Apple iPhone: review

I’ve been playing with my iPhone, Aphrodite, basically nonstop since I purchased her on Friday night. And my, what a beautiful, slick little device she is! Overall, I’d give the iPhone about 9.7 on a 10.0 scale; its greatest strengths are its ridiculously easy usability, wide-ranging functionality, convenient combination of features, and yes, its sexiness.

My first impression of the iPhone was: wow. This thing is tiny: less wide than my palm, a little bit taller, and so thin that it fits perfectly in your hand. It’s a tad heavier than my old Sony Ericsson, but that’s to be expected when it has 942,000 more functions than my old T637. I took Aprohodite out of her beautiful little black box and plugged her in; iTunes opened up and led me through an incredibly simple activation process that took all of about five minutes. I had my ($20/month) data plan in place and my phone activated within five minutes of opening the box. That’s incredible!

iTunes then synced my selected contacts (already meticulously catalogued in Address Book), iCal calendars, email accounts, Safari bookmarks, photos, music, videos, and podcasts. All with just a few clicks. You just check off what you want on your iPhone, and iTunes takes care of the rest. It filled Aphrodite up with lots of my media and then I had loads of music, lots of photo albums, music videos, podcasts, video podcasts, and all my contacts and appointments and more on my iPhone, available wherever I go, and it all took just a few clicks. Genius.

The screen on this baby is beautiful; crisp, very bright, and ultra-high resolution. Clearly readable in direct sunlight. It appears to be highly resistant to scratches, although—as is to be expected—finger smudges can be seen if you look hard enough. But, thankfully, they don’t interfere with the display quality.

One of the greatest features is multi-touch. This is something you just have to try to believe. I never thought navigating a handheld device would be easy; much less, actually fun. Pinching and flicking and tapping isn’t just a way to manipulate your information, it’s actually enjoyable. And even more important, it makes sense. Don’t want an email anymore? Just swipe your finger across it. Want to make a map smaller? Just pinch. Want to scroll through a list quickly? Just flick it out of the way. There are no menus in the navigation, either. Almost everything is just one or two taps away.

I was a bit worried at first about the soft keyboard. But after two days, I’m typing faster and more accurately on it than I ever did using my old T637 and its number keypad with ABC, DEF, GHI, JKL, MNO, PQRS, TUV, WXYZ, etc. Apple is right; trusting the device to predict your input is the best way to pick up speed. iPhone’s predictive input is excellent, because it doesn’t just use what you’ve typed. Instead, it predicts your word based on the sequence of letters you’ve typed and analyzing keys around those letters that could also make a word sequence. So you could type “vitd” and it’d predict you’re trying to type “bird”, because the B is close to V and the T is close to R. Because of this intelligence, I’m now routinely belting out multi-line text messages in a minute whereas similar messages would previously have taken me 2-3 minutes on a normal mobile keypad.

SMS (text messages) is beautiful; it uses the same speech-bubble interface as iChat to display your text messages. Calendar is nifty, but it could really use a week view, like iCal. List view is helpful, though. The Photos app is nice; but otherwise it’s just like iPhoto except on the go. And the Camera app has a cool shutter animation; I’ve found the 2-megapixel camera to be very good for still shots that are well-lit, but in darkness or when things are moving, the camera quality suffers noticeably. And it can’t take videos, though that’s not a problem for me. So while iPhone won’t replace a dedicated digital camera, it is more than sufficient for taking quick shots on the go.

iPhone’s YouTube app is great; when on WiFi, the quality is spectacular; on EDGE, it’s less so. And Google Maps on the go is so useful; I’ve already used it for directions, with great results. Satellite imagery and road maps anywhere: such a good idea. And beautiful, as well. Apple has really made a great interface for interacting with Google’s data. In addition, iPhone also has a nifty weather app that can keep you updated on weather for multiple locations, a world clock program, calculator, alarms, stopwatch, timer, and notepad. Loads of ringtones, and sensible settings.

The four main features—phone, mail, Safari, and iPod—all work wonderfully. Making calls is a joy. Having mail on the go is a joy. Internet anywhere is a joy. And my music anywhere, wrapped in such a beautiful interface, is a joy. Transitions between functions are natural and consistent, and since the phone is running Mac OS X, just like a desktop or laptop, you have full multitasking. You could be composing an email in the background while watching a movie, and then a phone call comes in and everything fades out gracefully and you can take the call, then it all comes right back when it’s over. Stunning.

About my only complaints are these:

1. AT&T’s EDGE network can be slow, but only sometimes. In Abington and Boston, it’s plenty fast. Out in the woods of Marshfield, or on the coast in Duxbury (very far from any cell towers) EDGE can be pokey; maps in Google Maps will load slowly, and it can be a bit frustrating when looking for directions. But iPhone makes do: if there are any WiFi networks in range, it asks if you want to use those instead. And over WiFi (like, in my house, for example), iPhone’s internet and email and maps scream.
2. Safari doesn’t seem to be able to save passwords. This may be a security feature—after all, if I (God forbid) lost Aphrodite and she had a bunch of personal information on her, whoever found her could easily steal my online identities, and probably a lot more. But still, it’d be nice to not have to type my login and password every time I want to look at Facebook.
3. The speaker is a bit puny for music, though I realize that’s not its intended purpose.
4. The lack of MMS and iChat (AIM) is a downer. I had MMS on my T637 and never used it; but now, with the ability to take great photos anywhere, and with audio, video, and photos at my fingertips, I wish I could send this stuff around in a form other than email, because few people with phones can currently receive email on them. And the absence of iChat is a bummer; having AIM on iPhone would eliminate 60% of the text messages I send. And that’s likely why AT&T won’t consent to having iChat on the phone.

Overall, iPhone is a stunning device whose capabilities and design can’t be found anywhere else. Nothing about this phone should preclude you from purchasing once, except maybe the price. But if you have the cash around, iPhone is simply amazing. I recommend it to everyone.

EDIT (2007-07-02 3:13 AM): Removed some needlessly hostile text based on the sound advice of Jeffrey.