iPhone 3G - Pros and Cons...

Disclaimer -I've only had the phone for about 6 days, so this is by no means a final judgment!   I also haven't even started messing with the apps, so this review is more based on the 'vanilla' iPhone 3G....

OK,  yesterday I said I bought the iPhone... now here's my review... or in this case more like  joys and regrets...

Before I do a review, let me explain a bit where I'm coming from -  I've been using Sony Ericsson phones for the past... 8 years or so, two from their 'P' series smart phone family... so most of my critiques are drawn from that background.

The last three have had pretty impressive media and 'smart' capabilities... so maybe my expectations are skewed more than the average person....  Also I'm not an apple nerd,  i have never owned an iPod...

So after using it for a bout a week, I've drawn the following conclusions:

iPhone is good because it:

Has a nice 480x320 display, good for displaying video, pictures, etc

Has a nice simple, clean interface with simple menus/buttons

Has pretty good sound from the iPod

Can do multiple language input w/ no additional software. Nice.The web browsing really kicks ass compared to any other phone i've seen. Fonts are nice and sharp no matter the size. This is probably the most outstanding feature of all in iPhone's favor.

iPhone is NOT good because it:

Doesn't have a way of selecting, copying or pasting of text between applications or even within them! the omission is almost shocking...  very important some times! (like try copying some complicated Chinese phrases that you don't know how to type into a dictionary or search bar for example...) Has no way of turning off images in the web browser.  Doh, another huge omission...  hope you like that google logo at the top of your search results, cause you're going to be paying every time you see it! Everything going into the phone has to go through iTunes - on my old phone i could just drag and drop files into folders onto the memory card and they and their subdirectories automatically show up on my phone when inserted.  One folder for mp3s, one for pictures, one for videos, one for documents, etc.    If I don't want it on my phone, you can delete it from the phone or delete it from the card with your PC.   Simple but easy... iPhone requires me to put everything in iTunes and then synch playlists with the phone... not as good. Speaking of which... here's another absolutelyappalling problem - If you want to load photos onto your iPhone (through iTunes only of course),  it will automatically ' optimize' your image into a special format and load that onto the iPhone... but it ALSO resizes the image to two standard sizes.  (480x320 and something smaller).  If you want to load some high res maps or images of text into your phone to use as a reference later, you're screwed... cause only a low res copy can be loaded onto the phone.  Oh, and the 'optimized' file format is actually LARGER than the original jpg file in many cases.  In iPhone land, ' optimized' means lower res and larger file size I guess. :-P

(is there a way around this?  I haven't found one yet).

No apparent way to save text files, web pages, pdf files to the iPhone... Apple boasts that iPhone users use like 30x more cellular data than the average phone user, even with the wifi...  I think part of that is because apparently you can't save anything except images and music to the phone. So forget about bringing that PDF with you to read on the plane or bringing those notes with you to the meeting...  (i'm guessing there must be a way around this, i'll have to research it... but its not built in, which is kind of lame).   This is something that I actually use... doh. The iPod part (media player) of iPhone kind of sucks! (I've never owned an iPod before, but everyone claims they are great... obviously i disagree!)  Ipod problem #1 - If you try to play a song with a long title, especially in non-english or double width characters,  the title gets horribly cut short.

EG:

 'ａｐｐｅａｒｓ（Ａｒｍｉｎ　ｖａｎ　Ｂｕｕｒｅｎ　Ｓｕｎｓｅｔ　ｄｕｂ／ｖｏｃａｌ　ｍｉｘ）'

from the album 'サイバートランス・プレゼンツ・ＡＹＵトランス２'

becomes:

 'ａｐｐｅａｒｓ（Ａｒｍｉｎ...'

from the album 'サイバートランス...'

if the name is too long, tough luck! no scaling, scrolling text or line wraps! WTF!

This becomes a big problem when you have CD singles with multiple versions of a song.  Case in point:

Ipod problem #2 - no video playlists or folders!  I have like 50 MVs and tv programs loaded onto my phone right now, but apparently no way to organize them into folders or video playlists.  

Ipod problem #3 - no 'physical' pause button. if the phone is in your pocket, you can still reach in and push volume up and down,  but if you want to pause (like when i am at the super market and I need to talk to the cashier),  there's no way to pause the music short of pulling the phone out of your pocket, then turning the screen on, then sliding the 'unlock' button over and /then/ hitting the pause button....  (OR yanking the headphones out, that also pauses the playback... not a good choice) RESOLVED: Thanks to Warren for pointing out the 'hidden' button built into the mic... not as obvious as the one on Sony phones. ;-)So why do people love iPods so much?  Again, coming from my background with P-series Sony phones...  i think it pretty much has all these features... plus you can  rename, move or delete files within the phone.

iPhone also has some other minor negatives like: Writing Chinese characters on the screen w/ your finger tip is not very easy... but the recognition stuff seems to work OK despite this. No kanji handwriting input for Japanese apparently? (only phonetics)  this is problematic for non-native speakers like me... :-P No way to store passwords for website (other than cookies).   It'd be nice if there was a way to make the iPhone explicitly asked you before connecting to the cellular data network. Right now if you accidentally open your browser or maps applications, it'll automatically start downloading.  The only way to stop this is to leave Wifi on all the time (it will ask you which wifi to connect to if one of your known networks is not around).  Leaving wifi on all the time wastes the battery though... Sometimes using a stylus (or at least your fingernail) is just better... finger tips are relatively large and ungainly --  typing (without mistyping), moving the cursor, clicking on links in web pages particularly is not super easy.  My fingers are relatively slender... I think the average obese middle-american consumer may have real problems. :-P

For some reason you can only use bluetooth for wireless headsets,  no file transfer, no sending contacts to another phone, no synching wirelessly w/ a PC via bluetooth.  Is there any reason for this?

But there are some things people have been complaining about that don't really bother me:

I've gotten used to the virtual keyboard for the most part,  i don't mind it!  (a few things need improving, but its livable). Battery life seems good to me, i'm not sure why people are complaining.  I don't have the screen turned up too bright and I try to keep wifi off til i need it.

Etchy's Bottom Line -  i like it for web browsing (via wifi), if i don't have my laptop with me, it makes a suitable gateway to the web in a pinch.   Its good for watching videos on the MTR or bus (my other main reason for getting it), even though iTunes is a pain.

But beyond that, it almost can't be called a SmartPhone...  I'm not sure if its a processor power limitation or if its an Apple Control issue... but for me, perhaps an abnormal user,  there's a LOT of features that are just missing...

Sometime down the road i'll have to come back to this and see how many of these problems have been addressed (by apple or apps makers).

Keywords:  iPhone 3G Problems,  iPhone 3G Deficiences,  iPhone 3G Sucks, iPhone 3G Copy and Paste, iPhone 3G functionality |
Disclaimer -I've only had the phone for about 6 days, so this is by no means a final judgment!   I also haven't even started messing with the apps, so this review is more based on the 'vanilla' iPhone 3G....

OK,  yesterday I said I bought the iPhone... now here's my review... or in this case more like  joys and regrets...

Before I do a review, let me explain a bit where I'm coming from -  I've been using Sony Ericsson phones for the past... 8 years or so, two from their 'P' series smart phone family... so most of my critiques are drawn from that background.

The last three have had pretty impressive media and 'smart' capabilities... so maybe my expectations are skewed more than the average person....  Also I'm not an apple nerd,  i have never owned an iPod...

So after using it for a bout a week, I've drawn the following conclusions:

iPhone is good because it:

Has a nice 480x320 display, good for displaying video, pictures, etc

Has a nice simple, clean interface with simple menus/buttons

Has pretty good sound from the iPod

Can do multiple language input w/ no additional software. Nice. The web browsing really kicks ass compared to any other phone i've seen. Fonts are nice and sharp no matter the size. This is probably the most outstanding feature of all in iPhone's favor.

iPhone is NOT good because it:

Doesn't have a way of selecting, copying or pasting of text between applications or even within them! the omission is almost shocking...  very important some times! (like try copying some complicated Chinese phrases that you don't know how to type into a dictionary or search bar for example...) Has no way of turning off images in the web browser.  Doh, another huge omission...  hope you like that google logo at the top of your search results, cause you're going to be paying every time you see it! Everything going into the phone has to go through iTunes - on my old phone i could just drag and drop files into folders onto the memory card and they and their subdirectories automatically show up on my phone when inserted.  One folder for mp3s, one for pictures, one for videos, one for documents, etc.    If I don't want it on my phone, you can delete it from the phone or delete it from the card with your PC.   Simple but easy... iPhone requires me to put everything in iTunes and then synch playlists with the phone... not as good. Speaking of which... here's another absolutelyappalling problem - If you want to load photos onto your iPhone (through iTunes only of course),  it will automatically ' optimize' your image into a special format and load that onto the iPhone... but it ALSO resizes the image to two standard sizes.  (480x320 and something smaller).  If you want to load some high res maps or images of text into your phone to use as a reference later, you're screwed... cause only a low res copy can be loaded onto the phone.  Oh, and the 'optimized' file format is actually LARGER than the original jpg file in many cases.  In iPhone land, ' optimized' means lower res and larger file size I guess. :-P

(is there a way around this?  I haven't found one yet).

No apparent way to save text files, web pages, pdf files to the iPhone... Apple boasts that iPhone users use like 30x more cellular data than the average phone user, even with the wifi...  I think part of that is because apparently you can't save anything except images and music to the phone. So forget about bringing that PDF with you to read on the plane or bringing those notes with you to the meeting...  (i'm guessing there must be a way around this, i'll have to research it... but its not built in, which is kind of lame).   This is something that I actually use... doh. The iPod part (media player) of iPhone kind of sucks! (I've never owned an iPod before, but everyone claims they are great... obviously i disagree!)  Ipod problem #1 - If you try to play a song with a long title, especially in non-english or double width characters,  the title gets horribly cut short.

EG:

 'ａｐｐｅａｒｓ（Ａｒｍｉｎ　ｖａｎ　Ｂｕｕｒｅｎ　Ｓｕｎｓｅｔ　ｄｕｂ／ｖｏｃａｌ　ｍｉｘ）'

from the album 'サイバートランス・プレゼンツ・ＡＹＵトランス２'

becomes:

 'ａｐｐｅａｒｓ（Ａｒｍｉｎ...'

from the album 'サイバートランス...'

if the name is too long, tough luck! no scaling, scrolling text or line wraps! WTF!

This becomes a big problem when you have CD singles with multiple versions of a song.  Case in point:

Ipod problem #2 - no video playlists or folders!  I have like 50 MVs and tv programs loaded onto my phone right now, but apparently no way to organize them into folders or video playlists.  

Ipod problem #3 - no 'physical' pause button. if the phone is in your pocket, you can still reach in and push volume up and down,  but if you want to pause (like when i am at the super market and I need to talk to the cashier),  there's no way to pause the music short of pulling the phone out of your pocket, then turning the screen on, then sliding the 'unlock' button over and /then/ hitting the pause button....  (OR yanking the headphones out, that also pauses the playback... not a good choice)So why do people love iPods so much?  Again, coming from my background with P-series Sony phones...  i think it pretty much has all these features... plus you can  rename, move or delete files within the phone.

iPhone also has some other minor negatives like: Writing Chinese characters on the screen w/ your finger tip is not very easy... but the recognition stuff seems to work OK despite this. No kanji handwriting input for Japanese apparently? (only phonetics)  this is problematic for non-native speakers like me... :-P No way to store passwords for website (other than cookies).   It'd be nice if there was a way to make the iPhone explicitly asked you before connecting to the cellular data network. Right now if you accidentally open your browser or maps applications, it'll automatically start downloading.  The only way to stop this is to leave Wifi on all the time (it will ask you which wifi to connect to if one of your known networks is not around).  Leaving wifi on all the time wastes the battery though... Sometimes using a stylus (or at least your fingernail) is just better... finger tips are relatively large and ungainly --  typing (without mistyping), moving the cursor, clicking on links in web pages particularly is not super easy.  My fingers are relatively slender... I think the average obese middle-american consumer may have real problems. :-P

For some reason you can only use bluetooth for wireless headsets,  no file transfer, no sending contacts to another phone, no synching wirelessly w/ a PC via bluetooth.  Is there any reason for this?

But there are some things people have been complaining about that don't really bother me:

I've gotten used to the virtual keyboard for the most part,  i don't mind it!  (a few things need improving, but its livable). Battery life seems good to me, i'm not sure why people are complaining.  I don't have the screen turned up too bright and I try to keep wifi off til i need it.

Etchy's Bottom Line -  i like it for web browsing (via wifi), if i don't have my laptop with me, it makes a suitable gateway to the web in a pinch.   Its good for watching videos on the MTR or bus (my other main reason for getting it), even though iTunes is a pain.

But beyond that, it almost can't be called a SmartPhone...  I'm not sure if its a processor power limitation or if its an Apple Control issue... but for me, perhaps an abnormal user,  there's a LOT of features that are just missing...

Sometime down the road i'll have to come back to this and see how many of these problems have been addressed (by apple or apps makers). |
Disclaimer -I've only had the phone for about 6 days, so this is by no means a final judgment!   I also haven't even started messing with the apps, so this review is more based on the 'vanilla' iPhone 3G....

OK,  yesterday I said I bought the iPhone... now here's my review... or in this case more like  joys and regrets...

Before I do a review, let me explain a bit where I'm coming from -  I've been using Sony Ericsson phones for the past... 8 years or so, two from their 'P' series smart phone family... so most of my critiques are drawn from that background.

The last three have had pretty impressive media and 'smart' capabilities... so maybe my expectations are skewed more than the average person....  Also I'm not an apple nerd,  i have never owned an iPod...

So after using it for a bout a week, I've drawn the following conclusions:

iPhone is good because it:

Has a nice 480x320 display, good for displaying video, pictures, etc

Has a nice simple, clean interface with simple menus/buttons

Has pretty good sound from the iPod

Can do multiple language input w/ no additional software. Nice. The web browsing really kicks ass compared to any other phone i've seen. Fonts are nice and sharp no matter the size. This is probably the most outstanding feature of all in iPhone's favor.

iPhone is NOT good because it:

Doesn't have a way of selecting, copying or pasting of text between applications or even within them! the omission is almost shocking...  very important some times! (like try copying some complicated Chinese phrases that you don't know how to type into a dictionary or search bar for example...) Has no way of turning off images in the web browser.  Doh, another huge omission...  hope you like that google logo at the top of your search results, cause you're going to be paying every time you see it! Everything going into the phone has to go through iTunes - on my old phone i could just drag and drop files into folders onto the memory card and they and their subdirectories automatically show up on my phone when inserted.  One folder for mp3s, one for pictures, one for videos, one for documents, etc.    If I don't want it on my phone, you can delete it from the phone or delete it from the card with your PC.   Simple but easy... iPhone requires me to put everything in iTunes and then synch playlists with the phone... not as good. Speaking of which... here's another absolutelyappalling problem - If you want to load photos onto your iPhone (through iTunes only of course),  it will automatically ' optimize' your image into a special format and load that onto the iPhone... but it ALSO resizes the image to two standard sizes.  (480x320 and something smaller).  If you want to load some high res maps or images of text into your phone to use as a reference later, you're screwed... cause only a low res copy can be loaded onto the phone.  Oh, and the 'optimized' file format is actually LARGER than the original jpg file in many cases.  In iPhone land, ' optimized' means lower res and larger file size I guess. :-P

(is there a way around this?  I haven't found one yet).

No apparent way to save text files, web pages, pdf files to the iPhone... Apple boasts that iPhone users use like 30x more cellular data than the average phone user, even with the wifi...  I think part of that is because apparently you can't save anything except images and music to the phone. So forget about bringing that PDF with you to read on the plane or bringing those notes with you to the meeting...  (i'm guessing there must be a way around this, i'll have to research it... but its not built in, which is kind of lame).   This is something that I actually use... doh. The iPod part (media player) of iPhone kind of sucks! (I've never owned an iPod before, but everyone claims they are great... obviously i disagree!)  Ipod problem #1 - If you try to play a song with a long title, especially in non-english or double width characters,  the title gets horribly cut short.

EG:

 'ａｐｐｅａｒｓ（Ａｒｍｉｎ　ｖａｎ　Ｂｕｕｒｅｎ　Ｓｕｎｓｅｔ　ｄｕｂ／ｖｏｃａｌ　ｍｉｘ）'

from the album 'サイバートランス・プレゼンツ・ＡＹＵトランス２'

becomes:

 'ａｐｐｅａｒｓ（Ａｒｍｉｎ...'

from the album 'サイバートランス...'

if the name is too long, tough luck! no scaling, scrolling text or line wraps! WTF!

This becomes a big problem when you have CD singles with multiple versions of a song.  Case in point:

Ipod problem #2 - no video playlists or folders!  I have like 50 MVs and tv programs loaded onto my phone right now, but apparently no way to organize them into folders or video playlists.  

Ipod problem #3 - no 'physical' pause button. if the phone is in your pocket, you can still reach in and push volume up and down,  but if you want to pause (like when i am at the super market and I need to talk to the cashier),  there's no way to pause the music short of pulling the phone out of your pocket, then turning the screen on, then sliding the 'unlock' button over and /then/ hitting the pause button....  (OR yanking the headphones out, that also pauses the playback... not a good choice)So why do people love iPods so much?  Again, coming from my background with P-series Sony phones...  i think it pretty much has all these features... plus you can  rename, move or delete files within the phone.

iPhone also has some other minor negatives like: Writing Chinese characters on the screen w/ your finger tip is not very easy... but the recognition stuff seems to work OK despite this. No kanji handwriting input for Japanese apparently? (only phonetics)  this is problematic for non-native speakers like me... :-P No way to store passwords for website (other than cookies).   It'd be nice if there was a way to make the iPhone explicitly asked you before connecting to the cellular data network. Right now if you accidentally open your browser or maps applications, it'll automatically start downloading.  The only way to stop this is to leave Wifi on all the time (it will ask you which wifi to connect to if one of your known networks is not around).  Leaving wifi on all the time wastes the battery though... Sometimes using a stylus (or at least your fingernail) is just better... finger tips are relatively large and ungainly --  typing (without mistyping), moving the cursor, clicking on links in web pages particularly is not super easy.  My fingers are relatively slender... I think the average obese middle-american consumer may have real problems. :-P

For some reason you can only use bluetooth for wireless headsets,  no file transfer, no sending contacts to another phone, no synching wirelessly w/ a PC via bluetooth.  Is there any reason for this?

But there are some things people have been complaining about that don't really bother me:

I've gotten used to the virtual keyboard for the most part,  i don't mind it!  (a few things need improving, but its livable). Battery life seems good to me, i'm not sure why people are complaining.  I don't have the screen turned up too bright and I try to keep wifi off til i need it.

Etchy's Bottom Line -  i like it for web browsing (via wifi), if i don't have my laptop with me, it makes a suitable gateway to the web in a pinch.   Its good for watching videos on the MTR or bus (my other main reason for getting it), even though iTunes is a pain.

But beyond that, it almost can't be called a SmartPhone...  I'm not sure if its a processor power limitation or if its an Apple Control issue... but for me, perhaps an abnormal user,  there's a LOT of features that are just missing...

Sometime down the road i'll have to come back to this and see how many of these problems have been addressed (by apple or apps makers).