48 Hours with the iPhone: A Look at the Phone Itself
While the iPhone was released to the masses on June 29th, just over a month ago, I’ve only been fortunate enough to have my hands on it for the past 48 hours. Though the reviews, praises, and gripes have been out for quite a while, I thought I’d share my thoughts and opinions on the product. But first, a few disclaimers.
DISCLAIMER 1: I am, and will not profess to be anything other than, an Apple Fanboy. Plain and simple. I know many of you have heard this before, but I want to make very certain that I get that out in the beginning so no one feels that I’m hiding it.
DISCLAIMER 2: I’ve never own or used a “smart phone”. My thoughts and impressions of the iPhone will be juxtaposed with my experiences using phones made my Motorola, LG, Sony Ericsson, and Kyocera.
Now that we’ve got the disclaimers out of the way, lets just jump right in. The iPhone is, hands down, the single greatest phone I’ve ever used. Throw out everything that any phone can be and lets just look at the most basic of phone features: storing contacts, making / receiving calls, sending sms messages, and checking voice messages. While all the internet browsing and ipod functionality of the phone is great, what really makes me love it are the most “basic” features.
Storing contacts: One of the things I love about the mac (and I’m sure these features are available in windows) is that all my programs that involve contacts are tightly integrated and managed inside of a little program “cleverly” called Address Book. While the individual information a programs needs may differ (one needing a phone number, one an email address, another needing a screen name), the person they are referring to is the same and there isn’t a need to store the information in different databases. I simply create a new contact, add all their information into the Address Book and then I can drag them into any program that requires any single bit of that info. This type of system, for an organizational freak like myself, is heaven. Unfortunately, most phones don’t work like this.
Take my [old] RAZR for instance. If I want my dad’s home, work, and cell numbers in the phone, I end up with his name appearing three times in the contacts list. Then, unless I can memorize the differences in the three numbers, I have to ender the him as “Dad (Cell)”, “Dad (Home)”, and “Dad (work)”. Or, I could have three entries that just day “Dad”, but have an accompanying cell phone, house, or building icon next to the number.
Now I know there are a lot of phones out there that allow you to nest several numbers within a contact, but not like the iPhone. Not only does the iPhone display every single bit of contact information you could imagine, they’re clearly labled without being overly cluttered. When you want to make a call or text someone (or email them, but we’re sticking to standard phone features right now), you simply click the phone icon, scroll through the list of names that can now sort by last name instead of the first letter of the first name, select your contact and then simply click the listed number you’d like to call. You can even click the text message button and send a text right from the contacts list without having to exit the list, go into your messages, type a message, and then select your contact.
Making and Receiving calls: Ok, now this is pretty much your standard fare when it comes to this feature. No one phone can really claim that it’s “better” at being talked through. With the iPhone we’re mostly just talking about the style through which it handles this very ordinary task. The big beautiful buttons that allow you to swtich between speaker or hand set and allow you to answer hold or end the call are just plain stylish. There’s nothing quite as beautiful, at least not on a phone I’ve seen. Now there is also a nice feature that allows you to easily add people to your current call, but I haven’t tried it out yet, so I’ll just move right along.
Sending SMS messages: Sadly, this is one of my favorite features of the iPhone. Not really the SMS itself, as it is a feature of pretty much every phone, but more how it is handled. When you receive the messages on the phone, they are threaded into separate conversations that display the entire thread in a very chat-esque window configuration. For the first time I’ve seen on a phone you’re able to view entire conversations with people, all at once, and separate from the other text messages you’ve received. Not only does this make it easier to follow what is being said across multiple messages, but it all but guarantees you will never again send that apparently random message to one friend when you actually meant to send it to another. This simply wont happen with the iPhone SMS because you can actually see your friends messages while you’re typing their reply.
Checking Voicemail: If you’re anything like me, you hate checking voicemail. One of the big problems with voicemail is that, unless you only have one missed call and one voicemail, it’s impossible to know who left the messages until you listen to them. With the iPhone’s visual voicemail system. You see exactly who’s called and left which messages, each message gets it’s own play buttons, and you can choose exactly which ones you’d like to hear now or save for later.
Even better is something that I think might be one of the best features of the entire phone. There is a scrub bar for each voicemail. Never again will you have to listen to an entire message three times to try and get that phone number instruction at the end. If you miss a little section, just scrub back a little bit an have another listen. It’s a beautiful thing.
Now if you can’t tell, this phone had me at “calling home…” and we haven’t even gotten into the other features of the phone. If you haven’t gotten a chance to play with one of these thing, find someone who has one or take a trip down to your local Apple or AT&T store. I’m not saying you should buy one, because they are pretty expensive, but you have to at least play around on it.
