iPhone impressions
some thoughts after having my iphone for a few weeksmonths. (I drafted this post on my iPhone on a train somewhere, then forgot about it! So I am posting it now, with minor corrections.
Firstly, the interface in general is lovely. The large clear high resolution screen shows off the beautiful graphics and makes reading a pleasure. The multi-touch pinch and zoom is also a joy to use.
Text input via the on screen keyboard takes a little bit to get used to, but I can now type at about half the speed I can on a normal keyboard (thanks to the autocorrect which is optimised for on screen typing). This is much faster, and (for me at least) uses less mental effort, than T9 predictive text (which is usually anything but!), or multiple presses to get each letter. The lack of cut/copy/paste is a limitation but not a major drawback.
The interface is designed to be “discoverable”, and for the most part it is, as long as you try new things and can remember what you did to get that neat short cut! I like the double space to start a new sentence, and holding letters to get accented characters (or different domains on the .com button).
Battery life isn’t great, at about 5 or so hours constant use browsing the web and listening to music, but if you compare this to a notebook rather than a mobile phone, it doesn’t seem so bad. I had a powermonkey battery for my iPod that works perfectly with the iPhone. This gave me enough juice for a long weekend of fairly intensive use, and you can normally get to a plug in that time!
The GPS and google maps are great for their primary purpose of finding businesses and navigating around urban areas, but totally useless for hillwalking. It tells you where you are, just not what’s around you, as there is limited detail apart from roads and towns. Luckily I can use a map and compass!
Coverflow view of albums in the iPod app is a nice touch when you rotate the screen to landscape orientatio, but I miss just being able to press the play button and get it to shuffle by album.
The only app I have found indispensable so far is byline (a google reader interface). This lets me catch up on the latest news/blogs while on the move and have them sync back to my desktop (web) app. I tried NetNewsWire on the mac and the iPhone, but found the interfaces inferior in both cases, and the newsgator website is pretty lackluster.
I have since downloaded, and kept a few more app, but that’s another post (which I will try not to leave for two months in draft.)
This entry was posted on Sunday 5th October 2008 in Computers and tagged apple, iPhone, phone, review, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.