A further review: iPhone is very cool, not perfect
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I distrust perfection, so when I finally got my hands on an Apple iPhone, the sheer delight of the experience made me nervous. Yes, I know what I wrote just over a week ago: "The iPhone is exactly as cool as you've heard, and then some," and I meant it. But I'd been given a mere half-hour of play time ...
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Slow iPhones are just fine with Apple.
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While purely speculation, it's a fairly safe bet that future versions of the iPhone will cost less and offer more features than the first iPhone.
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This beautifully designed media player is like a slim iPhone sans phone--but it&#39;s marred by some early hardware and software issues.
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âAfter all the ink thatâs been spilled describing, previewing and hyping the Apple iPhone, does it deserve the attention? Iâd have to say yes,â reports Ryan Kim (San Francisco Chronicle). âThe lure of the iPhone is that it makes you want to use it. Itâs actually fun. Do we say that about any phones? Hardly. Itâs not really the physical design, which is a marvel of simplicity. Itâs what happens when you pick it up and use it. There is nothing intimidating about it. Rather, itâs inviting.â âThe cell phone, the most personal of technology devices,â Kim concludes, âhas just gotten a whole lot more personal.â
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The cellphone industry went to Barcelona to âshow off the latest and greatest phonesâ and, once again, hardware took center stage. But, Victoria Shannon (New York Times) points out, âsoftware is growing in importance as smartphones, capable of accessing the Web, become more popular.â So, Shannon continues, âit was no surprise that many of the phones were iPhone clones â with touch screens, sleek flat shapes and spare software interfaces. Apple was able to make a phone that paid equal attention to the software and the hardware. And the rest of the industry was following suit here.â
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Apple Inc.&#39;s  iPhone won  a strong endorsement from a key technology reviewer on Tuesday  when the Wall Street Journal&#39;s Walter Mossberg called it a  beautiful, breakthrough device.
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A minor data disaster reveals a small flaw and briefly dampens my early adopter's enthusiasm, but Steve Jobs' wonder phone remains my favorite gadget of all time. Here's why. Commentary by Leander Kahney.
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Love it or hate it, the frenzy around Apple's iPhone is forcing consumers to think about what they want from a mobile device.
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Anyone who owns Apple Inc.'s iPhone knows that it can be mighty difficult to keep the sleek smart phone shining. But is it necessary to shell out more money to keep the gadget in pristine condition?
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âTo call the iPhone the best phone Iâve ever used is the biggest understatement of the decade,â enthuses Michael DeAgonia . âItâs like saying Jupiter is big, or infinity a long time. From the moment you pick it up, you can feel the weight and sturdiness of the phone, inspiring the sort of confidence you get from a quality build. The display is gorgeously integrated, the streamlined face covered by glass. Finally â a design worthy of being called a design!â iPhone is so good, in fact, that it even passed DeAgoniaâs most critical test. âOver the years, not a single device ever made it through my motherâs hands without being returned to me with a frustrated laugh and a shrug. With the iPhone, once the screen lit up and my mother discovered that Swipe to Unlock really did mean swipe to unlock, she was sold.â
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(InfoWorld) - So much for Apple Inc. raising the bar in the mobile phone industry. Since Apple announced it would soon start selling a combined music player and mobile device called the iPhone, industry experts have predicted that competing cell phone makers would rise to the challenge and start producing equally exciting phones. They may yet do that, but so far they haven't. I took a quick stroll around the show floor of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona checking out the music phones from some of the biggest handset makers out there to see if anything might compare to the hype aroundÂ expectations for the iPhone. Apple is known for great hardware designs and simple, intuitive user interfaces. While I saw a dizzying array of form factors and a multitude of user interface styles, I was unimpressed with the hardware I saw and downright confounded by the complexity of all the user interfaces. My examinations were quick -- the show floor is incredibly crowded and hot, so sometimes it took some sharp elbows to even get to touch a phone. I took a brief look at the overall form factor of the phones and then did some navigating around the music player. I started out at the Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB booth, perhaps because I know the company has been pushing its Walkman handsets. The W880 is a really nice looking phone. It's incredibly thin and has unusual raised keys that work nicely. Sony Ericsson gets high marks for the hardware form factor on this one, but the software user interface was a different story. I never did manage to find the music player from the home screen. Ultimately, I just moved along to another phone in the display area that was already running the music player. I had a similar navigation problem on Nokia Corp.'s 5200 music phone. From the home screen, I clicked on an icon with a music note in it, which seemed a logical place to launch the music player. But that took me to a music-related game. I scrolled and scrolled through a horizontal bar of icons but didn't find a music player there. Then I noticed that floating in the middle of the screen were two long bars: one for the music player and one for the calendar. That threw me -- of all phone functions, why were the music player and calendar the only two to be presented that way? At least Nokia had loaded the demonstration phones with music. Some of the other handsets I tried out, such as the Sony Ericsson one, had just one song on them. That makes it difficult to get a feel for navigating around the music player. I don't love the form factor of the 5200 but I think some people might. It's sporty, in white and bright red, and a shape reminiscent of Motorola Inc.'s PEBL phones. It slides open. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s SG HF300 "Ultramusic" was next up. I couldn't help but be struck by the cool design. One side of the phone is nearly all screen; the flip side has a keypad for dialing the phone. I never managed to figure out how to use the control panel on the music player side of the phone. It looks like the iPod's but square. I don't have an iPod so maybe iPod users can easily figure it out. If you're not an iPod user -- and you may not be if you're in the market for a music phone -- the SG HF300 might require a steep learning curve. Motorola was next in line. I'm probably least impressed with the Z8 than any of the others. I think the design is clunky and looks and feels like a slider phone from a couple of years ago. For the innovator of the thin phone, Motorola should have done better with the Z8's size. I found it difficult to figure out which buttons corresponded with the words at the bottom of the screen so even hitting "back" proved difficult initially. Then, when looking for the music player application, I suddenly found an error message on the screen and the phone froze. Not a great sign. My final stop was Neonode AB, a Swedish company that has been touting its music phone, particularly its touch screen. The device is in a category of its own and is very un-phone like. About the size of a business card, though not as thin, its touch screen definitely requires training to use. I would have never been able to figure it out without instruction. Users sweep up along the home screen within three columns. The first opens a navigation page with icons for functions such as the music player, calendar and calculator. The middle column opens a touch pad for dialing calls. And the final column opens a tools menu. Sweeping left along the screen goes back a page and sweeping right opens a function that is highlighted. When presented with a list such as albums, you touch the item to highlight it and then touch the middle of the screen to open. Sound confusing? It was. Still, I'm not panning it. It may require a bit of direction and practice but I think it'd be pretty easy to get the hang of how it works. While the small size was attractive, it also meant that it felt a bit designed for a child. Most adults have fingertips that are bigger than the icons on the screen. Overall, I was largely underwhelmed with my experiences. But there's time -- Apple only just announced the iPhone and its competitors haven't really had time to respond. Also, my search was by no means exhaustive. For example, I didn't make it to LG Electronics Inc., which recently unveiled a phone, the KE850, that is being compared to the iPhone. Even at the booths I visited, I chose to look at the phone that appeared to me to be the most focused on music but that may not be the one the manufacturer would direct me to and other models may compare more directly with the iPhone. And finally, I'm the first to admit my exercise was a bit silly given that I've never even seen an iPhone. But such is the power of the Apple marketing machine.
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The last few days have seen an amazing amount of security chatter concerning the iPhone considering that the thing just launched. Jon Espenschied would like to hear a little less hysteria and a little more clarity about the difference between standards and "what's usual."
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Proud owners of Apple Inc.'s iPhone raved about their first day with the device on Saturday, but a glitch took the shine off the year's most anticipated device for a few unlucky customers.
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âThe phone is so sleek and thin,â reports David Pogue (New York Times) in his review of iPhone, that âit makes Treos and Blackberrys look obese.â And the software transcends. âItâs fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate.â If you need âto answer a call, you can tap Answer on the screen, or pinch the microscopic microphone bulge on the white earbud cord. Either way, music or video playback pauses until you hang up.â As for email, itâs âfantastic. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with graphics; you can even open (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF documents.â And âthe Web browser,â he points out, âis the real dazzler.â No âstripped down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit the screen. You scroll with a fingertip â much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies the image to fill the wider view.â In short, Pogue calls the iPhone, âthe most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years.â
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After testing the iPhone for two weeks in multiple US cities, Walter Mossberg and Katherine Boehret consider it âa beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface,â they say, âworks well.â In addition to combining âintelligent voice calling and a full-blown iPod,â iPhone also âoffers the best Web browser we have seen on a smart phone and robust email software.â It offers âthe largest and highest-resolution screen of any smart phone weâve seen, and the most internal memory by far. Yet it is one of the thinnest smart phones available and offers impressive battery life, better than its key competitors claim.â It is, the two conclude, âa pleasure to use.â
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âThe iPhone makes me mad,â proclaims Peter Svesson (AP Technology Writer). âNot, mind you, at the iPhone itself, but mad at cell-phone manufacturers who have saddled us for years with interfaces that lure us into labyrinths of menus.â Unlike cell phones with buttons that âcan mean âBackâ on one screen, âCancelâ on another, [and] âExitâ on a third,â iPhone âhas one button on its face. It always does the same thing: takes you to the top menu, where icons representing all functions of the phoneâmusic player, Internet browser and moreâare laid out in a clear manner. Wham, youâre out of the labyrinth.â That, Svensson laments, is âthe way it always should have been done.â