When Apple presented the iPhone at Macworld 2007 the tech press went crazy, and because most of the iPhone details were kept under wraps, the questions kept going and going so we had to speculate not having much informations about the phone. Today when the phone finally got to us some important aspects are answered. Is the phone looking good? Of course. It’s hard to use? Certainly not. Does it live up to the stratospheric hype? Not so much. With its sleek interface, best performance music and video features, and innovative design touches makes the iPhone a very sweet mobile device. While having a touch screen you would think its harder to use but that’s not so true, the multimedia performs nice being one of the strong points of the phone. But a host of missing features, a dependency on a sluggish EDGE network, and variable call quality, a unfriendly quality for a phone call dependent, keeps us waiting for more from the Apple technicians. For the reasons pointed the iPhone does not really do what a phone should be best of, even so the fans would already have one for them already. Our suggestion is to wait a little more time until the phone gets a little cheaper and the network improves, while a two year contract with AT&T to activate the phone and a price tag of 499$ for the 4GB version iPhone and 599$ for the 8GB model, its not very attractive. Lets just hope the changes Apple should make won’t take that long.
With a brilliant display, trim profile, and clean lines, and its lack of buttons, makes the iPhone design to leave behind phones like LG Prada or the HTC Touch. When using the phone on the street you will make a lot of people jealous, a real fact without all the media attention generated by the iPhone. The dimensions of the phone are 4.5 inches tall by 2.4 inches wide by 0.46 inch deep. In comparison with other high tech phones, the Apple it’s about as tall and as wide as a Palm Treo 755p, and even its thinner that the biggest competitor in the area, the Motorola Razr. Very comfortable while held in the hand or near the ear when talking. With a weight of 4.8 ounces the phone feel more weighty and solid than it looks. Another aspect is the glass display rather than a plastic one.
The iPhone’s display it’s the masterpiece of the hole phone not only for the great look, but for the easy and attractive use of it. While having a generous 3.5 inches display, the phone is dominated by the 480×320 pixel resolution (160 dots per inch) translates into brilliant colors, sharp graphics, and fluid movements, all connected with a sleek design.
Looking at the iPhone’s menu interface wee see the Apple attractive, intuitive, and easy to use style. On the main menu of the phone, the colored icons show the principal functions as we mention them: the phone menu, the mail folder, the Safari Web browser, and the iPod player, the camera, the calendar, and the settings, all gathered in two groups displayed below and above. This makes them easy to find. A essential feature is the fluid animation that takes you between different functions, this helping you to zip around pretty fast.
A lot of thing were implemented in the iPhone’s touch screen, even if the Apple already made a few phones that relied on a touch screen, but this would be the first phone that would come with so much attention and great expectations. Everything you do on the phone relies oh the touch screen with serves as your dialpad, your keyboard, your Safari browser, and your music and video player. After tested other similar touch screen phones we were skeptical that the phone would not handle very well all those touch screen functions.
The touch screen and software interface are easier to use than expected despite a lack of tactile feedback on the keypad. There was no problem when touching the screen to activate functions and interact with the main menu, but as any touch screen, the display attracts its share of smudges, not that we were distracted by that fact. The onscreen dialpad took little acclimation, and even the onscreen keyboard was easy to use even for big fingers, making the tapping of a message relatively quick. The integrated correction software helped minimize errors by suggesting words ahead of time. It was pretty accurate for the most part of its use, not perfect but good.
Still, the interface and keyboard are not even close to perfection. For starters, when typing an e-mail or text message the keyboard is displayed only when you hold the iPhone vertically. As a result, we could only type comfortably with one finger, which cut down on our typing speed. While using two hands, even it was possible, it was crowded and the thumbs were tapping each other. Basic punctuation such as periods or commas are annoying to use because you always have to bring a secondary keyboard. If you’re a frequent text messaging or an e-mail maven, we suggest a test-drive first.
While using the phone book or the music playlist, you will have to scroll through long lists, flicking you finger in an up or down motion will move you through the list, but there is no option to move to the start or end by swiping and holding your finger. The good thing about the menu are the alphabet letters displayed on the right side of the screen which help you go directly to any songs or contacts beginning with that letter, only by pressing a letter. But the lack of buttons requires a lot of tapping to move about the interface. The Talk and End buttons are only displayed when the phone rings or its in call mode, and being a lack of buttons you will have to search for those functions using a few taps. That also means you cannot just start dialing a number; you must open the dialpad first, which adds clicks to the process. The music player works on the same principle, since there are no external buttons. Maybe switching back and forth may be a non issue for you, but not for mutlitaskers, they will love this feature.
Leaving the criticisms aside, everyone remarks that the multitouch technology from the iPhone allows you to use your fingers while manipulating the touch screen in a very big variety of ways. When in a message, you can magnify the text by pressing and holding over a selected area, and if you don’t lift the finger of the screen, you can move your “magnifying glass” on all the surface of the text. You can zoom in by pinching your fingers apart; to zoom out you just do the opposite. When using the web browser you can move around the Web page by sliding your finger, or you can zoom in by a double tap. A delete button will appear when swiping your finger from left to right across a message, of course when looking at your message list.
The motion sensor of the handset called accelerometer, will adjust the iPhone’s display orientation automatically when you flip the iPhone on its side while using the music and video players and the Internet browser. When you lift the iPhone to your ear, a proximity sensor turns off the display automatically, and lets you have the conversation.
The only exterior feature of the iPhone is a menu button set directly below the display who takes the user instantly back to the home screen, even if you are in the middle of an application. The button is very useful if you’re buried in a secondary menu, and helps you jump over a series of menu taps. On the top of the iPhone is a multifunction button for controlling calls and the phone’s power. If you are in the middle of something and you don’t want to answer your phone, you just have to press the button once to silence the ringer, or press it twice to send the call to voice mail. Another use for the button is to put the phone asleep and wake it up again. You can turn the iPhone off by pressing and holding the button.
On the left spine of the phone are located a volume rocker and a nifty ringer mute switch, a popular feature of Palm Treos, but a feature that all the cell phones should have. On the bottom end its located a pair of speakers and the jack for the syncing dock and the charger cord. Even if the headset jack look like any other device or ipod jack, its deeply recessed, which means you will need an adapter for any headphones with a chubby plug.
The battery of the phone is not one that you could replace yourself, that means you have to send the iPhone to Apple to replace the battery after it’s spent (Apple is estimating one battery will keep its full strength for 400 charges–probably about three years’ worth of use). The cost of the replacement is $79 plus $6.95 shipping. Even if a removable battery its not really needed, it would be nice to find it and other things that are missing from the iPhone, for such a expensive phone even more. And why should you wait during the replacement period, without your most loved phone? Contrary to earlier reports, the SIM card is removable via a small drawer on the top of the iPhone, but other AT&T SIM cards will not work in the iPhone. That a bad sign because its really gets in the way of using a GSM phone with a SIM card chosen by its user. Some people have multiple phones and like to change the SIM card between their different handsets. Also, you can’t use the SIM card to import contact information from another handset.
You can use the iPhone’s phone book until the memory of the phone its full. Every contact can save a lot of features like eight phone numbers, e-mail, Web site, and street addresses, a job title and department, a nickname, a birthday, and notes. You can store your best friends numbers in a favorites menu, to be easier to access the numbers when needed, but you can’t group callers to categories. Each contact can have a photo for caller ID and can be assign one of the 25 polyphonic ringtones. On the bad side you should know that voice dialing doesn’t exist, and mp3 files can only be listened not used as ringtones. Other basic features include an alarm clock, a calculator, a world clock, a stopwatch, a timer and a notepad. The vibrate mode it’s a tad light.
Not only the calendar shows the days and months, but can be used as a event reminder or a list with daily chores. Despite a clean and simple interface, imputing new appointments works you out pretty good due to a lot of tapping. There’s no Week view, however. We were able to sync our Outlook contacts and calendar and our Yahoo! e-mail address book with no problems.
Lots of wireless functions the iPhone offers including support for Wi-Fi, a feature that you can’t find on many smart phones, and Bluetooth connectivity. When using the Web, the iPhone connects to the nearest internet hot spot automatically. Bluetooth version is 2.0, a much faster transmission and longer range that Bluetooth 1.2 used to deliver. The Bluetooth can be used for voice calls, but you don’t get an A2dP stereo Bluetooth profile, something not really needed but nice to have implemented.
The lack of 3G support from the iPhone was explained by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, the reason being the chipset. It occupies a lot of room and sucks a lot of juice from the battery, to bad it’s not there we would really used it. The Wi-Fi network is great when you are able to use it, but AT&T’s EDGE network just doesn’t do the job well, when browsing the web is so slow, it almost ruins the pleasure of using the pretty interface.
The iPhone offers text messaging and e-mail, and as on other high tech phones, a text message thread is displayed as one long conversation, with a great arrangement that allows the user to pick the messages that he would like to replay too. The message not finished autosaves and after you finished using another function, you can return to pick up that message where you left off. The phone does not have multimedia messaging, so you can’t send photos to other phones, only pics through email you are able to send.
The iPhone’s e-mail menu includes integrated support for Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and Mac accounts. While the phone can be set up to receive messages from other IMAP4 and POP3 systems, you will have to convince your IT department to synchronize with your corporate exchange server. A rumor says that Apple will update the iPhone to support ActiveSync but there’s nothing official. You can read–but not edit–PDF, JPEG, Word, and Excel documents, and another bad news is that you can’t cut and paste text when composing messages.
Between all the iPhone’s features lives Apple’s latest iPod feature. The display, interface, video quality, audio quality are so carefully refined to impress even the worst critic. Its beautiful but to have it you need to own a device that will cost you more than 1,000$ a year. A Rolls-Royce has a top-notch umbrella hidden inside its passenger door. Buying the iPhone for its iPod feature is a lot like buying that Rolls-Royce for its umbrella. The iPhone is a new exciting step for Apple with its sixth-generation iPod. Apple has redeemed itself following the Motorola Rokr E1 debacle.
The features you already find on a fifth-generation iPod like podcasts, videos, music, playlists, and content management with iTunes, are also found on the new iPhone’s iPod. The interface is the only thing separating the two versions. While using the mp3 player from other touch screen interfaces, such as the Archos 704, iRiver Clix and Cowon D2, we realized that Phone’s unique integration of multi touch technology and a graphic user interface its far beyond its category.
The biggest triumph for Apple with the iPhone its the return of the album artwork back into the music experience from an iPod perspective, making it more special than a token thumbnail graphic. Physically flipping through your music collection in the iPhone’s Cover Flow mode really brings back the visceral feel of digging through a CD or record bin. A very much appreciated feature it’s the iPhone propriety to create the digital music to a form that is both visually and physically more vivid, a great feeling for the music lovers all over the world. Already being a iTunes fan that is jaded about using the Cover Flow mode on their personal computer, will not depreciate the mark that the experience using the iPhone’s intuitive touch screen will leave on you.
The only new feature that iPhone’s iPod brings it’s the integrated speaker, even if it sounds thin and is prone to distortion. It works great if you want to share a song with one of your friends. The speaker volume its independent of the headphone volume, a smart management from Apple, this feature helping the user not get deafened when deciding to plug in the headphones, while listening to the speaker full-blast.
The iPhone’s iPod forgot to add a very important feature, the ability to manually manage the transfer of music and video content. All the other iPod devices have it, but the iPhone does not allow an option for manually dragging and dropping content from an iTunes library directly to the iPhone device icon. Worse than that, Instead, the iPhone strictly uses defined library syncing options for collecting and syncing content from your iTunes library to the phone. This item its not critical for most people to work with, but when using a limited memory device, the inability to manually manage content just gets you more frustrated. After only a few hours of testing, our 8GB iPhone was already a quarter full, so a user should be vigilante while managing the iPhone’s library. An external memory card would be usefull in these conditions, but Apple din not thought about this.
The sound quality of the iPhone’s music seems right compared with a 5G iPod. The same EQ presets are available, but know you can find them on the iPhone’s main Settings tab. The included iPhone earbuds did a passable job for casual listening in a quiet environment. Because the iPhone has a smaller headphone jack, we were not able to test many headphones we’re familiar with, and barely squeezed the plug from the Etymotic ER6i earphones to make a comparison.
A video played on the iPhone does not beat one played on a Creative Zen Vision: W or Archos 504, but it tops the fifth-generation iPod by a mile, with its wide screen and bright contrast. Video playback is automatically bookmarked, and you can resume from the time you left the video, a feature present in previous iPods. An airplane mode its included, and keeps the music player activated while turning off the call transmitter.
Another part that sets the iPhone apart from the cell phone industry it’s the Safari browser who displays Web pages in their true form, not like other WAP using phones with their stripped down pages with limited text and graphics. Its truly amazing to see full web pages on a screen so small, to bad the browser its not Flash or Java enabled. To pan around a page, just swipe your finger across the display, and the page moves accordingly. If you want to open a new page all you have to do is tapping your finger on a link, or you can zoom in and out only by double tapping your finger. To move back and forth you will need to use the arrows located on the bottom of the display. In the same place you can find a multifunction button who lets you open new pages and flick among them.
The Safari Web browser has Google as the default search tool, but that doesn’t stop you to use Yahoo search as well. A keyboard will be displayed on the screen to help you type URLs or search for information’s, its pretty cool to use just like writing an e-mail just that the spacebar does other tasks like reproducing Web-appropriate language like “.com” and a slash.
For a more easy to watch view you can turn the phone on its side and the accelerometer will do its thing. Even if you turn the phone the other way the accelerometer will know which way you turn it and adjust properly. The onscreen keyboard can be used in landscape mode too while using the browser, also a cool advantage. When browsing a really complex web page like CNN.com you realize it’s a little crowded on the screen, not that most pages look great, and while you can zoom the page it will be easier to read, just that it still might be to small to read, but it will happen very rare. You can store bookmarks and sync your favorite pages from your PC, but it works only for Internet Explorer and not Firefox.
From the main menu of the phone you can use a icon to activate the iPhone’s integrated YouTube player, where you can find videos organized just the same as on the YouTube website, including Featured Clips, Most Viewed, Top Rated, and Most Recent. The bad thing is that you can’t read the comments, only information such as date the video was posted and the poster’s name will be displayed. Not updating in real time its another disadvantage, if you upload a video, it will show up on you mobile device only a few hours later.
The Apple iPhone has a built-in Google Maps application, making the appsense of GPS forgotten. You can get turn-by-turn directions between two points, with traffic information. While trying to map routes to various places we received accurate directions, but having no GPS you will have to figure out yourself were you are. The lack of audio instructions makes it very hard to use when driving. Calling functions interact good with the map, getting you to a point of interest and ring it in just a few taps. The Google satellite look its also familiar and has great usage.
Some other widgets point you to stock information and weather reports, and also you an program your own tickers and get information like a share gain or loss and see the chart of a share price over time. When using the weather function you will find out that a six day forecast from what city you chose will be presented to you. A selection of third-party iPhone apps are already available to use for more options added to the phone. A big disappointment it’s the lack of games witch are not included with the handset.
Using the visual voice mail will leave the users very intrigued. This feature works very much like a text message folder where the caller’s name or phone number and the time are displayed. IPhone’s voice mail its not doing only that, you can also can listen to the message instantly by pressing the individual message, a fantastic feature because you don’t have to call your voice mail first.
The Apple iPhone has a 2-megapixel camera on the back who offers a spiffy interface with great graphics. No camera editing options are offered, something you might needed to use, so you can’t change the resolution, choose a color or quality setting, or select a night mode. No flash, no self-portrait mirror, will make the shots pretty tricky. We can’t say that we are not satisfied about the cameras performance, because while testing the photo quality was excellent with rich, bright colors and distinct object outlines, and even it might looked a bit too soft, we were not disappointed. You can’t shoot your own video, which its rubbish by my opinion.
The photo menu its attractive and easy to use, the pinching motion bringing it to the top. Flipping between photos can be done by swiping your finger across the display. When you select a photo you will have the option to assign it to one of your contacts, use it as a wallpaper for the phone or just e-mail it to any one you like.
Testing the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) that Apple iPhone provides using AT&T service we realized a good call quality but not a dependable one. Even if the interlocutors voice sounded natural, the volume of the conversation was often low, and the microphone has a sensitive sweet spot. The phone its very sensitive, because if you move in away from your ear just slightly, you will realize the volume was diminished consistently, making you move the phone closer to the ear to hear clearly. Being able to talk to someone in a crowded place doesn’t make the volume so bad, but it sure could have been better. The speakerphone was also too quiet though conversations.
Some people noticed a slight background hiss despite the volume problems. That noise was not noticeable at our end, but more of our friends reported they heard it. The automated calling system was able to work for us in a quiet room, but on the hole, the call quality was likely the same in the different environments we used it.
An average web page loads in 5 to 10 seconds in our tests with the Safari browser, though sites with heavy graphics took longer. It was a cool experience even if it didn’t upstand our expectations. Pages took about the same time to load on a home network and just a couple seconds longer in a cafe. If you are not using Wi-Fi, the AT&T EDGE network will give you hard time with its too slow speeds in the 50-to-90Kbps range, just like an old dial-up browser. While testing the EDGE network against the Wi-Fi connection by comparing repeated results of the download time for a 9.4MB file we noticed a slightly big difference between the two, the results were an average download time of 15 minutes, 41 seconds for the file on EDGE, and an average required a mere 1 minute, 11 seconds on Wi-Fi. In the end, our test results indicate that the iPhone’s Wi-Fi connection is 13 times faster than using EDGE, the result will be dependable to the location were the phone will be used. We can only hope Apple adds 3G soon, especially since AT&T has a robust UMTS/HSDPA network.
To recognize the iPhone was easy because we used iTunes 7.3 which started the system automatically. After a few prompts, it asked us if we wanted to automatically sync contacts from Yahoo and Windows mail and contacts from Outlook. Internet bookmarks are also synchronized, but not the ones used with Firefox. AT&T account service its also present, you could select a plan and indicate whether you are a current AT&T customer, even get e new cell phone number from them.
The Apple iPhone it’s a empty space until you activate it, the only things you can do with it its make emergency calls. And the bad news is the dependability for the AT&T contract, once you cancel it the phone becomes useless.
You can use the Apple iPhone for 8 hours to talk, 24 hours to playback music, 7 hours for videos and 6 hours for internet browsing. The technical stand-by time should be 10.4 days. After a few test we were able to give you some conclusive results: when Wi-Fi function was turned of, the phone managed 7 hours and 45 minutes of talk time; after we activated the Wi-Fi we came away with 4 hours less; video playback managed to pass the 7 hours barrier to a close 7.3; we also got 28.4 hours of music playback on a single charge. This test are not so daily basics because you will not use each feature of the phone separated through each recharge, and so your battery will be influenced by your switch between functions. Having a big screen the iPhone will need recharging every couple of day due to its battery draining, but according to the FCC, the iPhone has a digital SAR rating of 0.974 watts per kilogram making him energy economic.
Comments (1) Posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
Asus has announced R600, a portable GPS with good specifications, like the 400Mhz Samsung processor, SirfStar III chip and the rechargeable battery with a lifetime of 6 hours.Also, it features 128MB of Flash ROM, 64MB SDRAM, it’s memory can be expanded to up to 4GB via the SD memory card slot, it has an optional TMC module, Bluetooth 2.0 with handsfree calling, multimedia player and it automatically adjusts the LCD backlight, to make viewing better.
We all know that the 700Mhz wireless spectrum is going to be opened by the FCC and the companies will have to bid on an auction, for it. Google has also announced that they will bid about $4.6 billion, if FCC meets their demands. They want FCC to allow the 700Mhz spectrum for “open applications, open devices, open networks, and open services“, demand that FCC’s Chairman Kevin Martin seems to agree with.
