First up - my initial post was admittedly over the top in it's criticism of the iPhone, however I felt that it only matched the over the top hype the media has created about how great the iPhone was. That first post was just testing the water to see how defensive people would come out in support of the iPhone, without even having have used it. No one posted here, but I had a few emails and even a phone call I wish I could put up here, it was quite funny.
Second - Thanks to Craig (the only person to reply to the original post) for his help in figuring out some of the things that were really bugging me about the iPhone (and for helping me find the user manual!!!!).
I had the iPhone for a few days, and then the Nokia N95 for the rest of the week and weekend. My initial thoughts on the iPhone were not good, however over the next few days I learnt to appreciate it a little more.
The web browsing is actually quite good, once I figured out the zoom capabilities the normal layout pages weren't too bad. The incorporation with Google is really good, iGoogle works well and the Gmail ability is excellent as well, being able to access your gmail account in an application on the iPhone.
However I'm still not overly impressed with the iPhone as a whole. My biggest gripes are;
- - The make! It's made like any iPod, that shiny metal case and a big touch screen. Basically it gets really greasy real quick, lots of finger prints and after a few minutes use it feels really gross in your hand! I mean it's probably something that a silicon cover will fix, but still it's apparent it is made to look good, not be good to use.
- - It's slow! Menus, going back to the main screen, bringing up favourites and changing settings get really really painful after a while. It's something you probably wouldn't notice when looking at an iPhone's functions in the store, but after a bit of use it's annoying to have to wait 1 to 5 seconds for the screen to change and get you where you want to go. Once you start using the iPhone you realise that it isn't the most efficient way of doing everything.
- -That touch keypad! Even after getting use to it, I still was having trouble. The spell check function on the iPhone is excellent - if you hit the wrong letter at the end of the word the iPhone will correct it for you in most cases... even if you only get one letter right it can usually guess the word you were attempting to type. However that doesn't make up for when the keypad doesn't realise you've hit a key at all so words come up without the first letter, or the space key gets hit between every letter. Even with being use to the keypad I still found I had to stop and correct way too much!
So there were a few other things as well. I think as a business tool I could use it if I didn't have to pay for it, however the data plans, the usage and it's settings all add up to it not being something I could conceive as worth it for private use. I'd still find it annoying to use all the time though.
Notice the one thing I haven't mentioned yet is that the iPhone is a phone... well that just doesn't seem important. Except that with the shiny make material means it feels yucky against your ear and cheek.
My feeling is that it's really a status symbol, I know because even though I felt the iPhone wasn't a good practical phone I still felt this urge to take it everywhere with me just so I could show it off. Which to me is the wrong reason to have a new piece of technology, but I still fell for it.
On the other hand the Nokia N95 worked great the whole time I had it... I am a bit of a fan of the Nokia operating system and I guess I'm use to using mobile phone web applications, but they didn't feel that much more troublesome than the iPhones web. Normal mobile keypad is easy to use these days because we're all so use to texting. The GPS on the N95 works well, but the directions can be a little slow and incomplete.
All in all the Nokia is definitely the better everyday phone, with all the same gizmos as the iPhone, and possibly more storage space with memory cards easily at the 16GB capacity of the iPhone.
1 comment:
yeah - pretty much agree mate!
i might keep it for a while, but we'll see
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