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Enter The iPhone

Got to spend some quality time with an iPhone yesterday and today. This was a customer’s device that was purchased on Day 1, and she was more than happy to let me play with it.

Let me get the #1 most burning question out of the way…

On-screen keyboard? Hated it. Beyond all measure of loathing.

Now, I’m a bad typist anyway (anyone on my IM list can tell you that I type kinda like I speak, which ain’t pretty). But this was a whole new level of teh svck. I swear, it looked like I was typing in some kind of Hungarian dialect.*

My customer laughed and said…

Yeah…it’s pretty bad at first. But after the 3rd day, you really get used to it.

That sounds a lot like the end-user experience after migrating to Office 2007, doesn’t it? Then she added this little tidbit:

But you can’t use your thumbs. You’ll never hit the right keys using your thumbs.

Say goodbye to converting the Crackberry whores. But talk about the perfect keyboard for women with actual fingernails.

Much ado has been made about the size of the iPhone. I have to admit that something about it bothered me. It seemed crazy huge compared to my trusty Treo 750. But a side-by-side comparison told a different story.

Height and width-wise, the iPhone was only 1/8” to 3/16” larger than the Treo. In mobile device terms, those aren’t gigantic margins. As for thickness, it absolutely kicked ass, coming in at about 33% of the Treo’s thickness.

But the iPhone still felt weird to the ol’ Tech Hand. And that’s because it’s so flat, it doesn’t fit the natural curve of your hand when you hold it. So the tactile sensation you get, since you touch it across the full breadth of the device, is of a much larger device than it really is.

I kept thinking the iPhone reminded me of one of those little trays they use bring your credit card slip at a sit-down restaurant. I’m also thinking that sucker is the perfect size for a woman to slide into a purse, but I don’t know that I’d try putting it in any kind of pocket. And no…there will never be a man purse AKA murse here at the Funcave.

2MP camera, ho-hum. I did think it was a bit odd the camera didn’t shoot video. Especially not with 8 GB on board to save a nice clip or 20. Heck, forget odd. Coming from the company that not only arguably laid the foundation for personal computer-based video with their tiny little curiosity known as QuickTime, and their rampant claims to be the leader in creative circles for NLE systems and software with Final Cut Pro, et al., it is an absolute TRAVESTY that the iPhone doesn’t shoot video. 

90% in love with the overall interface. If you want next-gen, this is it. If you want one-handed use tho…this isn’t it. Still, even with the necessity of using 2 hands, the web browser was PHE-NOMENAL. I never would have guessed the zoom in/zoom out commands tho. A nice tutorial vid, or podcast would have been cool. Imagine Steve “8 Kabillion Contacts” Jobs walking you through certain features. Of course, judging by the way he talks in his keynotes…you’d prolly run out of battery before he could dramatically tell you how to even answer or make a call.

Speaking of commands…I’m not so sure that “command” is the right word any more. Maybe “gesture” is a better fit?

And speaking of battery…expect to drain that sucker constantly the first couple of days while you become glassy-eyed using all the cooler-than-Vanilla-Ice features. Don’t sweat it too much tho. Once most folks get finished monkeying around, and start using it like most phones, their battery life will settle in at levels comparable to other smart phones.

The auto-rotation feature kicks butt. But I’m not a particular fan of the interface for a given application changing all that much if I decide to get my landscape on. Take the the iPod/music features, for example. While cute the first time, trying to find anything using the “stack of albums” interface gets old in about 1.5 seconds.

And that gets me to my main point. Much of the success of the iPod can be traced to its touch-sensitive jog wheel, which always enabled 1–handed operation. I’m curious as to why a similar navigation device (even a mini-jog wheel) wasn’t incorporated into the iPhone design. Besides immediately hearkening to the legions of iPod fans as an instantly familiar interface, it could have been used to:

• Flip albums in iPod
• Navigate in Safari
• Scroll in Mail

And so on…

Truth is…the iPhone is a 2–handed device. No, there’s no stylus to juggle. But it’s nigh impossible to use it without 2 hands. And sorry, but 1–handed is the way of the future. Especially if, as a seller of devices, you want to keep the British accidentally dunking their $600 (400 sterling?) handsets in the loo after catching a few minutes to surf the ‘Net in privacy at work.

And…I’m a bit of a screen spaz, as The Mastermind might put it. So the constant fingersliding all over the screen makes it start to look like a skillet slathered in bacon grease, albeit a brightly-colored, highly cool-looking skillet. Which bugs the crap out of me personally. Maybe they should think about selling an official iPhone jacket, with that soft cloth fabric as the innner cuffs? I’d be polishing that sucker 24×7 then.

Connectivity was awesome. We were in a remote-ish region, where signals are skittish, particularly indoors. My Treo 750 struggled, and was unable to find a signal at all. In the exact same locations and the exact same conditions, the iPhone had a solid 3 bars the entire time.

And as a video player, this thing is a slam dunk. I can think of nothing more beautifully satisfying than for me to rip my legally purchased DVD copy of Blade Runner, The Director’s Cut into iTunes, synching it to the iPhone and taking it with me on the go. That’s one more device (portable DVD) you could shed.

Not surprisingly, the only movie available on the iPhone I was testing: Sweet Home Alabama. So this final photo is for The Mastermind.

In a nutshell, if I was taking a device to work…it wouldn’t be the iPhone. But if I was taking a device on vacation, and cutting the ties to work completely, the iPhone would be my first choice.

PROPS: Big huge shoutout and thanks to Cindy for the use of her new iPhone, and to Porfirio Solorzano for the phenomenal photographic work. It’s amazing the kind of images that someone who really knows what they are doing with a camera can take on short short notice.

* For those who don’t know it…we LOVE Hungary and its many fine citizens, and we thank them for their patronage here at the Funcave.

|| posted by chris under hardware, mobility, shoutout, tech hand || comments (2) || ||