iPhone: Kungfuwoo's take on Apple's "Revolutionary" device

J

jadell

New member
I'll try to keep it short as I was only able to play with one for ~20 minutes today, but here goes.

First thing first is the size - very small, very nice screen. Fairly light too, but heavy enough to feel like a solid device. My first thought when I saw it was now THIS is a sexy device.

Looks GREAT. I also loved how the ipod features worked too, coverflow looks pretty good. Kudos to apple on making a device where everything from the hardware to the software looks great.

Overall, the unit was pretty responsive and I didn't suffer much lag. However, the speed of data transmission, even over wifi, left too much to be desired. I was expecting wifi to go faster, but it really didn't. When I switched over to EDGE only, I just gave up. I did however visit some mobile sites (like pda.wapedia.mobi) over EDGE and those pages loaded QUICK. Now I know that the selling point of the iPhone, according to Apple at least, is that you can view full HTML on it. While it does look pretty good, when I'm talking about a screen with 480x320 pixels, I don't want to zoom in to see everything and wait 20+ seconds just to view a page. I don't want that. I personally really enjoy using mobile sites on my smartphones. I'm more than capable of loading large pages (in full HTML as seen on your desktop) with 3G or wifi on my devices, but they are cumbersome to view on such a small screen, even with Apple's neat safari implementation. If I had an iPhone, I would still be bookmarking mobile sites instead of the full versions of sites (at least most of them).

The keyboard wasn't bad either, on my first try at it, I was probably about 70% accurate typing with two thumbs. Of course, I come from a touch screen device and so it probably is easier for me than most to get accustomed to it. I can see typing to be fairly easy, but not as easy as my 8525.
The other place that this thing really disappoints though is the apps and what you have a available for it. From a multimedia standpoint, it's great. It doesn't support divx or xvid, but that makes sense as itunes functionality is what drives the iPhone. What doesn't make sense is that there is no tasks app. I heavily use tasks for business and for personal life, but the iPhone didn't have it from what I could see, only appointments. The sales guy (whom is 9 days away from being eligible for the free iPhone, sadly) also stated that it had a notes app, and that it was probably the closest thing to a task list. Sorry Apple, but that doesn't cut it.

There just was no true lust factor for me. I had it in my hand, and the girl I was with asked if I was going to get it, and I said no without hesitation. I just didn't feel that it was "smart" enough. It's definitely more advanced than most cellphones out right now, and VERY aesthetically pleasing, but not enough for me to really want it. I do want Windows Mobile to be prettier and for it to do that cool finger-flick scroll action in every app, but other than that, I'm still convinced that the devices I own are perfect for me. Many of you will disagree and that's fine, I hope you will. And I am by no means saying that it's a bad device because it is not. I really think its a terrific device for the average "prosumer" but not powerful enough for my needs.
 
I bought 2 for people at my office....but you have to fucking activate them to even fuck around with the device.

AND we can't put it on our business account (only like 3 people on ATT, the rest of us are on VZW) so I can't even activate it for them until they split their accounts from the business one.

At least I didn't have to wait in line...I might just activate one and deal with the details later
 
I agree with everything you said and everyone keeps saying I'm a sackrider.

I found a couple things surprising:

I honestly didn't expect the software to be as responsive as it is. I figured coverflow would stutter and not be as smooth as it is in the commercials but it doesn't. It's actually quite peppy for such a graphics rich interface.

I don't understand the hate for activation on iTunes, personally, I think every phone should be sold with a similar activation routine. I spent literally 3 minutes purchasing the phone at the Apple store, and I didn't have to deal with some 20 year old phone dork in a bad tie trying to upsell me on plans and text messages that I don't need.

I came home and activated the phone in another 3 minutes and had the opportunity to look over the plans and options at my leisure on a computer that was connected to the internet and if I wanted more information I could easily get it. I liked it, so maybe I'm just anti-social.

I'm surprised that the keyboard is as good as it is, I honestly expected more suck from it. I'm typing with two thumbs and getting at least 85%+ accuracy.

The screen is quite possible the best I've personally ever seen on a pocket device. There may be better out there, but this is REALLY damn good.

I'm also VERY happy with the calendar app, creating appointments on iPhone is really well thought out and syncing through to my work Lotus Notes calendar works very nicely.

As for some of the missing apps and features, I suspect a lot of them will come with software updates over the next 3 months or so. For example, the current version of Mail on the Mac doesn't support tasks, but the version that will ship with Leopard will. I suspect iPhone will get updated around the same time to support tasks.

I also suspect iChat will be ported to iPhone in the not too distant future. Many of the other things that people complain about could also be pushed down with software update, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

And yes, data speeds suck, but it's still actually better than what I'm used to with all of my previous devices. So for us "prosumers" the device does what we need it to.

Frankly, the iPhone is what I've been wanting from a single portable device for years. Simple, REALLY easy to use, fantastic UI, good calendar app with seamless sync to my web/work/home calendars, great music app with enough capacity to keep you from getting bored, full HTML on a decent size screen, and of course, an easy to use phone.

Everyone is spending way too much time whining about what the iPhone won't do, and not enough time on what it CAN do.
 
definetly not perfect, but great in so many ways that actually matter. Simple yet advanced and easy to use. new apps are already rolling out and available. its exactly what they said it would be.
 
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