blaHCL Presents

Most of you probably know by now that I caved and got an iPhone. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait in line for 4 days in front of an AT&T store. Benefit of living in the NYC metro area, we’re blessed (yes, I used that word) with two Apple Stores within close proximity (one in SoHo and one on 58th and 5th). I leisurely walked into Apple Store on Saturday afternoon and snatched one without even waiting in line. Kudos to Apple Store for crowd control - they were able to service the 40-something people queue in no more than 5 minutes. I don’t even know if McDonald’s can do that!

So how does the phone live up to its hype? Here’s my feature-by-feature review after one week of ownership:

Battery: Well, it’s an iPod, internet navigation device, and, most importantly, a phone! So how does the battery do? The first night I got it, after a full charge, I was able to surf online and watch YouTube from 12:45 am to 5 am (with time evenly split between EDGE and WiFi network, switching back and forth) with a single charge. That’s about 4 hours and 15 minutes… not too shabby, you’d think. But what happens if you have mixed usage? Between 2 pm and 12 am, after a full charge cycle, I was able to listen to my iPod for ~3 hours, surf online (via EDGE) for about an hour, played with Google Map, checked mail, and other mixed usage of internet over EDGE network for 45 min, made ~6 calls, each lasted about 5 to 10 minutes (make it 45 minutes in total), received 3 SMS messages and 3 calendar notifications. By midnight, the battery life is at ~5%. During the whole time I had WiFi auto-search on, which probably effectively helped drain my battery. It didn’t last as long as I’d hoped, but it’s not too shabby for all the task it went through in one day (I know my Samsung A717 probably would’ve died on me had I done the same test). On the downside, the battery charge via USB port takes quite a long time. I’d say it probably takes 3 hours or so to fully charge the phone (from 5% to 100%).

For battery, I’d give it 7 out of 10.

Phone/Network: AT&T network is not the best available, that’s common knowledge. Especially since iPhone launched last Saturday, the network performance has been rather unstable, especially during the first few days when I can barely make/receive calls without the signal dropping out every other minute. This has significantly improved over the week, but I still run into the same problem occasionally during the weekend. On the other hand, their EDGE network speed has improved significantly. I can load the full page of Fandango and NY Times within 10 seconds as long as I have 3 or more bars of signals.

I’m very happy with the call quality. The voice comes through fairly clear, especially when you use the headset. I have heard some complaints about my voice being a bit muffled, or that background noise gets captured when I use the headphone. But when I tested myself, my voice carries through just fine (I tested at home by calling my landline, and then tested at the 5th Ave Apple Store by calling to my iPhone with one of their demo models). So I’m not quite sure what the deal is… but most of the time I don’t have a problem with it.

Visual voicemail is a great innovation! I love how you can skip directly to the voice mail you want to listen to, and replay/rewind it any time you want. The user interface also makes it super easy to call back, or look up contact detail in your address book. One problem I have with the visual voice mail (as well as the call history screen) is that it doesn’t always show you the exact time when the call was received/placed. It will show you the time if the call is received or placed today. But past midnight, all you’ll get is a general day range (Yesterday, Friday, Monday… etc). Might not be a big deal for many people, but I found that to be a minor annoyance as I’d like to keep track on when I placed/received those calls.

If you have your headphone on and listening to your iPod when a call comes in, the music will fade out and the ring tone will come in. You can squeeze the microphone to answer to the call, or “double-squeeze” it to send it to voicemail. Loved this feature!! Though it felt a bit weird at first not holding a phone next to your ear… but you get used to it, and it’s actually quite convenient! When the call ends, the music fades back in, right where you dropped off! Neat feature!

Haven’t got a chance to test out the conference call feature… so more on that later. So far, I’d give the phone functionality an 7 out of 10.

Integration: This is the first phone I’ve had that actually makes me want to completely fill out the contact information - I’m storing all the phone number for each person, all their email addresses, their mailing address, their birthday, and even their contact picture! Simply because all the functions are integrated seamlessly. For instance, if I have someone’s mailing address stored in the address book, I’ll be able to look up the place (or turn-by-turn driving directions) with Google map just by tapping on the address. With their birthday stored, it will be marked on my calendar, and notify me when it’s their birthday. Same goes with the email address - one tap and an email is ready to go. If I have their picture in my phone, I can just tap it to assign the picture to their contact card, so that when they call my screen will display their photo. Aside from the Google Map feature, none of these functionality is actually new (it’s readily available on any PocketPC or SmartPhone devices), but what iPhone manages to achieve is to make these function transparent and accessible, so that all these options are right there on the screen, where it should be, without having to go through some convoluted menu options or opening multiple programs and re-entering data.

One thing I’m a bit disappointed is inability to assign customized ringtones with your personal music collection. Instead, we’re stuck with the default ringtone selections that comes with the device… I would’ve loved to assign unique tones to my regular contacts, so that I can tell who’s calling via headphone, without looking at the screen. You’d think they’d integrate this feature with that built-in iPod… guess nothing is perfect!

In the integration department, I give it a 9 out of 10.

Internet: SafariMobile does not support flash… which rules out, let’s see…. 50% of websites in the entertainment category. Sure, that will be an easy fix via firmware upgrade… but it puzzles me why this plug-in was removed in the first built. Security reasons? No clue! Though iPhone has done a great job of identifying available WiFi network in the close proximity, and automatically switches to any “memorized” WiFi hotspot (i.e. when I’m in the range of my home router, iPhone will automatically switches to my WiFi network), it sometimes will switch to a “dead connection” and prevents you from any internet activities until you either turn off WiFi function, or remove the “dead connection” from your memorized network. An example of “dead connection” is, say, if my wireless router is powered on, but with no cable connected to it, the router will still send out signal, and therefore iPhone will switch to the network. But because no cable is connected to the router, the router itself is not connected to the internet. The end result is my iPhone receives full signal from the router, but I cannot access any webpage and iPhone will not switch back to EDGE network until I take one of the above mentioned actions.

One major flaw with the internet functionality is that while you’re surfing on EDGE, all your calls will go directly to voicemail. In other words, both your phone and internet connection shares the same EDGE bandwidth (sort to speak). So if your EDGE is actively transmitting data for SafariMobile, Google Map, Weather, or Stock, none of your call will come through (they will be forwarded to your voicemail). This is a non-issue if you’re on WiFi. But let’s face it, WiFi is not that common in NYC public area yet… so chances are when you’re on a run, you’re roaming on EDGE network. This is quite a big let down, and is actually something I failed to notice prior to making the purchase.

Overall it’s a breeze to go online with iPhone, but there are some obvious flaws with the way things are set up. So in this category, I give it a 5 out of 10.

iPod: Apple has this one right. It is indeed the best iPod ever created. Big screen with high resolution, making it an absolute pleasure viewing podcast/tv shows/movies on it. The lack of support for WMV files could be an annoyance for some users, but a non-issue for me since I don’t have any files in the said format. Cover-flow could be gimmicky at first, but I was surprised at how often I actually use that feature. I don’t know why, but sometimes it’s just easier to look for album art than flip through the names. iPhone is also perfect for audiobooks - it has an easy access to an “index” page, where you can skip from chapter to chapter (and it breaks down the length for each chapter, as well as the title of each segment). It also feature a time bar, where you can drag and drop to the exact time spot you want, instead of scrolling it back and forth like we do now with iPod, making life a lot easier while rewinding during an 11-hour audio book.

While the headphone doesn’t let you to fast forward or rewind, it does allow you to pause/replay/skip. And the volume control can be accessed from the side of the phone, so you don’t have to whip the phone out each time you want to skip to the next song or adjust volume.

So far I’m very happy with its iPod performance, and have yet to think of a complaint. So for the time being, it’s getting a rare 10 out of 10 from me~

Interface: Many problem have trouble with the virtual keypad. Personally I’m fine with it. In fact, I loved it. I guess I got used to virtual keypad when using Dopod - and that was without auto-correction. The one problem with iPhone’s interface is its inconsistency. That coming from an Apple product was quite a shocker.

First, supposedly iPhone has this built-in sensor that can tell whether you’re holding the phone in landscape or portrait mode, and rotate the screen accordingly. But this isn’t true for all applications. It only works for iPod, Photos, Camera, and Safari, and parts of YouTube (during video playback). It doesn’t work for Mail, SMS, Google Map, or Notes. To complicate things a bit more, the only time you’ll get a landscape virtual keypad (which is a lot easier to use than in portrait mode) is when you’re in Safari. It would make so many more happy campers had they integrated a landscape keypad for all applications. Alas, it’s not there.

Another inconsistency is zooming in/out. In all applications, you can zoom in/out with the “pinch” gesture. You can also zoom in by double-tap in a certain area, and iPhone will be smart enough to zoom to that section so it fits the whole screen width (iPhone does so by identifying any div, img, table, td, tr HTML tags). But in Google Map and Google Map only, you can zoom out by tapping the screen once with two fingers. I’d love to have this implemented in all applications. I mean, pinching is fun and all, but sometimes it’s just easier to tap once to get the desirable result. In most cases, fortunately, you can zoom out by double-tapping the screen again. But it’s an inconsistency nonetheless. So here it’s getting an 8 out of 10.

Camera: 2-mega-pixel. I know. Doesn’t sound glamorous at all. But in a well-lit environment, quality of the pictures taken are surprisingly good! Of course you can’t compare the photos took by a 6MP Canon camera, but for a phone cam, it provides a decent result with satisfying color balance, richness, and detail. Unfortunately, the camera can only take stills (i.e. no video), it does not zoom, and there is no setting for camera whatsoever (no changing the resolution, white balance, exposure… etc). Here iPhone scores a 6 out of 10.

The picture below is taken with a relatively low light source, and my hand was shaky… but the end result isn’t too bad (esp. if we shrink the picture a bit)

So here it is, summing up my experience during the first week of using iPhone:
Battery 7/10
Phone/Network: 7/10
Integration: 9/10
Internet: 5/10
iPod: 10/10
Interface: 8/10
Camera: 6/10

Total: 52/70

Three more areas I have yet to find out or do more intensive testing: stability, sync, services.