My iPhone! What's Lame - What's not.
The Power Users guide to what you will and won't like about the iPhone.
So... OK, I broke down and did it. I switched from my Treo 650 to an 8GB iPhone about a month ago. Now that I've been using it for about 30 days I wanted to share with my loyal reader what I like and what I don't. Overall, I love this thing! Although that's not to say there are things about it that aren't lame. So here it is, more stuff Joe wants you to know. My shiny new iPhone, what's Lame and what's not.
NOT LAME - Phone voice quality and reception.
In and around my chunk of Orange County I've found the overall voice quality and reception to be excellent! I'm really REALLY pleasantly surprised. It's a lot better than my Treo, and better than our Motorola Razr. In my office we get generally terrible mobile phone service on all the networks so I didn't expect much, and even there the reception is not bad! Moreover, I installed a Wi-Ex zBoost to boost the signal in the office, and the iPhone works great with it. I get 4 solid bars all the time. Cudos Apple, you even made AT&T look good. That's incredible!
NOT LAME - Activation and Setup.
It's all done through iTunes and it works really well, but after I got my first bill I discovered a major billing screw-up which I chalk up to an AT&T error. The actual setup process in iTunes is really slick. In my case I had an existing account with AT&T with 3 numbers already on it. The iTunes setup did a great job of looking up my account and giving me new service options appropriate to the plan I was already on. The only problem is that AT&T failed to actually activate the options I selected, so I had to call them to correct the problem (and issue a substantial credit). I hope then get it right!
LAME - AT&T only locked phone.
I just really dislike this, but its a business decision and I guess that's just how it is. My feeling is that its an expensive phone (even at $399) and for that price you should be able to buy and run it unlocked on any GSM network. Just swap the SIM card and go. Apple its own reasons for seeing it differently. I'm already on AT&T and I don't travel much outside of the country, so this didn't affect me much personally, but I still think it's Lame.
LAME LAME LAME - Web Browsing on the AT&T EDGE data network.
It's faster then my Treo on EDGE, but still largely unusable for just about all purposes anyway. It takes 30 seconds to a minute to load most web pages I want to go. By the time each page loads I just get distracted and move on to other things. I still can't believe this was released on the EDGE network, when AT&T has been blowing its horn about 3G for 2 years now. The iPhone should have had built-in 3G support from the beginning, plain and simple. EDGE is too slow! I'm sure 3G will follow in the next iPhone though.
NOT LAME - Safari and Web over WiFi.
Even though I take objection with the slow speed of the EDGE network, I think the implementation of Safari is excellent, and it runs very nicely over WiFi.
NOT LAME - On Screen touch typing, and multi-touch interface.
It takes a "little" getting used to, but after some trial and error its easy to see why Apple chose to omit the physical keyboard. They clearly put a lot of work into this and it shows. The on-screen keyboard that you see is adaptive; it changes itself to best suit the purpose. If you're entering a URL for example, the keyboard that pops up has a keys for ".", "/", and ".com"prominently displayed on the bottom, all three frequently used for entering URLs. If you're sending email the keyboard has keys for "@" and ".". The Safari keyboard works in landscape and portrait modes which is nice! The email keyboard works only in portrait. When you type the keys appear to "pop" up to meet your finger, and as you type if your fat finger hits a nearby key instead of the one you wanted, it suggests the word you probably meant to type. Its amazingly accurate.
LAME-O - Searching the Contact Database
I hate having to scroll through contacts to find the person I want to call! It works like a rolodex. You can get to the general area in your address book quickly, A B C etc., but then you have to scroll up and down until you see the specific person you want. This works fine for a small number of contacts, but not for a large contact database. I find it hard to understand why Apple failed to include some kind of keyboard search for names. I have well over a thousand and doing it this way is considerably slower than on the Treo, on which you can just type the first letter of the persons first name then last name and immediately get a short list of matching names. What bothers me the most is that the ability to search for contacts using the keyboard is available if you want to send someone a text message, or look them up in Google Maps, but NOT in the main contact application. It's not as good as on the Treo, because you can only search first or last names, but its better then no keyboard search at all! I would take the Treo smart keyboard search (first initial, last initial) over the iPhone scrolling list any day if I only could have one, but I would really prefer having the option to use either or both search methods. Apple could have easily implemented this, but somehow missed how clumsy scroll through a long list would be for anything more than a few dozen names.
LAME - No Third Party Applications Support?
This is one of the keys factors that makes the Palm (and Windows Mobile) platforms so versatile and robust; the ability for developers to write and consumers to buy and install non Apple software. Apple had previously announced that "We define everything that is on the iPhone". This was not an encouraging statement to Developers. The iPhone is thus far a closed system; NO support for third party software. This is lame; I hope and trust they'll get over this soon.
NOT LAME - The built in iPod.
I really like the click-wheel interface of a classic iPod, AND I really like the touch interface of the iPod in my iPhone. I would ideally have liked to have seen something on the touch screen that more closely immitates the behaviour of the clickwheel, but its actually pretty cool the way it is.
NOT LAME - Email and Yahoo Push Mail
The email client if fast, light, tight and pretty too! I have come to love it. There is nothing on a Treo or Blackberry that compares. Also, if you have a Yahoo email account you can have your email sent to your iPhone instantly using push mail. There is almost no documentation on this, and there is no mention of this capability anywhere in the Yahoo mail site that I can find, but it (generally) works. When I first set it up it didn't seem to work at all, then low and behold about a day later it started working every time. Now I notice that almost all my yahoo mail hits the phone instantly, but occasionally one doesn't. Overall, its good enough. Rather then check my main email accounts on the iPhone directly, I just have my yahoo account set up on it. By using rules in the Apple mail program on my Desktop I have it set up so that only email I want ever gets to my iPhone. Very Nice, I couldn't be happier with this setup.
LAME - Syncing!
There is only one way to sync up your iPhone; with iTunes over a USB cable.
This is a sore spot, and its somewhat of a sprawling discussion point. I think the best place to start is with what should have been in the iPhone; full on support for .Mac syncing over WiFi and/or the AT&T data network. It's possible that Apple left this out because of the woefully slow speed of the EDGE data network (as previously discussed). In Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) Apple nailed syncing information like addresses and calendars between Macs and your .Mac account. You just need to pony up $99 a year for a .Mac membership. You can sync your address book, your calendars and all kinds of other stuff. You can't sync Music or Photos though. I hope this is an enhancement that's coming in a future software update. The iPhone can and should participate in .Mac syncing just like another Mac.
LAME - The Calendar.
There is no support for multiple calendars on the iPhone. If you have multiple Calendars in iCal, when you sync them to your iPhone they all get bunched together into one big calendar. You can do this on a Treo with third party software. MarkSpace Missing Sync in particular.
LAME and NOT LAME - Document Type Support.
If you download, or open an email attachment that is a JPEG, a PDF, or even an Excel spreadsheet or Word Doc, the iPhone display it for you. Very nice!!! Try a vcard or iCal event, and you get nothing. On a Treo you get the option to add these to your address book or calendar respectively.
LAME - No File System.
Some kind of user accessible file system would be handy....
NOT LAME - Just about Everything ELSE!
The iPhone really is a brilliant device overall. Battery life is great, the high screen is big and bright and tight, Bluetooth on it is solid, the build in camera is pretty cool at 2 megapixels, the fit and finish is fantastic, and the software interface is light years ahead of anything anyone has ever seen on a handheld device ever.
The iPhone is a breakthrough device in every measure, and the bottom line is that Apple had to draw the line somewhere if they still wanted to get the product out when they did. My long history with Apple tells me that with time everything on the LAME list will be zapped as new software releases (and new iPhones) become available. The iPhone can be a great platform, Apple is a smart company. Overall I'm happy with the switch, and optimistic about what's yet to come. By contrast, the Treo felt like a dying platform that had seen its peak, and was destined to simply wither and die.
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