iPhone: the verdict
By The Prodigal Fool, published on 10 October 2007
It won’t surprise Prodigal readers to learn that we were first in line when the iPhone went on sale in the States back in June. A short taxi ride back to our hotel and an hour or so of ‘hacking’ later, we found ourselves the proud owners of an unlocked, sim-free iPhone. We’ve been using it as our main phone ever since.
Now, after a few months of real-life testing, (we told you we didn’t want to jump the gun) we’re ready to give you our verdict.
Let’s get a few things out on the table straightaway. As any geek worth his or her salt will eagerly tell you, there are some glaring holes in the iPhone’s technical armoury:
- The lack of 3G is the biggest one. When you’re out of range of a Wi-Fi spot, accessing the Web using Edge is slow and really feels like a big step backwards when you’re used to 3G.
- The camera is woefully underpowered. Under ideal conditions, it produces photos that are – at best – adequate. And its inability to record video is a mystery only Apple could explain.
- The phone has probably the best implementation of Google Maps we’ve seen, which makes its lack of GPS all the more frustrating.
- Although it happily syncs Outlook contacts, email and calendar details, the iPhone stubbornly ignores tasks and notes.
- It can’t send or receive MMS nor does it have a standalone RSS reader.
- And it doesn’t allow you to install third party applications (well, not without breaching the terms of your warranty anyway.)
All of this is true. And none of it matters. Because none of it prevents the iPhone from being – hands-down – the greatest phone on the planet today.
It’s Prodigal. Here’s why:
It’s a great phone
Yes, it seems obvious, but a device’s ability to elegantly make and receive phone calls is all too often overlooked – both by the designers themselves and the people who subsequently review them. Modern smart phones have many uses but – surely – making phone calls is still the most important? So before going any further, we’re pleased to report that the iPhone is a great phone. Sound quality is good and the user interface for handling calls is excellent: simple and effective.
It puts a smile on your face every day
Unlike every other smart phone The Guide has ever lived with (and there have been many: Sony Ericsson’s P-series, Palm Treos, PocketPCs), the iPhone has never frustrated us our made us annoyed. Not once. Its user interface is so well thought out that everything – everything – is where you’d expect. It’s all intuitive.
Getting something this powerful and feature-rich to work this simply, making it look so casual and effortless, is a very, very hard trick to pull off – just ask Microsoft, Palm, Sony-Ericsson and Nokia; none of them have yet succeeded. Apple has. The fact that they’ve done it on their first attempt is all the more impressive. The iPhone consistently puts a smile on our face.
It’s ‘real-world friendly’
While geeks in Web forums are debating the technical superiority of 3G speeds and 5-mega pixel cameras, the rest of us are living in the real world. And we want to surf the web, listen to our music, and respond to emails. We want to do this easily, elegantly, and without fear that our battery is going to die on us before the end of the day.
When asked why the iPhone currently lacks 3G, Apple has put the blame on the power-hungriness of current 3G chips. The Guide has no idea whether this is really the reason, but we do know that our iPhone looks elegant and slim yet its battery has never died on us. We’re never worried about using it too much. That’s the kind of thing that matters in the real-world and if missing out on 3G is the compromise we currently have to make, that’s fine by us. In the real-world, having a slim, elegant phone with a battery that will last us all day without any restriction on use is worth more to us that faster Internet access, a better camera, or built-in GPS.
It looks and feels gorgeous
We talked about this factor when we reviewed Nokia’s lovely 8800, you should never get complacent about – nor underestimate the importance of – good industrial design. It’s much harder to achieve than you’d think and all too few technology companies bother. This is baffling to us because- in a world where technology is becoming increasingly commoditised – a device’s physical design can make the difference between success and failure.
Apple understands this all too well – which is why its products are consistently gorgeous: elegant, solid, a joy to hold and behold. And we have Apple to thank for forcing the other technology companies to raise their game when it comes to design.
In this respect, even amongst a product line-up that represents some of the best industrial design of the last decade, the iPhone is a stand out. Its toughened glass and matt black front, framed by that lovely steel border give it an elegant, minimalist look. The lighter back with its reflective Apple logo looks stunning. And its overall size, weight and carefully rounded edges make it feel very satisfying in your hand. We also deeply admire Apple’s insistence on keeping the design clean and uncluttered. One button – well OK, five if you count the tiny ones on the side for volume up/down, ringer and device off/on – is all you get. And, thanks to the superb software, it’s all you need. The distractions you’ll find on lesser devices are thankfully absent here: no flashing LEDs, no moving parts, no splattering of buttons.
It really does deliver the Web in your pocket
In its ad campaign for the iPhone, Apple has made a big deal about how the device delivers the real Web in your pocket not a “washed down version of the Internet”. This is more than marketing hype. The iPhone’s web browser is easily the closest thing to full desktop browsing we’ve ever experienced on a ‘phone. (Nokia N810 excluded, as…well…sorry, but Nokia amazingly forgot to include a ‘phone in this device – why oh why Nokia!? But we’re getting distracted; that’s another post…). Its uncanny ability to zoom in and resize the area of the page you’re trying to read is a joy to experience. The animation is smooth and the fonts are somehow crisper than they appear on our desktop Mac.
It’s also the best iPod. Ever.
The iPhone’s built-in digital music player is head-over-heals superior to anything else out there. And that includes other iPods. The gorgeous Cover Flow navigation, the intuitive interface, the great sound quality – all combine to make this the best iPod Apple has ever made.
Some people have complained that the 8GB storage capacity is too limited for a media device of this power. Well, let’s set aside the fact that 8GB already places the iPhone at the top of the charts in terms of built-in storage for a ‘phone. There are plenty of other reasons why 8GB is not a problem in the real world.
The reality is that – as long as you sync your iPhone at least once a week – 8GB is enough storage space to ensure that you’re always entertained.
We regularly carry three to four episodes of our favourite TV shows, a full length movie, and a dozen episodes of our favourite podcasts. Oh…and of course 300 or so songs from our music library as well as 500 or so photos from our iPhoto library. The real issue when people talk about capacity is not about having enough content with you at any one time, it’s about not having to think about what to take and what to leave at home. That’s why, in an ideal world, we’d like to see an iPhone with 40-60GB of storage, so that we could carry all of our media, all of the time. That will happen. It’s only a question of time. While we wait, setting up iTunes carefully – ensuring you’ve got some good smart playlists in place, making sure that iPhone is set to sync only the three latest, unwatched episodes of your shows / podcasts – is all you need to do to ensure that you’ve always got something new and entertaining to listen to or watch. Trust us, 8GB is plenty.
It just works perfectly
Music, videos and photos are not, of course, the only things that need to sync with your computer. A Prodigal smart phone (and yes, we do regard the iPhone as a smart phone) must do a good job of seamlessly keeping your contacts and diary up-to-date too. You might remember how disappointed we were with Sony Ericsson’s P990i. And one of the reasons was that it wouldn’t sync properly. Well, our iPhone is synced every day with two different computers: a PC and a Mac. It works perfectly. Every time. No duplicates, no errors, no hassle. It just works.
We had our doubts about whether the boffins at Apple could really maintain their legendary ease of use with a product as complex as the iPhone. But they have. This really is plug and play. You plug it into iTunes, answer a few basic questions about set-up and, from that point onwards, it does exactly as you want it to.
Don’t wait
Is the iPhone perfect? Will it change your life? No, of course not. Could it be improved? Yes – and that’s why we’re so looking forward to 2008 – but that’s no reason to wait. Today, in its current form, the iPhone is already the best phone on the planet by a significant margin. And it achieves this feat by foregoing some features in order to focus on delivering the ones that really matter in a way so elegant, so polished, so satisfying that it makes every other phone you handle – even those that are technically more competent – feel five years behind the curve.
Go out and get yourself one of these Prodigal phones today.
iPhone: the verdict
It won’t surprise Prodigal readers to learn that we were first in line when the iPhone went on sale in the States back in June. A short taxi ride back to our hotel and an hour or so of ‘hacking’ later, we found ourselves the proud owners of an unlocked, sim-free iPhone. We’ve been using [...]
2 Responses to “iPhone: the verdict”
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[...] long-term Apple fans and devoted iPhone users. Not because we buy into the hype, not because Steve Jobs’ reality distortion fields works on us [...]
Nokia’s tempting little brick: the E90 « The Prodigal Guide
5 August 2009
[...] The Guide has already declared the iPhone the greatest phone on the planet and we’re not about to revise our verdict. But as gadgetholics, it’s hard – very hard – not to be tempted by the awesome feature-set of Nokia’s latest and greatest Communicator, the E90. [...]