I played with an iPhone today - first impressions

Joined
Jan 18, 2006
Messages
1,868
Reaction score
106
Points
63
Your Mac's Specs
G4 Cube
I stopped by the local Apple Store this evening with my wife and played with an iPhone. Here are our first impressions:

Dislikes:
Wife - Didn't like the keyboard (but also didn't hate the keyboard). Said it will take some time to get used to
Wife - No Flash on the Internet (her website's galleries run on Flash)
Wife - Gets lots of fingerprints & smudges on it
Me - Lag when turning (sometimes didn't register that it had turned and was still in vertical mode)
Me - Screen doesn't have super great viewing angles, not *quite* as bright as I had hoped
Me - Touchscreen is more of a "tap" screen than a "touch" screen
Me- Call quality is average. Not as good as my Motorola v710 or Q. Not bad, just not great

Likes:
Wife - Everything :)
Wife - So easy to use, very intuitive, not a puzzle box like most phones
Wife - Buttons for all the things she does on her Mac (Calendar, Mail, etc.)
Wife - Lightweight & small, but not too small (easy to see webpages, etc.)
Me - Screen was very clear
Me - LOVED the keyboard!
Me- EDGE was faster than I expected. Somewhat faster than EVDO on my Q

The first impression I had was, "WOW this thing is small!" It's a hair thinner than a Razr phone and roughly the size of my Motorola Q. It fit perfectly in both my hand (large with long fingers) and my wife's hand (average size). The keyboard was the very first thing I played with. I actually like it! It's just like using the virtual keyboard on a Nintendo Wii. The trick for typing is sliding your finger instead of just tapping - if you tap, it's fairly easy to hit the wrong letter, but if you tap and hold then you can slide your finger to the next key and it will expand to select that key instead of the one you originally pointed on. If you use the keyboard this way, it's pretty hard to select the wrong key. I think that people are complaining about the keyboard simply because they're not used to using a full keypad on a phone. I had a bit of trouble using my Q at first, but after a week I was a pro. I didn't even bother using my thumbs on the iPhone, typing with just one thumb was so fast because I didn't have to press a physical button down.

The first quirk I encountered was the touchscreen. It's more like tap screen. This bugged me at first because I couldn't just brush the screen with my finger, I had to tap or press down on it. This actually turned out to be a good thing because that way it doesn't register every single skin stroke on the screen - you have to make an effort to select what you want instead of accidentally pressing a button. I'm not saying you can't press something accidentally, it just requires more of a "push". If you've ever used PDAs and SmartPhones, I'd say it's more like using a Treo's touchscreen than a Dell Axim's touchscreen (I prefer the lighter touch of the Axim). I also noticed that the viewing angle wasn't that great. But I would assume that if you're using the iPhone you'd be looking at it straight on anyway. The screen was very crisp; web pages rendered very clearly when zoomed in on. I wasn't too impressed with the brightness; looking straight on it was good, borderline great, but not superb. The best screen I've seen on a mobile has been on my Motorola Q, but it's not a touchscreen. The brightness is more than adequate when viewed straight on though.

The "Home" button is AWESOME. It's the only physical button on the face of the phone. Anywhere you are in the menu system, you can simply press the home button and go back to the main menu. The main screen is wonderful. No complicated menus, no legacy features like a "Start" menu - everything is laid out for you like a buffet. Simply touch the function you want to use - Weather, Mail, Calender, Phone, and so on. Very straightforward, very OS X-ish. My wife is a HUGE fan of OS X and really loves the GUI and so she really flipped when she got to play with the iPhone. She figured out features faster than I did, actually, and was showing me different actions she could perform on the iPhone. Everything was just incredibly straightforward. We talked about how there weren't really any new features per se, just an easier, more intuitive way of accessing them. She would get really frustrated with my Q because even simple functions were more difficult than they needed to be, but she was absolutely delighted with the iPhone's simple and direct interface.

Before the iPhone came out, I had a lot of concerns. First, I didn't like Cingular. They are merging with AT&T, so hopefully the quality will improve. The quality of the call I made at the Apple Store from the demo iPhone was pretty decent. Again the earpiece wasn't as good as my previous Motorola phones, but it was adequate. Nothing to write home about, but nothing to complain too much about either. I was also worried about 3G, but the speed of EDGE was better than the EVDO that Verizon has in my area. There are a lot of other niggles I have with the iPhone, but most of them can be address via software updates either from Apple or hackers - Bluetooth tethering, Bluetooth GPS, Flash for the Internet, etc. The lack of ANY kind of tethering (for use as a modem with my laptop) is an annoyance, but if I just need to look something up online the browser is better than ANYTHING I've used on a mobile before, even on my previous PDAs like the Dell Axim X51v.

Conclusion? Looks like I need to start saving for a couple iPhones :)
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top