Brian's Brain

As previously mentioned, my review iPhone (an 8 GByte model) arrived on Monday. I'm pretty swamped right now, but I spent about 15 minutes with it around the home office on Tuesday morning and also took it with me for a dog-walk session around the neighborhood that afternoon. Finally, about 10PM that night, I convinced my sleepy wife to try it out for 'only five minutes, ok, honey?'....at which point she spent the next 45 minutes exploring it (there's a testimonial if I've ever heard one!). Some preliminary thoughts for y'all:

1. The biggest issue I run into time and time again with 'converged' devices like the iPhone, which combine the functions previously served by multiple devices, is that each function ends up being sub-optimal compared to its distinct-device counterpart. To wit, I was quite concerned about the quality of the iPhone's fundamental phone capabilities, particularly since this was a first-time stab at the function by Apple. I'm happy to report that my fears here were unjustified; this is hands-down the best GSM phone I've ever used, with respect to voice services. Granted, I can nitpick a few things; the lack of voice-activated dialing, for example. But, as I mentioned last week, my home office is a pretty horrid reception 'hole' for AT&T and T-Mobile. Whereas I'm lucky to get 1 bar's worth (out of 4 max) reception on my iMate SP5m within the premises, with the iPhone I consistently get 3-5 bar's worth (out of 5 max) of coverage. Outside, I get a solid 5 bars everywhere. I do feel compelled to point out, with no shortage of amusement, that the iPhone reports it's connected to AT&T's network even when I know darn well from my location-of-the-moment that it's talking to a T-Mobile cell tower (iMate sells the SP5m service-unlocked, so it accurately reports whatever provider's network it's currently latched onto....I haven't used a service-locked phone in a while, so I don't know how typical the iPhone's incorrect service reporting stance is).
2. Conversely, I'm so far not seeing great EDGE cellular data speeds on the iPhone. I've run numerous iterations of Broadband Reports' tests over the past two days, at various locations around Sacramento and at various times of day, and in no case have I been able to squeeze more than 50 kbps of EDGE bandwidth out of the iPhone. Conversely, as I also pointed out last week, I can nail ~200 kbps speeds on my iMate with regularity, over both AT&T and T-Mobile EDGE connections.
3. The screen is stunning in both its resolution and its brightness, and the finger-gesture user interface is intuitive and (generally) accurate and effective. I love being able to zoom in and out of Safari browser windows, Google Maps displays and photo previews with a simple two-finger vertical divergence or convergence, or to toggle between weather reports of multiple cities with side-to-side single-finger sweep. With that said, the iPhone occasionally misinterprets my digit gestures; I haven't explored the device's user settings in enough depth yet to discern whether or not I can customize the sensitivity.
4. Speaking of the user interface, what about the virtual keyboard? Ah, yes....the keyboard. I'll begin by pointing out that my wife and I are both diminutive in stature and girth, attributes that proportionally extrapolate to our svelte phalanges' (fingers') radii. The virtual keyboard's not bad, but it's not great either. Usage suggestions like those by David Pogue help, as does trusting the iPhone's auto-correct intelligence. That intelligence will improve over time, as the iPhone adapts to each user's unique vocabulary. However, as I've pointed out in the past both generally and specifically with respect to technologies such as voice recognition, most consumers don't have the patience for a slowly-but-steadily improving usage experience; they demand solid out-of-box performance and will quickly return an item (especially one that costs $500-$600 plus service fees) that doesn't deliver on that promise. Although there is the matter of the 10% open-box restocking charge to consider as a counterbalance to any rejection tendency....
5. Speaking of the keyboard, this device is begging for the capability to Bluetooth-tether it to an external keyboard, particularly if (I'm hypothesizing here, with no hard data to support my prognostication) the increasingly cozy relationship between Apple and Google eventually leads to the ability to run Google Apps on the iPhone through Safari. But I've already mentioned the iPhone's currently neutered Bluetooth capabilities....

Continue reading with 'Apple's iPhone: More Initial Hands-On Impressions'....