OMG IPHONE REVIEW LOL
Note to Ken: This is everything I currently have through General usage, minus settings. The next major section after this is "as an Internet device," then "as a phone" and whatnot. The Internet section is by far the largest single section. I hope to have those to you in post-Jacqui-edited form by the time I go to bed tonight (Saturday).
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Some think that the hype surrounding the Apple iPhone started in January of 2007, but that's not true. The hype behind the iPhone started many years ago, when creating such a device was still a sparkle in Steve Jobs' eye. After so many years of rumors about the mythical iPhone, so many fake (or trashed?) mockups, so many fake (or trashed) names, and a brief experiment with the now-failed Motorola ROKR, Apple finally went ahead and launched the device that Apple fans have been craving since the beginning of time. Or at least since Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and killed off the Newton.
And of course, to do something simultaneously predictable and shocking, the company actually called the device by its long-rumored, but never-quite-believed-to-be-the-actual-name nickname, the "iPhone."
The iPhone is now out, and promises to revolutionize the way we use our phones forever. Steve Jobs recently declared during an internal company meeting that he believes all phones will, some day, work the same way as the iPhone and that those who worked at Apple during the iPhone launch will be able to tell their grandchildren about it one day. It appears as if Steve truly believes in this product as a long-term revolutionary device, even if he does acknowledge that it does come with various flaws today.
As of launch in late June, iPhones come in two flash-based storage flavors: 4GB and 8GB. They are WiFi, Bluetooth, and USB enabled, which we will discuss later in the review. Contrary to initial reports and speculation about the device, current iterations of the iPhone do not include a GPS unit, although there are still rumors that such a thing may be incorporated into future versions. The box is smallish—not as small as the boxes that Apple now uses for full-size, fifth-generation iPods, but about the same size as one would expect when purchasing a cell phone of this size—with a matte black finish, similar to that of the MacBook Pro and true to Apple's current packaging style.
[pictures of box]
Inside the box is the iPhone and a packet with the iPhone booklet and a soft wipe cloth. Underneath, there is a standard iPod/iPhone USB connection cable, a tiny AC adapter brick, a dock, and the iPhone headphones.
[photos of everything in box]
For the longtime iPod owners in the house, this is a familiar scene—this many accessories may or may not continue to come included in the box as future iPhone generations get released. As one commenter aptly observed in the discussion about Infinite Loop's iPhone unboxing photos, "Look at all those accessories. I can't wait for the 3rd or so generation iPhone that comes with a phone and a cable."
The iPhone's size is best described as a regular-sized, video iPod, but taller. In fact, the width is exactly the same as an iPod at 2.4 inches and minutely thicker than an iPod—the iPhone is 0.46 inches thick while the iPod is 0.43 inches. Height-wise, the iPhone is 4.5 inches tall and an iPod is 4.1 inches tall. Physically, they are very similar. They weigh exactly the same, at 4.8 ounces each, despite the iPhone being flash-based and the iPod containing a hard drive. Some people feel that the iPhone is heavier than expected, and view this as a negative. Others like the substantial feel in the palm. We are fairly neutral and think it's fine.
[pictures of iPhone and iPod]
Compared to a BlackBerry Pearl (2 inches wide, 0.6 inches thick, and 4.2 inches tall), an iPhone is slightly taller by 0.3 inches, slightly wider by 0.4 inches, and slightly thinner by 0.14 inches.
[pictures of iPhone and Pearl]
Compared to a Motorola RAZR V3 (2.09 inches wide, 0.54 inches thick, and 3.86 inches tall while closed), the iPhone is a fair bit larger.
[pics of iPhone and RAZR]
[pics of all four]
On the front of the iPhone, there is a single button: the home button. On the right side, a silent ringer switch and volume controls. On the top, a recessed headphone jack, a sleep/wake switch, and the SIM card slot. There is nothing on the right side of the phone, and a tiny camera lens on the back.
[photos of buttons]
[photo of camera]
Naturally, the most noticeable thing about the iPhone in comparison with most other phones on the market is its large screen and lack of buttons. This is due to the almost entirely touchscreen interface on the iPhone, which people seem to either love or hate. However, the general consensus among those who have used iPhones by now appears to be that using the touchscreen for every single function is not "that bad." It's big, bright, and very contrasty. Despite the fact that the glossy glass surface does in fact get very smudgy at times, the smudges are almost a complete nonissue while the screen is on and the iPhone is being used. Naturally, handling the iPhone with sticky hands or putting it up to your face with smudgy makeup on will muck up the screen a bit, as it does with any phone. Overall, we love the screen. We'll talk about the screen further in relation to its brightness, contrast, and sensors in a bit.
The first thing you have to do once you take the iPhone out of its box is turn it on and activate it. No part of the iPhone's functionality—including that of the iPod—is accessible until the phone is activated through an AT&T plan.
[picture]
Unlike most phone plans in the US, the iPhone can be activated at home on your own computer, where you get to choose the plans, how you want to activate it, and more through iTunes. This requires the recently-released iTunes 7.3 and can be done on both Macs and Windows. Although we did the majority of our testing on a Mac, we also went through the whole process on Windows.
Once you connect the iPhone to the computer through the USB cable, the computer automatically recognizes the iPhone as new and walks you through the steps in order to activate it. You need to have an iTunes login to be able to do this.
[screenshots 1 and 2 of recognition and birthdate]
Even if you are a current AT&T customer and plan to transfer your plan over to the iPhone, you have to do so through the computer activation process in order to transfer your number to the included SIM in the device (you cannot pop your old AT&T SIM into the iPhone, according to AT&T). Users of other carriers can also transfer their numbers to AT&T through the iTunes interface. Or, if you want to activate an entirely new plan, that can be done as well. Apple has posted an instructional video on its website to walk users through the activation process.
Upon entering your billing information, iTunes will ask you for your social security number or an AT&T credit check code. As with most cell phone carriers in the US, AT&T requires a credit check before you can begin a new contract with them. By entering your social security number, you are authorizing AT&T to run a credit check on you on the spot to make sure that you can use the service. If you bought the phone from an AT&T store instead of an Apple Store, they may have already performed a credit check on you and provided you with a number to enter at the iTunes Screen.
[screenshot of billing info]
AT&T charges a $36 one-time activation fee for the iPhone, and the lowest available iPhone plan is $59.99 per month. This includes 450 "anytime" minutes, unlimited data, visual voicemail, 200 SMS messages, night and weekend minutes, rollover minutes, and unlimited mobile to mobile minutes. There are various other plans for the iPhone that are exactly the same as the one we just mentioned, except that they offer more anytime and night and weekend minutes. There are also family plans available, and plans for existing customers to add an iPhone onto their existing rate plans. All available rate plans can be found on Apple's website.
As mentioned on Infinite Loop, however, it is possible to activate an iPhone without committing to AT&T's "required" 2-year service plan. By entering "999-99-9999" into the social security field, you will get booted into GoPhone mode—AT&T's prepaid phone plan that does not require a contract. An equivalent voice plus data plan under GoPhone comes out to about $10 more per month than a similar plan under contract, and so this may be a very attractive option to those who aren't interested in committing to AT&T for long periods of time. Seeing as AT&T isn't subsidizing the iPhone's cost when you sign a contract (as most carriers do in order to entice customers with steep phone discounts), it doesn't seem as if there is much reason not to go this route unless you are interested in saving $10 per month and don't mind being in a contract for two years. This is the simplest way to activate the iPhone without a contract without getting into some hackery, which we will discuss in a later section. It will cost $175 to break an iPhone contract with AT&T if you choose to leave before the two years is up.
Activation typically only takes a few minutes, although many users reported on launch day that activation took them several hours, if not several days. AT&T claims to have fixed this problem, however, and so activation should really only take less than five minutes.
[picture of activation screen, picture of iPhone saying activated]
Once the iPhone is activated, the phone will inform you of this and iTunes will ask you what you want to sync with the device. The iTunes interface for syncing the iPhone is very similar to that of the iPod, except with more options. Here, you can specify among the various tabs which e-mail accounts you would like to sync (if any), music, photos, calendars, and contacts from your address book.
[screenie of main iPhone sync screen]
We chose to sync all of our e-mail accounts, address book contacts, a few playlists and videos, and one photo album for testing purposes. The process went fine on a Mac with no hitches, and it acted just as it would when syncing an iPod. Unlike an iPod, however, the iPhone does not mount as a USB storage device, and so it cannot be used as an external hard drive. There are currently efforts underway to hack this functionality, but as of this writing, major progress has not been made on that front.
On Windows... [talk about Windows syncing]
The iPhone home screen is where you can find everything you'll need (and a few things you won't) to make use of the iPhone's functionalities. Any one of the icons can be tapped with your fingertip to access that particular function, and you can return to the home screen at any time by pressing the one and only button on the front of the iPhone. The four main buttons across the bottom of the screen represent what Apple considers to be the phone's main functionalities: phone, mail, Safari (web browsing), and iPod.
[picture of home screen]
By returning to the home screen in the middle of doing something else (say, checking e-mail or loading a web page), you are not "quitting" out of that application. The iPhone allows you to multitask and do multiple things at once, so that if you fire up a song on the iPod, you can return to the home screen and check some e-mail, go load a few web pages in Safari, and while those are loading, go back and make a phone call. The iPhone always saves whatever you were doing in each separate application, and that's what will come up by default when you return to that app. This can both be annoying and a godsend, depending on what you were expecting when you went to a specific e-mail account, returned to the home screen, and then tapped "mail" again. Some people would rather return to the main mail screen with multiple accounts listed, while others like being taken back to exactly the same spot they left it at. This is highly based on personal preference.
Every aspect of the iPhone is done with what some of us describe as "gratuitous animation." That is, practically every single thing that happens on the iPhone is animated in some way. Things don't just pop up, they slide in. When deleting a note, the little trash can opens and the note swooshes into it. The home screen icons scatter in and out of the screen. This may sound annoying in description, but it looks great and makes the phone's OS appear to be extremely polished. We didn't find any of the animations to get in our way of getting things done.
[video of gratuitous animation]
The SIM card is accessible through the slot on the top of the iPhone and can be popped out with the help of a paperclip or safety pin. The SIM itself, once activated with AT&T, can be used in other AT&T-compatible phones, but the iPhone cannot be used as a phone without a SIM. It can, however, be used as an iPod and a WiFi Internet device without a SIM. The iPhone is currently locked to the AT&T network in the US and so SIM cards from other GSM carriers, such as T-Mobile, will not work in the iPhone. In our tests, we inserted a T-Mobile SIM into the iPhone and it merely told us "Incompatible SIM." There are multiple efforts underway to unlock the iPhone from AT&T.
[pics of SIM popping]
One thing we noticed about the iPhone in general is that it gets pretty warm after long periods of use. While most people won't typically find themselves using the iPhone to browse the Internet for several hours at a time in a single stretch, doing so will most definitely heat the little bugger up. If you don't notice the heat while holding it in your hands, you will when you get a phone call and end up holding the equivalent of a tiny MacBook up to your ear. It's not warm enough to cause physical pain by any means, but certainly warm enough to notice. Based on intermittent everyday use, however, the iPhone never really gets the opportunity to warm up that much before going back into standby mode.
Restoring
While annoying and inconvenient to have to do this, Apple apparently anticipated that such a thing would be inevitable at some point and made re-syncing as simple as possible. When restoring, we made sure to sync everything with the computer before the restore, and once the computer had restored the iPhone's settings as new, it asked us whether we wanted to set up the iPhone as a new phone or restore to the previously-synced profile.
[screenshot of restore from itunes]
When you restore your iPhone to a previously-synced profile, everything is restored—all of your iPhone settings, everything you had ever synced with it, and even your full SMS conversations and call logs. Even if you get a brand new iPhone, we believe you would be able to "restore" all of your information to it as if it was the one you were using all along. This does help to calm some fears about having to exchange broken iPhones and/or wait for erased ones to come back from repair.
Settings
[insert settings stuff here!]
Oh, the irreverent, touchscreen keyboard that has been scrutinized from afar since January. One of the most common question we've received when testing our iPhones has been about the keyboard: "How is it? Is it really that bad?"
Truth be told, none of us were fond of the concept of a soft keyboard before the iPhone was launched. We're used to our tactile feedback, damnit, and that's what we want! What about those of us who (only in hypothetical situations, of course) might text a little bit while driving, or have a habit of sending e-mails and SMSs while not entirely sober? What about people who just plain have bad eyesight, or big hands, or fat fingers? These were legitimate questions that we, our friends, our family, and our readers raised for many months.
The truth of the matter is, the keyboard is very easy to hate when you first use it. Our reactions ranged from mild annoyance all the way up to maniacal rage upon first use, with some of us fat-fingering our way through 50 percent or higher error rates. However, Steve Jobs said in his ever-so-knowing, slightly-creepy way that we should "trust" it—the keyboard's intelligence, that is, to figure out what we were saying, and trust ourselves to get better at it over time.
That turned out to be true, at least for most of us. After several hours of solid use, we became significantly better at using the keyboard. After two days, we were writing multi-paragraph e-mails to family members and friends without hesitation, and Jacqui even ended up having to manage two simultaneous (but smallish) emergencies via the iPhone during preparations for her friend's wedding. Five days in, she was declaring herself a "f-ing master" at the keyboard. Some other Ars staffers didn't quite feel so strongly, declaring that anyone who claims they can type faster on an iPhone keyboard than on a BlackBerry is "lying." However, they did admit that it got better over time.
[video of e-mail keyboard typing demo]
We were all in agreement that the word recognition software that is tied to the iPhone's keyboard is extremely intelligent. You can severely mangle words and still have them come out okay in the end, and while it's possible to mangle them so badly that the iPhone doesn't know what you're saying, it's difficult. The iPhone's keyboard tracks the pattern of keys that you've pressed so far and tries to predict the words that you're typing—as you progress through the word, it reduces the hit area for keys around what it thinks is your next target key so that it's easier for you to type the word it thinks you want to type. It also looks at the keys surrounding the keys that you've already hit in order to determine whether you had meant to hit the "w" key instead of the "q" key when typing "qhen," for example. In our experience, the iPhone keyboard's intelligence was far, far superior to any interpretation of T9 that we've dealt with on other phones, and at least on par or superior to the word recognition offered up by BlackBerrys.
[picture of mistyped word and correction]
One thing we noticed that differed from text entry on other phones (particularly T9 on regular phones) was that the iPhone will automatically correct your words if you hit the space bar immediately afterwards, which is the opposite of what happens in T9. T9 will offer a completed word, but will not insert it unless you tell it to. If you hit the space bar, your typed word will be used instead. At first we feared that this reversal would completely throw off everything that we was used to, but it turned out to be quite easy to adapt. If you don't want the iPhone to correct a word, you tap the word that you were spelling and it will use the word that you had typed. This is also how you add words to the dictionary that aren't already in there (fun tip: almost all nasty curse words are already in the dictionary). One problem, however, is if you accidentally add words to the dictionary, there seems to be no way to get them out. For example, when typing "Ars" one day, I had actually typed "ARs" and the iPhone wanted to correct it to something else, but I tapped the word before looking at the improper capitalization. Now, whenever I type "ars" (or "are," for that matter), it tries to correct me to "ARs," which I don't want. Explicitly typing "Ars" doesn't seem to replace "ARs" in the dictionary, either.
[picture of ARs?]
