Archive for May, 2009

I’ve been wanting an iPhone for quite a while, was even tempted to get one when I last upgraded my phone at the beginning of 2008 but went for the supposed ‘iPhone Killer’ of the LG Viewty. Probably a mistake as aside from the first few months I really hated that phone.

The upgrade point on my o2 contract kicked in over the weekend and i’d already decided that this time around I wanted to get the real thing, and that I did.

I thought i’d do a review of sorts (spurred on by my mate Greg, who suggested I blogged about it in more detail) and here are some thoughts after a few days of use.

As a phone, it does exactly what you might expect. To me though, I didn’t buy it just because it’s a phone, I bought it because it’s capable of so much more.

Interface
It’s intuitive, I have yet to think ‘how do I do this?!’ You have a home screen with a preset of apps, some of which I immediately removed (eg stocks ..I don’t really need to know how the FTSE is doing). Essentially all you do is tap the app/function you need and it appears straight away. No faffing about.

Texting is a different affair. You have ‘conversations’ and every text between you and another person is broken down into coloured speech bubbles. You can clear these conversations down whenever you please but so far I have found it very handy to keep track of texts I have sent to other people and then their subsequent replies. I no longer have to go into sent items to see what I have sent and when I have sent it..and then into my inbox to see the reply (my memory is not great!). This is a really good feature.

Camera
The only negative with this device. A 2.0 megapixel camera really doesn’t cut it. You can tell that the iPhone 3G was developed over 2 years ago, as nowadays the minimum you would expect from a phone is 5.0 megapixel and the norm for a top end phone is 8.0 megapixel. Still, it’s a competent camera for capturing those candid little moments. Ideal for documenting my mate Leigh spewing his guts up after a night out or passed out on my living room floor.

iPod
The iPhone is also a fully featured iPod. Not much to say really, my only gripe is that the storage on the iPhone is so low at 8gb/16gb that I can’t even hope to fit 20% of my music collection onto it. For this reason alone, I will be hanging onto my 80gb iPod classic and am not totally sure i’ll make full use of the iPod for more than podcasts or video.

Speaking of video, thats where the iPhone really excels over the iPod. The screen is twice the size for a start and it makes it a much more enjoyable experience to watch. I have so far watched 7 or 8 episodes of LOST on it and am very impressed. A cool feature is that the device automatically registers if you are holding it horizontal or vertical and adjusts the picture accordingly ..even mid play. You can turn it upsidedown and it turns the picture back the right way. Not exactly something vital, but the geek inside me really likes little touches like that.

The ability to login to iTunes and purchase music is also there, although I doubt I will use it. My preferred legal download source is Play.com or HMV (whichever is cheaper) ..although I guess it could be handy to use iTunes if i REALLY need to grab a specific tune whilst on the move. Can’t see that ever being on the cards though.

Apps
One of the great things I had seen and heard about the iPhone was it’s huge development community. Apple had opened the doors to allow anyone to develop applications for it, and there are staggering amounts of apps out there! They range from free …to, well… not free! and so far it seems that a lot of the free stuff is demo versions of full apps that you can buy. There are some good free apps though and I have spent hours installing and playing around.

A good example of two great apps:

‘Facebook for iPhone’ is pretty much a match for the original website and made especially for the iPhone. I no longer have to load up Opera Mini, browse to my bookmarks, find and select Facebook, load it, occasionally have to enter login details … and then put up with a pretty slow and feature lacking interface. Now I just tap the facebook logo on my home screen, Facebook immediately loads .. it remembers the last page I was on and auto refreshes it. Also, you can manually refresh with the flick of a wrist! (seriously, the iPhone has movement sensors in it!).

Example 2 is last.fm. I can stream any of my own custom radio stations (or anyone elses for that matter) straight to my phone. Again, just tapping the last.fm logo, selecting the stream and I am listening. Superb for tuning into my own last.fm musical library … eg always getting a track I will like! Sound quality is also top notch for portable audio.

WiFi
WiFi is something I really like on this phone. I have set it up to auto connect to my home network whenever I am in range, negating the need to logon and use the 3G network everytime I want to check my emails or view Facebook or whatever. 3G is fast for mobile internet, but using my home internet connection via broadband is so much faster …it’s so fast that you can even use the BBC iPlayer to watch BBC content in superb quality (iPlayer only works on WiFi, probably due to the amount of data it needs to transfer to you).

GPS
Google maps is one of the apps already preloadedonto the iPhone. I loaded it up quickly just to see if it was any better than the version I had on my old phone and was amazed to find that it pinpointed my location! It knew where I was! A little spooky/big brother-ish but the prospect of GPS on my phone really excites me. So much so that I hopped in the car, perched the iPhone on the dash and drove down the road. The dot on the map followed my every move in real time! Once back home I immediately searched for Sat Nav apps but sadly there aren’t any out there yet, at least not through the official channels. I’m not ready to jailbreak my iPhone yet, so will just bide my time. Apparently, Tom Tom have got their sat nav software working on the iPhone, so it will be awesome if they ever release this to the general public.

There is probably a lot more I could touch upon, but these are my initial thoughts.

My first impressions of the iPhone were probably influenced by the fact I REALLY wanted to like it. That said, several days later my impressions haven’t changed. I know it should take a few weeks of use for me to build up a proper opinion, but I genuinely do like this phone and am very pleased with it.

I am writing this blog post from my new iPhone and via a wordpress app I have installed.

Just a test post!!