Apple's iPhone 4s Update

Thaks to a silly 2 year contract I can't upgrade to the iPhone 4s, but luckily about a third of the people I know have iPhones and of those, about a quarter of them have the 4s. The 4s is the 4 but even better. The pictures and video are even better, Siri is pretty incredible, etc.

Now, I'm still very happy with my iPhone 4, and it was a huge step up from the original that I stretched out an extra year so I could get the 4. In reviewing my review below, I thought I'd comment on how iOS5 has gotten better. Gone are the Safari Crashes. In iOS 3 & 4 Safari crashed less, and in iOS5 they are even less common. I still use iOS Safari at least a few times a day, and I think the last time it crashed was a few seasons back.

Once again I have to comment about the on-screen keyboard. After using it and being happy with it for 3 years, I saw that ThinkGeek had a Bluetooth case for the 4 on sale. I got it, thinking I would type faster. Wrong. I found that I actually lost speed with a physical keyboard. The keyboard orientation is fixed wide and can't predictively make the touch area for the letter you're trying to hit, leading to more errors the faster I type. I hadn't thought about my virtual keyboard typing speed, until a friend of mine heard me typing a SMS response to his friend on my iPhone. He is a very even tempered and considerate person and not easily impressed. So, when he said he was kind of blown away at my speed, I started thinking about it. After 3 years I'm almost as fast using one finger on my iPhone's on screen keyboard as I am using most of my fingers on my Laptop's keyboard. (I got carpal tunnel in college and had to give up typing. Now my typing is more like advanced hunt and peck. I know where all the keys are, and often I'm hitting the next key before even having to look at it. So, I use my eyes more as an occasional guide. People have also commented on my keyboard typing speed with using traditional typing finger positioning.)

The interface is better in iOS 5, and the new notifications center makes keeping up with what's happening on your phone and in your life easier. As things usually go, there are often ways I can see the interface improved. For instance instead of double-tapping home, then pressing and holding a running app and finally hitting close. I'd like to be able to close an app faster. I think a gesture down should close the app. Also, you have to leave an app, then close it as above. I wish I could assign a triple tap to leave and close and app.

Last almost all of the Cons listed in my initial review are gone.Flash is continuing to disappear from more tech savvy websites as a video delivery platform and third party apps are more abundant. In fact they are so abundant, that I've had to get an app to tell me which ones are the best among categories (thanks to AppAdvice.com).

For more about the improvements see The Best Features of the iPhone 4s review at blogspot.

Apple's iPhone Review
by NoiVad 20070717 (updated 20090403)

Well I've had the iPhone for just over a week and I want to start by saying that despite its shortcomings it's a pleasure to use. When the iPhone was announced I knew it was going to be exactly what I thought I needed: a mobile link to the internet in addition to a phone and MP3 player.

Anyone could do a web phone, but only Apple really "got it" as far as the user interface goes. Any reasonably intelligent person can figure out how to use the iPhone if they're already familiar with personal computers and other phones without a look at any manuals.

iPhone 1.0

Up until the day it came out I wasn't sure if I was going to get one though because of concerns about a 1.0 product. Would the iPhone be full of bugs or missing functionality that should have been in there in the first place? The answer to the first question is no, I haven't crashed the iPhone, though Safari quit on me once, but it came right back up with all the tabs that were open before the crash. So, is this one bug a big deal? Nope. (Update: Safari will still occasionally crash, but it's become infrequent, and virtually non-existant in OS 3.0.x.) But what about features? Is it feature complete. Well yes and no. All the apps seems to have been thought out very well, and they're pretty much feature complete from an average user's standpoint. But for me, an advanced user, there's little things to be desired. But first the good stuff.

The Onscreen Keyboard

How about the on screen keyboard would it be difficult to type on? No. In fact the keyboard application learns words you frequently type and offers to auto-complete them when it has enough info. It learned my name, noivad, in about 3 or 4 times typing it. Besides misspellings it also figures out if you accidentally hit the wrong key and offers to correct the type with a word. If you accept the correction/completion you simply hit the spacebar, and if not you tap the little "x" next to the word the app is offering. More often than not the word it thinks you're trying to spell is the right one, so you rarely have to stop typing and cancel the word.

The user interface (UI) is very slick and incase you don't know anything about it, here's the basic operation of one. You see what application you want to open and you gently tap the screen with your finer. If you're in a map or safari you can scroll just by touching and dragging your finger across the display. If you want to zoom in on an area, you pinch the area you want to expand on open your dragging them across the display. Likewise, if you want to zoom out, you just touch the display with a pinching motion. Also, double tap in the map or safari zooms in if (in safari's case) the element doesn't already take up the whole screen already. To input text to just tap in any text field and the onscreen keyboard comes up. The only button on the face of the device returns you to the program/widget selection screen.

The iPod Improves

Basically, this device is meant to complement the iPod line, so Apple chose to have the iPhone's maximum memory to be 8GB (Note: The current top of the line model, the 4s has up to 64GB of memory). So, my 160GB iPod still has a place in my pockets, for now.

However, there's no scroll wheel. Instead the iPod interface has been completely redesigned, and is even easier to use. If you are looking at a list and turn the iPhone on its side while in the iPod application, it immediately goes to cover flow view where you see the album covers, and even there a flick across the screen will end with you scrolling, or if you see the album you want to look at on the display, you simply touch it to bring it to the front. Another touch will flip the cover so you can see what songs from the album are on your iPhone, and tapping in the song list will start playing the song. You can also tap a small play button in the lower left hand side of the screen and the iPhone starts playing the entire album. In list view you can scroll entire letters by touching an address book style alphabet running down the right side of the display. There are other features that make it the easiest music player to use as well.

In fact, the only downside to this new iPod interface is that one has to be able to see the display in order to operate it since tactile feedbacks doesn't yet exist on touchscreens. So, for people jogging or the blind, this phone is not a good fit as an iPod if you commonly do tasks that require you to not look away or if you are blind.

Goggle Maps

Google maps is a great feature in the iPhone, and it's already saved me from getting lost while going to pick up a friend in a location I've only been to once before. A great feature of Google Maps is that you can touch a little car icon in the lower right corner of the display, and it will show you the traffic congestion along highways. Green is all clear, yellow is a slowdown and red means that area is stop and go traffic. Like any computerized street map, you can enter a start location and a destination and it will give you the route, with an estimation of how long it will take you to get there factoring in traffic. The time estimation is a bit optimistic, but it's usually within 5 minutes of the time it said it would take.

Update: The 3G and 3Gs can give you turn by turn directions with added software.

The Camera

The iPhones camera is pretty decent as far as capturing images. It's a 1 megapixel camera, and it will take photos in portrait or landscape depending on the rotation of the iPhone. I don't have a digital camera to compare it to, but it's not bad as far as color fidelity goes and luminance. It's not great, but the pictures are clear (as long as you have a steady hand while taking the pictures) and free of compression artifacts.

Update: The 3Gs can shoot video and has a much improved camera.

Other Built In Applications

Of course the iPhone has a Calendar which is basically a touchscreen enabled version iCal. It has a note pad, a stock prices applet, weather, SMS Text messaging, a calculator, e-mail, and a YouTube video player. (The iPod application can play videos loaded on the phone through iTunes.)

The Phone Itself

The biggest concern I always have about all mobile phones is the sound quality and loudness. Often manufacturers, in order to squeeze more life out of the ever smaller and smaller batteries, often don't outfit their phones with a decent speaker. The iPhone luckily doesn't have this problem. I was able to carry on a conversation at freeway speeds in my noisy truck (illegal in California now), something that was almost impossible to do with my old motorola RAZR. Also to save a bit of change, a lot of phone's microphones are often cheap an sound tinny. Such isn't the case with the iPhone. It was remarked that the iPhone sounds like a landline when I called a few people. There's speakers on the bottom edge of the phone as well that act as a decent speakerphone as well.

The Wow Factors

The coolest things about the iPhone are the following. When I demonstrated my iPhone to about 5 people the two things that got the most reaction where, in safari, if you turn the display from portrait to landscape or vice versa, the display rotates to remain right side up. The second thing was the pinch in and out and the third was being able to drag in any direction across a page once zoomed in.

Nice touches

As a nice touch Apple engineers realized that sometimes people want to scroll in a straight line while in Safari, so if you start dragging your finger in a straight line the direction you want to go, the display scrolling will lock scrolling to either the horizontal or vertical axis. If you don't want it locked you just start by dragging your finger diagonally for free form dragging.The iPhone is full of nice little touches like the preceding example, which shows how much thought went into the UI. Little things like turning off touch sensitivity when you hold the phone up to your ear, or being able to drag and flick your finger off the display to make the scrolling keep going after you stop touching the screen in any application that scrolls. Also, in the weather widget to see temperatures in other areas that you've already configured, you just flick your finger horizontally to the next page. The SMS texting program keeps track of previous messages from or two you to each contact, so you can see a conversation in context. The mail and phone icons show the number of messages in your inbox like programs in OS X's dock.

To cap this pros off here's a quick list I made of them when I first got the phone.
Pros:

• Maps showing Traffic density Feature.
• Snappy performance on 802.11g|n. (Haven't tested others see below.)
• Automagically changes networks once set up, seamless Edge to Wi-Fi.
• iTunes navigation improved dramatically.
• Mail works seamlessly.
• Safari opens external links in a new page instead of overwriting the front most page. Yes it has "tabbed" browsing.
• Keyboard intelligence is pretty good.
• The screen is gorgeous.
• Camera pretty decent for a phone camera. (Note I can only compare it to the RAZR, and that camera sucks. the iPhone Cam is a vast improvement.)
• Interface extremely clean, & exceedingly easy to operate. Very intuitive.
• Pinching to zoom in/out precisely is incredible, and very fun to play with.
• The tilt and zoom/fade out effects blow people away.
• When you turn it the screen turns too.
• The icons zoom in and out of place.
• It has a very slick interface. Nothing beats it, yet.

The Bad Stuff

Perhaps the biggest drawback of the iPhone is the 2 year service agreement one must sign with AT&T. Luckily for me I was a Cingular subscriber, so all I had to do was add a $20 data plan to my account. But a 2 year service agreement is pretty ridiculous when you consider the phone is not subsidized. You can't sign up for longer plan and get the phone cheaper either. My guess is that will come out in a year. AT&T's exclusive contract with the iPhone runs out in 2012. (UPDATE: As you know Apple renegotiated a few years back with successive models and is now on 3 or the 4 big carriers.) So, if this one factor keeps you from purchasing one, know that in 3 years most likely every provider will want to offer the iPhone.

There's a list of pluses and shortcomings I've been making. Of them my number one is a physical problem with the headphone jack. It's recessed to lessen the strain on the jack by making the plugs fit snugly in the recessed jack. This can only be remedied by purchasing either the Belkin iPhone adapter or Griffin Technologies iPhone headphone adapter. (Edit note: the Griffin device isn't shipping yet an the Belkin device is selling out, so I have yet to get one. This is why my iPod is staying in my car for now.)

Here's the list thus far:
Cons:

• Edge 2.5 network doesn't do the device justice.
• No MMS support.(*3G and up include it)
• No cut, copy or paste.(*Introduced in iOS 3)
• No built-in GPS for map/internet integration.(*3G and up include it)
• No way to check the battery life more precisely than the little battery indicator.(*An option to show percentage charge was introduced in iOS4.)
• Needs to come with a screen protector and a way to clean off the oils that built up on it and a case. (*Still needs both)
• Limited alarm setting options.
• It doesn't take MP3 ring tones.(*Quite a few apps now allow you to make compatible ringtones.)
• Your wall paper only shows up in certain places instead of lying behind everything like a real mac desktop. (*different lock and wallpaper are now available.)
• Interface is a bit too dumbed down for my tastes. I'd like more detail.
• The complete YouTube catalog is not available only select movies have been converted. (*Almost never happens these days.)
• No Flash Support.(*After Flash having more and more problems, it is finally dead.)
• No To Do list.(iOS 5 got reminders. Plus there's plenty of third party ToDo apps.)
• No ability to run OS X programs on device.
• You can't view PDFs or MIME attachments.(*You can now.)
• No Clan Lord on Device. =(*Okay that's just us few Clan Lord players.)

*Note: These have been fixed in the iPhone 3G(s) and/or iPhone OS 3.0 or up.

Summary

All in all I'm very happy with the iPhone. It's a competent phone, ipod, web browser, mail client and map. The top three things I would change about it would be the 2.5G network, the recessed headphone jack, and not taking MP3 Ring-tones. If I had a wish list It'd include access to OS X so you could load programs on the device.