My iPhone Review

I’m going to start my review off with the following statement: The iPhone is a phone. Apple even went so far as to put the main function of the device right in the name. So everyone who wants this device to do everything or expects it to have everything should just forget about the iPhone and buy a laptop. Apple makes a very nice Mac Book that weighs about 4 pounds, measures about 13 inches across, and is about twice as thick as the iPhone. It won’t fit in your pocket, but it will do everything that you want it to do. Except make phone calls. Why? Because it’s not a phone.

This is more of a listing of things I like or dislike about the phone. I didn’t get to it right away and more thorough reviews are out, so this is more of my thoughts on how the phone fits into my life and not a real review of the device.

SMS

Can’t save individual messages. Linear text messages from each person is nice, but I would like to be able to save individual messages. Time stamping is horrible and random. No feedback for character count.

Calendar

Awesome app. Looks great. List view is killer, day view is nice. Month view is just okay. Can’t choose which calendar to add events to. All events are added to the Home calendar.

Photos

No complaints. From what I have seen, it works great. I actually like that it has a Camera Roll for photos taken with the phone separate from imported photos. Imports well into iPhoto and/or Aperture from the iPhone.

Camera

All fur coat, no knickers. No zoom, horrible lighting, and the delay when pressing the shutter release causes a crazy amount of unexpected blur.

You Tube

Great app, minus the serious lack of videos in comparison to the regular site. Videos play well and look great though.

Stocks

This is pointless. No one uses this junk. It’s there to fill a spot on the home screen. No caching, so you have to reload info each time you change your selection.

Google Maps

Amazing. The only thing that would make it the perfect map application would be the ability to push a pin into the map to say “I’m here” which would help when you can find where you are on the map but don’t have an address. It’s quick, it renders great, and the list view is perfect for quickly looking at directions while driving.

Weather

It’s nothing new if you have the Widget running in your Dashboard.

Clock

The clock is great. You can add as many cities as you want. Alarms are the same. The stopwatch and Timer will come in handy eventually, but haven’t so far.

Calculator

It’s a calculator on your phone. I had this on my Nokia in 1997 so it’s not all that revolutionary. But it is by far the most Web 2.0 look calculator on any phone in the history of all phones.

Notes

This I would use regularly if it were not for the use of Marker Felt as the typeface. This is of course, me being a complete typography snob, and I am 100% okay with that. It’s a horribly chosen face. I understand it (make it look hand-written), but the ability to change it to just plain old Helvetica would make my month. And the yellow legal pad lined notebook paper makes me want to vomit.

Settings

It’s a much more thought out and well-executed group of settings than ever found on a phone. My dad could figure out how to change things and he can’t set his own Casio. Overall the settings are nicely done. As of now you are stuck with the standard set of ring tones and you can’t change what tone is used for text messages or new mail, or anything that has a tone besides a phone ring. The brightness is easily changed and has a pretty hefty range for you to choose from. Bluetooth features are almost non-existent. I have my phone synced with my Mac Pro Tower and Bluetooth won’t let me browse my phone so I can’t send pictures to my PowerBook with Bluetooth. And when I turn on Bluetooth, my WiFi shuts off.

Battery Usage

Gets unusually hot while charging.

Phone

Works great. Favorites is nice. Visual voice mail is fantastic.

Mail

Weakest app on the phone. You can’t create folders to organize your messages. You have no junk mail filtering unless it’s server side.

Safari

Safari is nice unless you ever want to watch any video or listen to most audio. And forget Flash support, but that could all change in the next few months, so who knows.

iPod

The iPod functionality, and this is unexpected to me, is what I use most on the phone. I watch movies to kill time, I listen to music while eating lunch at Panera, it’s perfect. And I haven’t had a problem with the phone only have 8 Gigs (7 actually) of space.

Overall, I love the phone.