As my friend and fellow mobile tech writer Sean Cooper said, “the iPhone is our Paris Hilton.” Nothing else could possibly explain the amount of hype that this device has generated, even long before it was officially announced. Often referred to as the “Jesus Phone” because of its laundry list of supposed capabilities, there were a lot of people, myself included, that did not believe that the Apple iPhone could possibly live up to the hype.
For the most part, I was wrong. It can and does live up to almost all of the hype. There are a number of issues, but the iPhone is very much the device that Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised the world in January. Is it the ultimate phone? No. The best iPod ever? Probably. More importantly, though, it may well be the most advanced handheld computer ever marketed. Read on to learn most all there is to know about this remarkable device.
Physical Aspects
There really isn’t much to the iPhone in terms of physical controls and features. The device weighs a somewhat hefty 145g (5.1oz) and measures up at 115mm x 61mm x 12mm (4.5″ x 2.4″ x .47″). For comparison, a current model 30 or 80GB iPod weighs 136g (4.8oz) and measures 104mm x 61mm x 11mm (4.1″ x 2.4″ x .43″). Most people will be able to forgive the iPhone its size and weight once they see the beautiful 3.5″ 480×320 pixel touch screen display that dominates the front of the device. Apart from the home key that is located below it, there really is nothing else going on up front. Almost all interactions with the phone take place on the display, but we’ll get to that later.
A chrome frame surrounds the glass that covers the black face of the iPhone. A matte finish metal covers up most of the sides and back of the phone where, oddly, the phone’s serial number and IMEI are clearly written. The camera lens, also located on the back, is very small and unobtrusive.
One of the only places where plastic is used on the device, and the only place it is used as a cover material, is along the bottom section of the rear of the device where the speaker, microphone, and standard 30-pin iPod docking port are found. Plastic was needed here so as to not obstruct the phone’s antenna. Plastic is also used, sparingly, for the remaining few controls on the iPhone. The ringer switch and volume controls, which are found on the left edge of the device, are made of plastic. A well hidden SIM card slot is located on the top of the device, sitting between the plastic standby/power key and the 3.5mm headset/headphone jack.
I find few things to fault with the iPhone’s physical design, but the headset jack is one of them. It is deeply recessed and will force many owners to purchase an adapter to use their own headphones. Another problem is the rear cover of the iPhone: it cannot be removed. Accordingly, the user cannot swap the battery. When the battery starts to lose capacity after 300 to 400 charges (according to Apple), the iPhone will have to be sent in to Apple to receive a new battery, a process that takes 3 business days and will cost US$86, including shipping. I am happy to report, however, that my initial concerns about the durability of the iPhone’s finish seem unfounded. The iPhone ships with a dock, a stereo headset with a call button, and a cable that can attach the iPhone to either a computer or the charger.
Physical Aspects
There really isn’t much to the iPhone in terms of physical controls and features. The device weighs a somewhat hefty 145g (5.1oz) and measures up at 115mm x 61mm x 12mm (4.5″ x 2.4″ x .47″). For comparison, a current model 30 or 80GB iPod weighs 136g (4.8oz) and measures 104mm x 61mm x 11mm (4.1″ x 2.4″ x .43″). Most people will be able to forgive the iPhone its size and weight once they see the beautiful 3.5″ 480×320 pixel touch screen display that dominates the front of the device. Apart from the home key that is located below it, there really is nothing else going on up front. Almost all interactions with the phone take place on the display, but we’ll get to that later.
A chrome frame surrounds the glass that covers the black face of the iPhone. A matte finish metal covers up most of the sides and back of the phone where, oddly, the phone’s serial number and IMEI are clearly written. The camera lens, also located on the back, is very small and unobtrusive.
One of the only places where plastic is used on the device, and the only place it is used as a cover material, is along the bottom section of the rear of the device where the speaker, microphone, and standard 30-pin iPod docking port are found. Plastic was needed here so as to not obstruct the phone’s antenna. Plastic is also used, sparingly, for the remaining few controls on the iPhone. The ringer switch and volume controls, which are found on the left edge of the device, are made of plastic. A well hidden SIM card slot is located on the top of the device, sitting between the plastic standby/power key and the 3.5mm headset/headphone jack.
 Weather |
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 Flipping |
 Flipping |
 The start screen |
 Home menu |
 New mail waiting |
 Menu during a call |
User Interface: Actual Use
So now that we know how to communicate our intentions to the iPhone, how does it work? In general, it works very well. Most controls are very intuitive. Tapping on buttons and flicking a list up or down seems to make sense to pretty much everybody. The iPhone’s physics engine emulates the real world well enough for people to forget that they are manipulating non-physical objects. The pinch gesture used for zooming still seems alien to most novices, though, as does double tapping elements. However, the thing about the iPhone that confuses the most people would have to be its lack of a back button.
Most every phone on the planet today has either a dedicated back button or an on-screen softkey with “back” written above it that does the same thing. After the initial “oooohs” and “aaaahs” over the device’s beauty, the first comment is often “How do you go back?” I agree that this is the one major gaff in the user interface. While there are frequently controls for getting back to a prior screen in a particular application, such as getting back to the contacts list from a particular contact, it never runs deeper than that. When, for example, the user views a contact and taps on the listed street address, the user’s address appears loaded into the Google Maps application. That’s fantastic, but there is no obvious way to get back to the Contact screen. You are pretty much forced to hit the Home key and then press the phone icon in order to get back to the main contacts list, where you will be able to tap on the contact you were viewing to see the information. That’s one physical button press and two on-screen taps to get back to where you were. It makes no sense, and there are certainly worse examples to be found.
This brings up my next point regarding the system. There is no way to see what applications are running or to quickly switch between them. Applications such as Mail could be doing things in the background, like checking for new messages, that I might wish to stop when I’m browsing the web. There is no way to do this, as going back to the home screen and then tapping on the mail program will load the Mail app, if it wasn’t already running. This and the lack of a back button are what I call Apple’s “eyes forward” approach to the UI. Much in-application navigation is linear in nature. To switch from the inbox of one email account to another, for example, requires at least four taps to navigate down and back up the application structure. Worse yet, most all navigation between applications is one-way; you can only move forward. While that might be “simple”, it is certainly neither intuitive nor efficient.
The main menu of the iPhone is its home screen. By now, nearly everybody has seen a picture of the iPhone’s home screen, with its colorful icons all lined up in rows across the display. The icons all have text labels on them, which is nice. A status bar usually adorns the top of the display, generally only disappearing when photos or videos are being viewed in full screen mode. Indicators and icons on the status bar tell the user when EDGE or WiFi data is being used, the current signal strength, the time, as well as battery status and whether or not Bluetooth is enabled. When navigating through the menu while on a call, the status bar grows and turns green. Tapping on it will then return the user to the call screen.
 Virtual keyboard |
 Keys grow when pressed |
 Auto correct |
 Magnifying glass for cursor positioning |
The biggest stumbling block in the iPhone is its text input method. The on-screen virtual keyboard is difficult to use by novices, at best. Obviously some people will be able to use it very quickly, but they will be members of a very small minority and will also tend to have slender fingers and thumbs. A single index finger seems to work best for most people because the balance and shape of the iPhone makes it very difficult to use with two thumbs accurately. Keys enlarge as they are hit in order to make it more clear to the user when they have hit the wrong key. That’s fine. I take exception with the fact that the keyboard always shows capital letters though, leaving only a glowing shift key to indicated when caps are active instead of the default lower case letters. Luckily, there is a decent amount of logic behind Apple’s auto-correct system in terms of both spelling and capitalization. It manages to correct most typos on the fly if you put your trust in it. Those it misses can be fixed by long tapping on the mistaken text, which brings up a magnifying glass that can be dragged around to position the cursor properly for a correction to be made. While there are few situations where an application allows it, the virtual keyboard can be used in widescreen mode as well.
Overall the user interface works pretty well, but as a power user I always feel that I am being protected from things for “my own good.” For example, how much RAM is available? Who knows. What apps are running. I have no idea. What is going on when I am having problems connecting to WiFi? You got me. The iPhone user isn’t supposed to worry about such things. While it might be a good idea to insulate general consumers and novices, it can be very stifling to people that are technically oriented. Similarly, I hate the fact that all settings for applications, if there even are any, are set in the Settings control panel, not in the applications themselves. If I’m reading mail and want to increase the font size, I have to go to the Home screen, tap on Settings, tap on Mail Settings, change the font size, press the Home key again, and then tap on the Mail icon to get back to where I was. That’s not helping anybody.
Regardless, what Apple has done here is nothing short of marvelous. The finer points of the UI, such as its organization, might not be ideal, and one-handed use is somewhat difficult, but what the company has done with finger gestures and 3D transition effects (nearly every page switch includes a flip, spin, or zoom of some sort) is just fantastic. It is a truly fun device to use. It is a beautiful device to use. It is a simple device to use. It just also happens to need some more work. Considering that this is Apple’s first shot at such a device, I take my hat off to them and am anxiously waiting to see how they refine the iPhone in the coming year or so.
 Inbound call while in standby (ZOOM) |
 Missed call (ZOOM) |
 Inbound call while active (ZOOM) |
 During a call (ZOOM) |
 Switch audio source (ZOOM) |
Phone
For the rest of this review I am going to change things up. Since there are so many aspects to the iPhone that are not in normal devices, I’m going to review the device’s features organized the same way as its home screen icons. We’ll start with the phone.
The Phone icon on the iPhone is where, unsurprisingly, the phone related functions are found. The iPhone is a quad-band GSM/EDGE device that works here in the states on AT&T’s network, though not on the company’s speedy 3G network. The main on-screen phone dial pad is used for dialing numbers, and a convenient Recents section keeps track of the calls made, received, and missed. Our iPhone seems to have pretty good reception characteristics but offers only average call voice quality as far as the iPhone user is concerned. Speakerphone performance was weak in general. It is worth noting that the iPhone also caused an extreme amount of noise through the speakers on my nearby PC when it was using EDGE data or in the middle of a call - the worst I have experienced in years.
The contacts in the phone app are organized into the regular contacts list and the favorites list. The Contacts list is a finger scrollable/flickable list of contacts. Users can skip to a particular section by tapping on the appropriate letter from the alphabet that runs down the right edge of the display. Contacts can be viewed by tapping on them, where they can then be edited or added to. Contacts can be synchronized with an Mac or Windows PC through iTunes.
The Favorites list replaces traditional speed dials by letting the iPhone organize the user’s most accessed contact phone numbers (not complete multi-number contacts) into one list. Tapping on an item in the Favorites will immediately call the associated number. I like this far better than speed dials. Sadly, there is no voice dialing at all in the iPhone, which I would have liked even more since I am an avid Bluetooth headset user.
There is no ring profile system in the iPhone. There is a physical switch next to the volume control for switching between vibrate only mode and the normal ring mode. Ring volume is adjusted with the volume control. iPod music files cannot be used as ringtones, and currently new ringtones cannot be added to the device, though that seems likely to change soon. The various notifications can be configured to be disabled or to use any of the preloaded tones. Vibration can be turned on for calls and notifications, but only as a single global setting.
The much hyped Visual Voicemail system in the iPhone is very nice. Messages are organized by name or number and can be played just as any locally stored music clip would. Tap on the message, tap on the play button that appears next to the name, and listen to the message. Messages can be deleted and even undeleted easily. It is a very nice system, and the only basic phone functionality that the iPhone truly excels at.
 Contact favorites (ZOOM) |
 Recent calls (ZOOM) |
 Contact list (ZOOM) |
 Contact viewer (ZOOM) |
 Contact editor (ZOOM) |
 Phone keypad (ZOOM) |
 Save a dialed number (ZOOM) |
 Voicemail list (ZOOM) |
 Select a message (ZOOM) |
 Play a message (ZOOM) |
 Mail accounts list (ZOOM) |
 Folder list (ZOOM) |
 Inbox, 2 line summary (ZOOM) |
 1 line summary, deleting (ZOOM) |
 Full HTML email (ZOOM) |
The mail client on the iPhone, like the rest of the device, is very pretty. It supports POP and IMAP accounts as well as Yahoo!, Gmail, .Mac, and AOL mail. Setup is pretty straight forward, and in general the application works well.
Apart from the aforementioned hoops that have to be jumped through to switch accounts, the application is easy to use. IMAP folders show up as expected, and messages are opened with a simple tap. The application can be configured for font size and number of lines of summary text to be shown in the inbox view. Pressing the edit button at the top right of the inbox (or any other folder) lets the user delete messages. A quick right to left swipe on a message will also bring up the delete button, which is faster and just as safe. The mail viewer supports full HTML email, including zooming and panning, though it lacks the ability to be viewed in landscape (widescreen) format like the Safari browser can.
There is no direct support for Microsoft Exchange or any other corporate email solution yet. Steve Jobs has hinted that there are corporate mail trials going on, but has not provided any more detail than that. If your corporate Exchange server is up to date and has IMAP access enabled, you can use the iPhone to look at the inbox or any other folder, like calendar and contacts, as if it were made up of messages. It isn’t Direct Push support, but it is better than nothing. Unfortunately, many Exchange servers are configured to not allow IMAP access.
The SMS application organizes messages into threads like those that one would see in an instant message application. The sending and reading of SMS messages is uncomplicated. Inbound messages in a thread are aligned to the left side of the screen, and messages sent from the iPhone are aligned to the right and colored green. The only thing missing is MMS support, which seems extremely odd for a multimedia centric device like the iPhone. Also missing is an instant messaging client of any sort.
 SMS thread list (ZOOM) |
 Opening a thread (ZOOM) |
 SMS thread (ZOOM) |
 Typing a message (ZOOM) |
 Sending a message (ZOOM) |
Safari (Web Browser)
Depending on your where your interests are, the Safari web browser might be the coolest application on the iPhone - even cooler than the iPod app. Nokia’s open source browser for S60, based on Apple’s Web Kit rendering engine, which Safari also uses, has long been the best mobile browser available. It should come as no surprise, then, that Apple’s own mobile version of Safari would be even better.
The browser makes viewing full sized websites on a mobile device a piece of cake. Pages load full screen initially, as they would on a PC or Mac. Generally, this means that the text is microscopic in size, and that images are too small to view well. Apple lets users address this with a double-tap on whatever it is they are trying to read or view. Double tap on a column of text and the browser will zoom and pan to have that column fit the width of the screen, making it readable in almost all cases. If that isn’t good enough, just rotate the iPhone 90 degrees to get a widescreen view of the same page.
Once zoomed, users can use a finger to pan around the page as needed to read. Double tapping on another section will adjust the screen appropriately. Double tapping on an already zoomed section will zoom back out to the whole page, letting the user find the next thing to read or view. Manual pinch based zooming also works, but is rarely needed.
Multiple windows can be opened at the same time and easily accessed with the button in the bottom right corner of the screen. Tapping on it will allow users to visually move from window to window by flicking the miniature versions of the web pages to the left or right. The browser also has a nice Bookmarks section that allows for sub-folders and even includes a history. The bookmarks will sync with those on the user’s PC or Mac.
So what is the catch? There are a couple. There is no support for Flash or Java applications, though it does support JavaScript and JavaScript based menus, such as those used in our own menu above. Like the lack of MMS messaging support, it strikes me as insane for a multimedia focused device to lack Flash and Java in its browser.
To be continue…..