iPhone love post

[nonelvis]

Because randomcrazy wanted to hear me ramble on and on about why I love my iPhone.

• This is the interface phones were meant to have. The iPhone is so effortlessly simple to use that I am astonished that designers didn't come up with this UI before, instead leaving us at the mercy of developer-centric UIs that require four buttons, a jogwheel, and a miniature joystick to operate. (Actually, a partial explanation for why the iPhone UI didn't exist beforehand is that the technology couldn't easily support it. But I think it took Apple's designers, and Steve Jobs' fanatical devotion to simple and intuitive designs, to do this the right way.)


• No, really, it's the interface, stupid. It's not just that being able to use a finger or two as your pointing device is so intuitive and easy virtually anyone can do it; it's that Apple has made a UI that makes everything easier. Typing, for example; you'd think hitting 40 x 40px virtual keyboard keys would be tricky, but in fact you can type pretty quickly on the iPhone with very little practice. (Well, pretty quickly compared to standard predictive-text input, which is barely tolerable at best.) Dragging items, selecting items, zooming in/out, taking photos ... it's all so easy that using the iPhone becomes fun instead of a chore. Ask yourself how many submenus and clicks it takes to find your current phone's settings, and then try the same thing on an iPhone – you may have to sometimes dive down just as deep, but it doesn't feel that way, which is a critical difference.


• Because the phone is so easy to use, I take advantage of more of its features. My previous phone was a Nokia N75, which included a web browser, games, an MP3 player, and a ton of other features. But everything was such a pain in the butt to use, especially the web browser, that I hardly ever bothered. (And the MP3 player? You needed some special Nokia-specific adapter to plug in headphones. DUMB.) The iPhone? Well, while stuck in traffic today, I checked my email and looked up ways to automatically post photos from the phone to Flickr. On the Nokia, it would have taken me a good minute just to input a Google query.


• Applications. Apps turn the iPhone from a great tool into an indispensable one. I have applications running that turn my phone into a wireless web server, enabling me to transfer documents there for reading and reference; a reverse Polish notation calculator, because I hate using regular ones; a grocery list tool, so I don't leave little scraps of paper everywhere; an interactive map of the London subway system, which was invaluable during my trip there in October; a Wikipedia widget; and an SSH client so I can log in securely to remote systems. (Actually, I've got more apps than that; I'm just not going to go through them all.) Carrying the iPhone around is like carrying a very small laptop, and having it means I have internet access and all the other ways I need to keep in touch with people, without having to bring my computer along.

Which is not to say that the iPhone doesn't have some issues.

• Battery life. It's puny. If I use the phone for a few calls, some light web surfing, my grocery lists, and listening to music while I drive to and from client meetings, I have to recharge the phone every three days or so. Apparently short battery life is a problem with power-hungry 3G phones, and sure enough, the iPhone's battery life is comparable to my last 3G phone.


• It needs a bigger hard drive. I have a 40Gb iPod I haven't used since I bought the iPhone in August, but it held all my music and had room to spare; the iPhone forced me to pick and choose which songs I wanted it to store, because I have 12.5Gb of music and wanted to leave room for apps and video as well.


• Text messaging isn't included in iPhone plans. That's right – it's not enough that we pay more for texting here in the U.S. than they do in Europe (quite a bit more, in fact); AT&T has greedily left text-messaging out of its iPhone plans. If you text, you'll either have to pay by the message, or buy one of their add-on plans. I send few enough texts that it's cheaper for me to pay as I go, but this is still needless nickel-and-diming.


• No MMS. Not that I used MMS all that often, but on a phone with this many media capabilities, not including this feature is downright stupid. I suspect this is AT&T's fault, not Apple's.


• Can't delete default applications. I will never use the Stocks or Calculator apps, and I've used the YouTube app exactly once, to test it out when I got the phone. They're taking up space I could use for music or other apps, but I can't remove them from the phone.

Bottom line? There are phones out there that have more built-in features, but none easier and more fun to use. Look at it this way: your phone is a tool. You can buy all kinds of multifunction tools, most of which do a few things well, and a lot of things adequately, but not enjoyably. Or, you could buy a tool that does just what you need it to do, does it in a way that doesn't make you want to bang your head against the wall every time you use it, and allows you to add on more features when and if you choose, not when and if your phone manufacturer thinks you're due for a system upgrade.

I know which one I'll pick every time.

Comments

[nonelvis]

I totally disagree that the QWERTY keyboard makes it harder to text -- I find it much easier, mostly because predictive text input is such a pathetic replacement for QWERTY. Now, if I used a lot of txtspeak, I might feel differently, but I prefer to communicate in complete sentences and alphabetic characters whenever possible. You could always go to the Apple Store to try out the keyboard on the notepad app to get a feel for it.

All the iPhone plans include unlimited data within the United States. International roaming is an entirely different matter, so if you travel overseas a fair amount, you'll definitely want to invest in one of the international data plans, which are very expensive. Still, they're less expensive than the multi-thousand dollar bills iPhone users were getting before they realized that turning on data roaming while outside the U.S. is a very bad idea.

Unlimited texting is $20/month, and international texting is $9.99/month for 100 texts, so if you text overseas more than that, the iPhone plan may be much more expensive than what you're paying at the moment. AT&T will be able to walk you through this better than I will, though.