I’ve had the ulti-phone for about two weeks now. The initial one week was simply enjoying the life of an alphageek. Yes… iHave iPhone…
In the meantime, I also picked up a Nokia N800 just for comparison, since I heard so many good things about it. I also ready many reviews of the phone. I think this one is the best.
User Interface: There was more emphasis put into the user interface than most other phones. The one thing that has always bothered me about phones is when they do nothing… as in you push a button, and they do nothing. The iPhone almost always does something. If you’re at the end of a series of pics, the screen bounces when you try to go further. Almost all of the UI transitions are analog, meaning there is no hard screen change, almost always a fade effect or animation. Also all the scrolling effects with inertia are pretty cool.
Compared to the Nokia N800, the touch keyboarding on the iPhone is great. On the N800, you HAVE to use a stylus or hand writing recognition. The gesture navigation becomes so natural for everything else (like browsing photos and resizing things) that I’ve been actually surprised when a touch screen doesn’t do it. Actually, I’ve been surprised when something doesn’t have a touch screen.
Still nitpicking:
- Cannot do a parametric search on phone numbers. Like spelling out “to” and getting the book narrowed to Todd, etc.
- Syncing through iTunes for contacts / calendar sucks. Need ActiveSync
- Microsoft’s Webmail on Safari is rough. Reading is okay, but replying is tough. Need Active Sync.
- EDGE network is unreliable in terms of connectivity and speed
- Sometimes when EDGE is active, it’s not animated on the main screen as such in the corner.
- Not all iPod accessories work right with it (would have nice for my Griffin Charger / FM transmitter to work)
- Glass gets fingerprints… ALOT
- Widget information is not always correct. (Said 80 degrees a couple of weeks ago, when I know it was near 100)
- Average phone quality
It’s still a very cool phone.
I still can’t shake the feeling that Palm could have made something like this (minus iTunes and plus ActiveSync) a while ago.
The future:
I can see in 4 years, the iMac and MacBooks will be basically two large touchscreens, the monitor and “keyboard”. But when you open an app like Photoshop, the keyboard changes completely. Or when you open iTunes, the click wheel appears on your keyboard. You can also interface to your screen by touching it.