I’ve been drooling over the iPhone ever since it was announced a year ago, but I kept waiting for the official launch in Asia. Unfortunately it hasn’t happened yet, and rumors are not good either. So I finally made the plunge and got myself an unlocked iPhone. Here are my thoughts.
This is the 8GB model with firmware 1.1.2 already jailbroken and unlocked. In order to work with my own non-US simcard, they cut away an angle and added a StealthSim to fool the iPhone thinking that it is an AT&T card. Once that was done I was able to use all features, except the AT&T related ones (Edge, Voicemail etc..).
Let’s start with the phone features. These are the ones I am less interested in, since I don’t really care about phones in general. Calling is very easy, you can use the keypad, which has very big buttons. Or you can enter contacts with all imaginable information and call from there. I like the favorites, since I have many contacts but I only ever use a few. Text messaging is very easy to read, it feels like an instant messaging application with all previous messages organized in threads.
The Mail application is small but effective. It is possible to setup Gmail and Yahoo Mail easily, or any other pop/imap account (I sync with my Gmail with imap). I don’t think it’s possible to sync with a Hotmail account. It is also possible to read attachments, many formats are available (Office, PDF, etc…).
The Safari browser is definitely my favorite feature. So far it is probably the best mobile browser out there, the reason for that is the touch screen. Using your fingers is so much easier than using a stylus. Safari can have more than one page open at the same time, just like tabs on the desktop. It also senses the orientation of the phone, thus turning the page display from horizontal to vertical. This is especially useful when typing, because the horizontal keyboard is much easier to use than the vertical one.
As I am not on AT&T, I can’t browse with Edge, but only with wi-fi. For some reason I am having problems with my router. Whenever I want to connect the iPhone to my network I have to restart my router. And if I turn off the iPhone I cannot connect anymore. However I don’t have this problem with my laptop. I am not sure what the problem is.
Then we get to the iPod part. The music playlists are so much easier to browse, and the videos look great. I’ve tried watching a 40 minutes TV episode and it was fine. I had no eyestrain as long as I had a comfortable position. I didn’t even have problems reading subtitles. I do wish that videos could be organized in playlists too. At the moment all videos are in one list. Luckily I can synchronize video podcasts which are kept separate. Also there isn’t an option to synchronize all videos, every single video needs to be selected for synchronization.
The camera takes ok quality pictures, but it doesn’t have flash, so it’s not really a substitute for a digital camera. However it’s good enough. Photo viewing is another very cool feature. Zooming in and out is fun with the “pinch” gesture, flicking through an album is also fun. I even uploaded some scanned pages of a manga, and I can read it off the iPhone. When you plug it in your computer, the iPhone will be recognized as a camera, so you can import your camera roll.
There are other internet related widgets that allow us to skip having to open the browser and find the page. These are Stocks, Weather, Maps, YouTube. The first 3 are actually useful, they load very quickly. YouTube loads very slowly, even on wi-fi. I really don’t see myself using it often.
Other misc apps are Calendar, Clock, Notes (which also doesn’t sync back to computer). These are all standard apps, with most of the features needed. Since I can’t have an iTunes account, I don’t need the iTunes store, but it’d be nice to be able to buy music directly.
The main attraction of this device is its interface. Everything is intuitive and natural, there is no need for a manual to be able to navigate the screens. The touch screen really makes this an excellent device, allowing for easy finger gestures.
The keyboard takes time to get used to. I can now understand why everybody wasn’t happy about it. I make a lot of typing mistakes, and so far the software correction only helps a little bit. The problem is that the keys are too cramped, so it is very easy to press on the adjacent key, even for someone with small fingers like me. It is also not possible to press with your nails, it really needs your finger tips. One solution would be to make the keyboard horizontal, like what happens in Safari. In horizontal mode the keys are much further apart from each other. UPDATE: at first I was checking every single letter and correct the mistake at once. However once I just started typing without looking at the mistakes, it was clear that the software was doing a great job at correcting my typing. It really works great, and I can type much faster than on my old BlackBerry. I even started to use both thumbs.
This is a great device, one that I hope to use for a long time (battery permitting). Since there is no Edge here, without wi-fi a good number of features are gone. It is still a great iPod, but apart from that I can’t do much else when offline. Which is why I am glad it was already jailbroken and I can add many apps that I can use offline. But I’ll talk about that in a future post.
To summarize, here is my wishlist:
- Sync notes from iPhone to iTunes.
- Horizontal keyboard
- Playlists for Videos
- Sync all videos option