Apple's simple, versatile iPhone changes the game
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Saturday, June 30, 2007
So ... is it all that?
After all the ink that's been spilled describing, previewing and hyping the Apple iPhone, does it deserve the attention? I'd have to say yes.
It has its flaws and omissions, but this is a device that will be defined by what it brings to the table, not what it leaves behind.
Will you want to buy it? Well, that's a personal question that has to do with your take on the value of technology. I would have loved it to be $100 cheaper. But let's be clear: This Internet, music and cellular device is a game-changer.
The lure of the iPhone is that it makes you want to use it. It's actually fun. Do we say that about any phones? Hardly. It's not really the physical design, which is a marvel of simplicity. It's what happens when you pick it up and use it. There is nothing intimidating about it. Rather, it's inviting.
Here is a quick look at some of the key features:
-- Touch screen: It starts with the 31/2-inch touch screen, which the iPhone uses to great effect. On other phones with a traditional directional pad, you can measure people's attention fading away by each click of the button.
But with the touch screen, even mundane tasks seem interesting. You're actually able to move things about, sliding your finger here and there, conjuring up fluid screens that slide and zoom into place. Unlocking the phone involves a sweep of the finger. Gliding through your music library requires a similar movement. You can "pinch" pictures and Web pages with two fingers to make them larger or smaller.
I keep coming back to the word "fluid" because each action seems to flow into the next. Nothing is abrupt.
For those who remember the first time the mouse was introduced, it's a similar sensation. This is something quite new, utterly engaging and smile-inducing.
-- Keyboard: The biggest question about the iPhone has been how the virtual keyboard works. It only pops up when you need it, but because it has no physical keys, there is no tactile feedback. Instead, you have to watch your typing and then rely on the iPhone's intelligence, which constantly works to correct your spelling and also predicts what letters you're trying to press.
I found that it performed better than I thought, though it was still difficult early on to get the hang of it. It will take awhile to get up to speed, especially if you've got thick fingers.
There are some problem words you will need to look out for. Mine was the word "but," which came out "bit" or "not." The virtual keyboard won't replace the BlackBerry's keypad yet, but it'll get the job done if you give it some time.
-- The Internet: The Internet experience is beyond what I've seen on other phones. Surfing the Web on your cell phone or smart phone can be grim work. Even on phones that allow you to call up regular Web pages, not watered-down mobile versions of regular Web sites, the text and pictures are reordered to fit the small screen. No wonder only 11 percent of people surf the Web on their phones.
But with iPhone's 31/2-inch screen, you're able to call up the actual Web site and see it in full as it would appear on your computer. With a double tap on the screen, you zoom into the page. A quick double tap and you're back out. If you want to move around, you just drag your finger and "pull" the page in one direction or the other. The screen is sensitive enough to discern when you're trying to pull the page in one direction and when you're trying to connect a link on the page.
It's not a perfect port of the computer experience. You can't watch Flash-based videos, and the browser won't support Java. And when you're out and about, you have to rely on AT&T's Edge data network, which, while a few times faster than dial-up, is not as fast as the state-of-the-art 3G data network, which approximates DSL speeds. But when you're in Wi-Fi range, the iPhone is really able to make good on Steve Jobs' promise of delivering the Internet in your pocket.
-- Music: The iPhone is a sweet music player, too. Gone is the iPod click-wheel, which will probably never make another appearance on a full-size iPod. Here you just scroll through your library by sweeping your finger. Turn the phone sideways and you can view your album covers through Cover Flow, allowing you move through your collection visually with, again, a sweep of your finger. When a call comes in the song pauses and then resumes when the call ends.
-- Video: Watching videos on the iPhone is where you can really take advantage of the large screen in landscape view. Tapping on the screen brings up onscreen controls. Tapping twice moves you between full-screen and widescreen views. The screen is brilliant, and the experience of watching TV is full. I've stopped watching videos on my iPod, partly because of battery concerns but also because the screen seems too small. This gets it right.
-- Phone: Lest we forget, this iPhone makes phone calls. Because it has no keyboard, you're just pressing virtual buttons on the screen. But the act of making calls, moving through your contacts and setting up conference calls is a breeze. Every task is organized right on the phone screen, and it's just one-touch to get started. Visual voice mail is a bit of a treat, especially if you're someone who lets voice mails pile up. Here you can just view the voice mails as if they're e-mails, allowing you to jump to the messages that seem the most important. The phone quality was OK, though a friend experienced an echo when I put him on speakerphone.
-- E-mail: It's not a BlackBerry. But it sets up e-mail nicely with programs like Yahoo, Google and AOL. I wasn't able to set up on our corporate exchange server through the IMAP protocol. My company, like many others, won't allow you to access e-mail because of potential security risks. But when you get the e-mail running, it's actually very fun to use with clean messages that support full HTML, so your picture attachments come through. Word, Excel and PDF files are also viewable, though you can't edit them.
-- Pictures: Pictures are fine, too. You do the pinching maneuver to resize your photos and sweep your finger to move through your library. For pictures in landscape mode, you just turn the phone horizontally and it reforms the picture to fill the screen.
-- Applications: Google Maps is nice, though it would have been great to have GPS. Without it, you have to enter your location to find nearby stuff or get navigation help. It allows you to do turn-by-turn navigation, but you have to update the process after each turn. You do get live traffic updates on a map, showing you where trouble spots are. YouTube support was a late addition and a nice one at that, allowing you to kill time checking out videos.
Again, this is not the perfect phone. You can't voice-dial, and there is no word on downloadable ring tones or the ability to make your own ring tones. And without the fastest data network, it's not always as fast as it can be when surfing the Web. GPS installed would have been nice, too.
But for a first effort, this still blows away so many other phones because it takes us to a new level of interaction with our mobile devices. This makes the promise of a "mobile computing" future seem possible because it's now something we want to do.
The cell phone, the most personal of technology devices, has just gotten a whole lot more personal.
Apple iPhone
Combination cell phone, media player and Internet device.
$499 for a 4GB unit, $599 for an 8GB unit.
Sold through Apple and AT&T stores and online at www.apple.com.
This article appeared on page A - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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