IPhone review by Tom
The Apple IPhone has been talked about for months, and not just in the Mac community. When the most technological people have hard of this new addition to the Apple family, which claims to be five years ahead in mobile phone technologies. When the first pictures and carefully censored specifications to hid the faults were released, everyone went crazy. The first release was so hyped-up that people spent days queuing outside Apple stores in th US to get their hands on one of these gadgets. Once in their ahnds, the joy of being able to call their friends using an “IPhone” made them over look its subtle, annoying, and damn right awfall faults. However, someone who can look beyond a pretty glass face will see these faults loud and clear.
As a regular phone it is lacking The voice quality is poor and the speaker phone is too quiet. The vibrator is too soft and there is no voice-activated dialing. What I find so shocking is that it cannot send picture messages(MMS)! Did the guys at Apple forget to put in that little bit of code? Or did they forget just not bother? I feel that this is quite pathetic, as it is something that would have taken so little time to sort out. The battery life for talking is 8 hours, which is good, and the standby time is 250 hours.
As an IPod, the user interface is fantastic, especially coverflow. The hard drive (which is actually a flash drive) is too small- only 4 or 8 GB. The headphone socket is too recessed, so only Apple headphones can be used, which is a bit cheeky. Also, the headphones are too small so they fall out of the users ears very easily. There is no Divx player (for some types of videos), which is a bit of a shame. The battery lasts for 24 hours listening to music, and 7 hours watching video.
As an internet surfer Safari (the web browser) is very good, but using regular GPRS is cripplingly slow. It takes 2 minutes to load Yahoo.com. This means it is only really usable on a WIFI or 3G connection. The security features are a major problem. It is easily hacked, which makes it redundant for business use. This is a dreadful fault.
The user input needs work. The touch-screen keyboard is difficult to use with both hands, and beware anyone with fat fingers. Also, scrolling through large pages is slightly difficult.
The user interface is utterly fantastic. It has inherited the intuitive, easy to use and beautiful interface of all Apple devices.
The looks are gorgeous. The glossy screen, the black case and the single home button ehance each other brilliantly.
The build quality is poor. It scratches easily, the screen breaks from the most minor knock, and the thing is encased in a flimsy tin which might fold in two if you sit on it. The battery is irremovable, which means when the battery eventually does loose the will to charge, you have to fork out to get it sent off to an Apple store to get it replaced by them.
Instead of creating a whole new operating system for the IPhone to run, the guys at Apple make a stripped down version of Mac OSX to use. What they didn’t do is create a public SDK (something used to make software for a computer). This means that no one apart from Apple can write software for the IPhone. This means that the security cannot be improved, which is bad for business users. But even the most basic things are affected. Your stuck with the few bundled games and the charming 25 ring tones. Nothing more can be added.
In conclusion, I think the Iphone should only be bought as a piece of eye-candy. The looks and the user interface are the only things Apple has done, had always done in the past, and always will in the future perfectly. The rest of it has had something missing. If Apple hadn’t rushed it to calm the eager public by leaving out bits, it would have been so much better. I think it is a real shame. I hope the Iphone Generation 2 will have a better out come. If I were you, I would wait until Apple sort out its several awful problems before thinking about buying.