carkitter
Joined: Apr 29, 2005
Posts: > 500
From: Auckland, NZ
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Hi all
Yes I got a 3G iphone a few days ago and thought I'd post some first impressions. I do intend to do a full review as soon as I've come to grips with it.
The Belkin Silicon case I bought to protect the iPhone:
Background
I am not a Mac user nor am I an owner of an iPod or any other MP3 player; the iPhone is my first Apple product. When I got my laptop 3 yrs ago it had iTunes pre installed on it and I did't use it. About 2 months ago my son got an iPod Nano (3rd gen) so I fired up iTunes to synch our music with the Nano. Later in anticipation of getting the iPhone I re-encoded most of my Albums using iTunes which took most of a weekend.
The iPhone
What it's got
A good phone with large buttons, a favourites list and good sound quality.
An amazing screen. It's certainly the best screen I've used on any device.
Beautiful and readable fonts; I'm afraid any phone after this is going to look dated.
Wifi - something SE should be putting in all their mid range and high end phones. It connects easily and overrides the 3G network for data usage automatically.
A pretty good iPod User Interface made even easier to use by that big screen.
A great email client which makes email readable and usable. Unlike my V640i which would recieve my emails too, I'm more inclined to reply to the emails on the iPhone straight away rather that waiting until I'm near my Laptop, beause of the virtual keyboard.
A great photo album which my kids love.
Really good video playback - once you convert everything over to a compatible file type. I've added 57 video clips taken using my wife's Sony DVD Handycam and they look suerpb.
Easily the best calculator I've used on a phone.
A great Weather App and a very cool Notes App which I use all the time.
Lots of interesting Apps in the App Store. This helps you feel like your iPhone does actually have some features after all.
The ability to auto-sync with my HBH-PV705 Bluetooth headset in firmware 2.0 . Firmware 2.1 doesn't want to recognise the headset yet.
What it does'nt have
The ability to sync without iTunes - more on this later.
Bluetooth profiles I want like file transfer and A2DP, but we all know that.
Much in the way of Settings which is one of the best things about SE phones.
Themes or Wallpaper. "But wait" you'll say, "You can set wallpaper!" Ah no. What Apple calls Wallpaper, the rest of us would call a Screensaver, not the same thing.
An easy to use browser. I use Opera 9.52 on my laptop and Opera 4.1 on they V640i and Safari on the iPhone doesn't come close. The main issue is a lack of keyboard shortcuts due to... no keyboard - and no additional options either that I can see. I can't find any way to store usernames and passwords either which makes browsing Esato a laborious task. I will reserve final judgement 'till I've spent a bit more time with it, but I'm pretty disappointed ATM.
A My Words type dictionary to store specific words I use often, like place names for instance. The virtual keyboard buttons are very close together for my large fingers and it's easy to make a mistake.
An awkward virtual keyboard. Overall it's slower for me to type on this than on a V640i and the magnifying glass which moves the cursor works only half the time.
Proprietary Software
Anyone complaining about a lack of MicroSD support or 3.5mm jack on SE phones, you 'aint seen nothing yet. Apple have a massively tight reign on this phone that makes Microsoft and Sony look positively open source by comparison. I've had 3 Vodafone branded SE phones without any issues but the requirement of iTunes only for sync is nothing short of obnoxious. You can't delete or move files on the iPhone, you have to edit things on iTunes and then re-sync. What a waste of time! If you have an older computer then iTunes will slow everything down, if your monthly bandwidth is limited or download speed is slow, then good luck downloading the 200MB+ software upgrades to provide the functionality you expect such as calls that don't drop and decent reception. You are expected to be running the latest Apple computers and unlimited, high speed broadband, allow Apple to store your credit card details online and let iTunes share all your personal files with all and sundry over an open Wifi network! Err... No thanks! I am not keen on unlocking and debranding phones but I can see me jailbreaking this very soon. In fact, this experience has put me off owning other Apple products.
Overall
I've decided to upgrade my rating on this phone to 7/10. Since adding video and apps to my iPhone I've discovered it is much more useful especially when entertaining my pre-school kids who have learned to use the touchscreen UI in no time at all. Having said that I am trialing using two devices ATM with the V640i doing the phone duties and the iPhone acting the role of an overpriced iPod Touch (I need the wifi connectivity). Will I miss using the iPhone so much? We'll see.
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Voted Best Phone Review Esato Awards 2008!
[ This Message was edited by: carkitter on 2008-10-02 04:11 ]
[ This Message was edited by: carkitter on 2008-10-06 07:41 ]
[ This Message was edited by: carkitter on 2008-10-06 07:45 ]
[ This Message was edited by: carkitter on 2008-10-13 02:46 ] |
Posted: 2008-10-02 01:18
