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Here are some comments about the new iPhone that
I have gathered from forums and blogs. Read on and enjoy..
My immediate reaction.... OH MY.
OH MY OH MY.
Wow. No matter how much you've read about it, in the news, in the blogs, in the forum, it will never capture the actual experience of using it. First impressions:
1. It's MUCH SMALLER than you think. It's comparable to a Treo, yet so much more lighter and so much more thinner. It's not the size of a Palm Tungsten (which I thought it would be). The bloggers are right... it feels really good in your hand.
2. You will not believe how beautiful the screen is. VERY hi-def, very colorful, very bright. Youtube looks FANTASTIC on this thing. I was shocked to see how the video quality looked so good.
3. Using the iPhone multitouch is amazing... it's fast, very responsive, and effortless. It feels almost unreal. Parang you can't believe something like this can exist. Almost magical. I went through the features and it's just so easy to use, and so fast. It reminds me of using a computer with tons of RAM, multiplied 100x.
4. I must agree with the reviews... the keyboard IS a non-issue. I can see myself really using it. There is a bit of a learning curve involved, reminds me of how I first started with the Treo. It's easy to get the hang of it, I'm sure in a day kabisado ko na siya. This was my biggest apprehension of all and I'm glad it wasn't a problem.
5. The screen smudges easily, but it doesn't present itself as a problem. It's not like the annoying smudges of your laptop screen, or the black macbooks casing. Parang winipe mo lang ang LCD screen ng digicam.
Bottom line... oh my god if the iPhone would only work in the Philippines I would've bought it on the spot. Replaced my trusty Treo in a heartbeat. It feels like a very polished product and you don't feel afraid that the bugs haven't been worked out yet. It works like magic. I dare anyone who hasn't tried it NOT to love it, I'd say even the diehard cynics will become converts... it's really that good!
FYI, this review was based on ten mintuets of using the iPhone. The Apple Store has a lot of units available to play with, some of which are LIVE phones (yes, you can make phone calls!). You don't need to wait long to get an opportunity to play with it, and you don't feel like you're hogging it. Good work Apple Store!
Now I'm sure my cousin and my friend Zeena will get one, which will give me more time to play with it. I'll give you more details then :-)
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Here are a few more reasons not to buy the first generation just yet: 1. The battery is estimated to take between 350-400 charges and is not user-replaceable, you have to send it in to Apple to get it replaced. 2. AT&T is not offering their regular replacement warranty on the unit. 3. The Iphone uses a special sim card not friendly to other opened phones even on the AT&T network. For now, I don't see any way it can make it's way to Manila unless one is so rich they'd be willing to pay roaming charges.
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from one of the videos i watched of the demos... iphone learns the words that you type often...
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Tried the iPhone in-store too. Great interface but had a really hard time using the keyboard. It was ok with predictive but when i typed in a proper name k-u-y-a it kept on coming out as kits! Maybe my fingers are just too fat!
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Activation with AT&T was a pain in the ass. Had to wait 30 minutes but I read other people had to wait hours.
The touchscreen is fun to use. Easier to browse music, video, contacts, etc. GSM is ok but it would be nice to have 3G. WiFi works very well. Haven't tried the BT. Safari works great but the screen is still too small to do some serious surfing. Music and movies play great but the speakers can be a little better. Most YouTube videos are still stupid. The 2MP camera ain't bad. We can all ask for faster Internets, higher megapixels, and the solution to world peace but the truth is the current specifications work just great. No bugs encountered, no complaints.
Is it worth the steep price? I say YES! But then again I've been drinking the kool-aid for quite a while...
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iPhone First Impressions
Saturday, 30 June 2007
Overall day one impression: the iPhone is 95 percent amazing, 5 percent maddening. I’m just blown away by how nice it is – very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun.
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Booting: A cold boot takes about 20 seconds. (Sleep/wake is effectively instantaneous – far faster than any Mac.)
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Activation: Went pretty well for me and my wife. We already had an AT&T family plan. The only options are to create new AT&T accounts or to add iPhone data plans to existing ones. It more or less comes out to the same $120/month for the two of us, either way. It’s a shame activation is taking so long for some people, but for us, it took about one minute per phone.
My phone needed to be power-cycled before it “saw” the activation.
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User Interface: The high resolution screen is gorgeous. Helvetica has never, ever looked so good on screen. Everything is very fast, very responsive. When you drag something – whether it’s the slider button to unlock the phone, a zoomed-in photograph, or a web page – the drag keeps up with your finger. I haven’t found a single element of the iPhone UI that doesn’t feel super-snappy. The whole thing feels very realistic.
Update: Real-time dragging is such a priority that if the iPhone can’t keep up and render what you’re dragging in real-time, it won’t even try, and you get a checkerboard pattern reminiscent of a transparent Photoshop layer until it catches up (typically, an instant later). I.e. iPhone prioritizes drag animation over the rendering of the contents; feel over appearance.
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Scrolling: One of the things I was worried about was the lack of a gesture or shortcut for “page down one screenful of text”. Like on a Mac, when you hit the spacebar reading a message in Mail, news item in NetNewsWire, or web page in Safari. The iPhone’s inertia-like flick scrolling seems to work really well for this. Part of it is that the UI is so responsive, which makes it easy to be exact about how far down you want to scroll.
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Rotation: You can rotate the screen in either direction to put it in landscape mode. Nice.
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Brightness: The screen is a magnet for fingerprints and smudges, but when the display is actually on, you just don’t see them because it’s so bright. And that’s with the default brightness setting, which is relatively low.
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Mail: I hope you like top-posting, and quoting the entire message you’re replying to. Me, I despise that style of email, but iPhone Mail doesn’t really work well any other way. One problem is that the iPhone doesn’t support the concept of selected text. That means you can’t just select a specific portion to quote of the message you’re replying to; nor can you select a chunk of the quoted message and delete it while editing. The only way to delete text is one character at a time (although the keyboard does let you press-and-hold to repeat). And to top it off, there’s no way to reply without quoting anything at all.
Not a surprise, but noteworthy nonetheless: iPhone’s Mail has no spam filtering whatsoever. You’ve either got server-side spam filtering or you’re stuck wading through the dreck.
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Safari: Excellent mobile web browser. Double-tap to zoom in and out just works, at least on the pages I tried. iPhone Safari seems hyper-aggressive about keeping a low memory and resource footprint. For example, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of cache for the back button; going back loads the page again.
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Typing: I’m terrible with my thumb typing so far, but I think ultimately, the iPhone is a very thumb-oriented device. You can do most things holding the iPhone in just one hand, driving the UI with a thumb; this seems especially good for reading and scrolling. One of the knocks against the idea of a screen-based keyboard is the lack of tactile feedback. (It might be nice if a future iPhone offered some sort of subtle force feedback while typing, sort of like modern video game controls.) But the iPhone does offer audio feedback, and I like it a lot. There’s a pleasant tap-tap-tap as you write.
I’m already frustrated by the keyboard layout, but not in the way I expected. My expectation was that I’d have a problem with the comma and period keys living on a secondary punctuation keyboard. That’s actually not so bad, so far. The problem for me is the Delete (a.k.a. Backspace) key, which is down in the lower-right. The problem is that I’m used to its placement on real keyboards, in the upper-right, and so I keep striking the P key when I want to backspace.
The auto-suggest correction system works pretty damn well, considering it hasn’t yet had a chance to learn much about what and how I type. Most impressive touch: it knows the word “fucking”.
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YouTube: Works great on Wi-Fi. I haven’t tried it on EDGE yet. I haven’t really done much of anything with EDGE yet, really.
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Wi-Fi: My wife’s iPhone at first seemed like a lemon, in that it would not connect to our home AirPort base station. Mine connected just fine, and hers saw the network and prompted her for the password, but it never actually switched to using the Wi-Fi instead of EDGE. Then she power-cycled the iPhone and it looked like it was using Wi-Fi, but wouldn’t actually connect to anything. She used the Restore feature in iTunes (the thing was only out of the box for 30 minutes) and that fixed it.
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Earbud Remote: The simple one-button remote on the earbud microphone is genius. Click to play/pause the iPod. Click to accept an incoming phone call. Phone calls sound good through the earbuds, but I’m not sure how good the microphone is.
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Calendar: None of the major pre-release iPhone reviews really said much about the Calendar app. I’m not sure why – it’s very nice. There are three main views: month, day, and list. Month view is necessary, but the screen is too small for it to be useful as your main view. You pretty much just get a grid of days, with dots in each day that contains an event. Day view is too long to fit on the iPhone’s small screen at once. You can look at part of your day (say, morning) at once without scrolling, but not the entire day.
iPhone Calendar’s killer feature is list view. I’ve wanted a view like this in iCal ever since it came out. It is data-rich, especially important with the iPhone’s small screen. Nice touch when you scroll – the date headers “stick” to the top of the screen until all of the events in that day have scrolled by.
You can edit, create, and delete events on the iPhone and they sync back with iCal. The iPhone Calendar app, however, doesn’t use the concept of multiple calendars: all events are more or less in one calendar. In iTunes, you can choose which of your iCal calendars to sync, but the events from all those calendars are effectively thrown into one global calendar on the iPhone. (In iTunes, you also specify one iCal calendar to which new events created on the iPhone should be added.)
In day view, you cannot create a new event by double-tapping on a start time. Double-tap does nothing in this context; creating an event with this gesture seems natural and convenient.
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To-Dos: There aren’t any. They don’t sync from iCal and you can’t create them on the iPhone.
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Switching Apps: I keep looking for some way to close or quit an app when I’m done with it. I’ve done this over and over with the same apps. “Use it then close it or quit it” isn’t the metaphor on the iPhone, however. When you’re done with an app, you just tap the Home button. What happens to apps when you do this is not exposed; there’s no concept of quitting or closing, just switching. I think this is a great design, I’m just having trouble getting used to it.
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Notes: The weakest app on the iPhone. Cosmetically, it’s a train wreck. The entire iPhone UI is set in one typeface – Helvetica – and it’s gorgeous. But Notes, in a lame attempt to be “friendly”, displays a UI that looks like a pad of yellow legal paper, and uses the handwriting-esque Marker Felt as the font for note text. This is not adjustable. Marker Felt is silly, ugly, and worst of all, hard to read.
The other problem with Notes is that there’s no synching between your iPhone and Mac. I was hoping iTunes would sync, say, plain text files back and forth. No dice.
Both problems with Notes seem to me an indication that it was designed under the assumption that iPhone would debut alongside Leopard. Mac OS X Leopard includes a system-wide “notes” feature, exposed through Apple Mail, and as you can see in the screenshots, it looks a lot like iPhone Notes – Marker Felt text on a yellow legal pad background. Presumably, some sort of synching is coming eventually, at least with Leopard.
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No Clipboard: Ever since the iPhone was announced, I’ve been curious what Apple planned to do with the standard Cut/Copy/Paste clipboard commands. With no menu bar, there’s no Edit menu. With no keyboard, there’s no command-key shortcuts. The Newton solved this with magic gestures. The iPhone solves this by not having a clipboard at all. No copy, no paste.
Instead, Apple has tried to anticipate where you might want to copy and paste and offer you direct commands to accomplish the same thing. For example, let’s say you’re reading a web page and decide to email the URL to a friend. The way I would do this on a Mac is to (a) select the URL in the location field; (b) copy; (c) switch to Mail; and (d) create a new message and paste. On the iPhone, there’s a Share button that appears when you click on the location field. Click the Share button and the iPhone creates a new outgoing mail message with the URL already in the body. The Share button should be named “Email”; there are all sorts of ways one might wish to “share” a URL, but the Share button does just one of them: email.
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Email as de Facto Clipboard: In fact, email is the iPhone’s de facto clipboard. Notes don’t sync, but there’s a button at the bottom of each note to turn it into an email message. It’s the only way to get the text of a note out. The only way to send a photo is to email it.
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Web Page File Pickers: They don’t work, so you can’t, say, upload pictures to a web app using Safari. It makes complete sense that iPhone Safari would never present the user with a file picker that displays a view of the actual file system – the file system is completely abstracted away in the iPhone UI, and that’s a good thing. But there could still be a “file picker” panel that lets you choose from iPhone data items like photos. (In the meantime, if you want to post pictures from your iPhone to sites like Flickr, you have to email them.)
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Crash Logs: The iPhone Mail app has crashed for me twice so far. Interestingly, I only noticed once; I sent a message and I was instantly taken back to the Home screen. The next time I synched with iTunes, I was presented with a dialog box asking for my permission to send crash logs from the iPhone back to Apple.
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just to add also some bits and pieces before I forget them...some cool stuff I found out while getting the hang of the phone...
1. after watching podcast videos (not sure bout tv shows or movies)...it asks you whether you want to keep or delete the video to conserve space...I guess they really figured 8GB (7.23GB free space)is not enough for most users considering they used 700mb for the phone's OS.
2. Sensors - I think it's really cool...something really well thought of...not just when turning from landscape to portrait mode but also senses the proximity from the phone to your ear...screen turns blank when your in a call and it's near your ears then comes back on when you hold a little further away...uber coolness...
3. When a call gets cut off accidentally...phone will say "Connection failed" then asks you if you want to callback the other party...
I'll be back with more as I discover things...this phone just makes everything so simple.
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Was at the Chicago launch, line was all the way around the block. Nice phone, prone to smudges though like the iPods. I accidentally dropped it pa nga about a foot on to the table . It survived naman If I could you use it back home I would have gotten one. Will wait for the asian version.
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Here's my first impressions after playing with it for less than a day...
Design - Like what everyone in here said... it's just simply gorgeous (i mean it's made by Apple must be really well-designed). Only concern is holding the phone itself feels slippery but I guess that's what my case is for.
Activation - Unlike what other people experienced...my activation went pretty smooth without a hitch (I guess part of it was that I was an exisiting AT&T customer). I got home at 730pm after lining up for 2 hours, had some dinner...activated phone and syched around 9pm and I was using it by 915pm. nice huh...
GUI - must be the fastest phone yet...I mean all the things featured on the ads on how fast it is...it's actually really true. One thing that got me confused a little bit was everytime I open an app I tried to find a way to close it (you know got used to the symbian OS that you have to close apps otherwise your phone slows down) but eventually I figured that there's no need to close the apps and just simply press the home button when your done with an app.
Display - The display is soo good that it eliminates all my finger prints once it's on...it's just simply bright and awesome.
Scrolling - I think this is something you have to get used too aside from the virtual kb...i get confuse when scrolling since the finger gestures are opposite when your using your computer. Like to scroll down you have to move your fingers upwards.
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So I dragged my girlfriend over to the Apple Store in Glendale, CA to buy an iPhone. Two, actually. One for me, and one for eBay
I actually waited in line from 11AM till about 640PM, when I finally purchased the phones. It was amazing! Everyone in the Apple store was incredibly excited-- there were people cheering and all the staff had this huge smile stuck on their faces! I bought two phones, a clear case for it, as well as a screen protector. However, after reading the recent articles on the iPhone stress test, I'm considering returning the screen protector :P
Like many others, I can't stop playing with this phone! So here are my first impressions (I'm much too excited to have time to write up a proper review, hehe):
I've been surfing the internet on EDGE as well as WiFi. In case you were wondering, EDGE speeds are faster than dial-up. I just tried doing a speedtest and the results were is 197kilobits per second. 1MB transferred in 40 seconds.
I'm still a bit iffy on the keyboard. When I use my right hand, things are alright. However, my left hand seems to always press a little to the left, and I end up tapping the wrong letters Hopefully this will change with time.
The build and screen on this thing is amazingly gorgeous!! I've synced movies, photos, and music to the phone and everything looks fantastic. I'm especially impressed with its interface. Very slick-- animations are smooth, colors are vibrant, everything looks very well thought out. You can tell the interface was built from ground-up to be "finger-friendly" and not "stylus-friendly". However, the screen doesn't register fingernails. Due to it being made of capacitors, it only recognizes human touch, which means no gloves on the iPhone!
Last things before I go– speakerphone is nice and loud. I like how it is positioned at the bottom. There is a vibrate feature in case people were wondering, google maps works very very well, events on the iPhone can only be synced to one calendar group, contacts work just like address book, the home button is a physcial button and not a capacitor. If you guys have other questions, lemme know!
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Here’s my very first impression based on very limited usage, please be aware the I can't hardly put 2 sentences together so I'll just ramble incoherently here:
Voice. First, let me preface by saying that Cingular/AT&T is spotty in New York City to begin with (it’s Verizon country over here). However, I am familiar with Cingular/ATT performance as I currently have a Treo 680 under Cingular (and Blackberry 8700 under T-Mobile). Anyway, I took the iPhone around SoHo late last night and early this morning and found that I am constantly getting an extra signal bar more on my Treo than my iPhone. Voice quality is on par with the Treo, but the Blackberry is a tad bit better when it comes to clarity. I was hoping for iPhone to be better than Treo though (no basis, I was just hoping) because this is a phone, first and foremost.
Looks & Feel. It’s an Apple product, therefore, it is gorgeous. But you kids already knew that. The build itself seem sturdy enough since I already dropped the damn thing (landed on a carpeted floor). The glass is great. I run my fingernail across a small portion on the edge of the screen to see if it create a scratch (I know, I’m a freakin’ masochist) but it didn’t, thank goodness. Fingerprints can be easily wiped off.
The keyboard: Maybe I have fat fingers or somethingn but I'm constantly mis-hitting my intended target. It definitely needs some getting use to. I found that if I just plow ahead and trust the suggested words, it's significantly faster. Thank goodness I don't do text lingo nor do I type in tagalog.
Synching. My mail, iCal, music and photos synch without a hitch.
Oh and by the way, the iPod heats up a bit. I played some music for 15 minutes or so and the thing is hot. Why can't Apple makes portables that won't give you burn is beyond me.
I haven’t tested the much of the functionality yet as I have a flight to catch in 3 hours and I need to get ready. So, for now, I’ll let the other Philmuggers to get it rolling.
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Got mine and Stef's a few hours ago. Bought them at apple store in Burlingame CA. Some waited overnight but we got there 1pm ... so it was a five hour wait. As soon as the store opened everyone was cheering...Excited Lahat!! Cingular/ATT subscriber kami so activation was a breeze. We used our same phone number and it was assigned to our iphones. At the most it took us 10 minutes to activate... so for those who had problems with activation... maybe it's because they are not currently with ATT. it really takes a wwhile to be activated for new accounts even if it is not an iphone.
Been tweaking with thephone for maybe two hours now. uploaded music,photos, contacts, calendar, etc. GRABE SOBRANG GANDA! Currently i'm using it as an ipod... pero phone din sha and web browser...and... organizer...nakakaloko! I havent been using my ipod for a while... maybe I need to sell it now that I have my iphone. BTW anyone interested with an ipod 80 gig and/or a mini ? haha.
More than I expected so far. Hope no or few bugs lang. SULIT! Bili na!
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I can officially say that Safari on the iPhone is the best mobile browser. It has beaten the Nokia E61's browser. It knows how close it needs to zoom based on the width of text inside a table or a div in a webpage.
The virtual keyboard needs getting used to. You have to train yourself where the middle part of your finger or thumbs are. I am still getting some typing mistakes but I am now using two thumbs to type.
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It's much more fun flipping through songs and watching videos on the iPhone. Now I don't want to go back to the iPod. Scroll wheel? Eew
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