iPhone Review - Is it worth every penny?
Choice in buying
I have been a very long time T-Mobile customer and I have had the Motorola Razr phone for the last year. It was one of the first Razr phones and I’ve been really disappointed with it as a whole. You couldn’t see the screen in the sun, it would smudge really easily, the camera quality was terrible. The keys were impossible to see in certain light conditions and I was having more and more dropped call issues with T-Mobile than ever before. I also couldn’t get any reception at work inside the buildings.
I decided that I wanted a new phone and was considering the Samsung slider phone a lot of my friends have. I liked the look of it and the feel, but I didn’t want to pay retail pricing or sign another long term contract until I had checked out the iPhone. Normally I would be a bit leery to be the first out of the gates with a brand new product and yes, some of that cynicism still exists with this purchase, but I have to say that Apple has delivered on their end. The question will be if AT&T/Cingular can improve on theirs. So far, not anymore complaints than any other carrier, but I haven’t tried it in all the usual spots I travel/roam on a daily basis. More on this later.
Price
The pricing for the iPhones starts at $499 for the 4 gig version and $599 for the 8 gig version. I went with the larger version and very glad I did based on the fact that I have already filled it with 7 gigs of data. I’m sure the future will entail much larger models - my guess at least a 20 gig model in the next release.
I read and interesting article about the price. It’s expensive when you think of it as a phone, but keep in mind that is a phone, a video iPod, a camera, and a real life internet (Safari running on Mac OSX). You would drop around $300 on a kick butt phone (like a Blackberry) and another $400 on a video iPod alone, so if you consider all the iPhone has in it now, the price is a bit easier to swallow.
Plans
During the activation process you select a monthly plan. They start at $39.99 for about 400 anytime minutes (with rollover), 200 text messages, 5000 weeknight and weekend minutes and unlimited data (email/web surfing). I elected to go for the $59.99 plan which upped my minutes to 900 minutes and then I upgraded for another $10.00 to get 1500 text messages … so now I’m at $69.99 before any taxes.
They tag on another $20.00 per plan/per month for UNLIMITED data useage (Internet, Google Maps, Widgets)… so add this amount to the plans I mentioned above. There is a single activation fee of $36.00. (not sure if you are already an AT&T/Cingular customer if you would pay this again if you got an iPhone)
Activation
Apple has partnered with AT&T/Cingular as their provider of choice for at least the next five years. I was very hesitant initially to buy the phone because I didn’t know how strong the service would be at my house. I had a good friend come by with his AT&T phone and confirmed that he was getting a good signal in all areas of my house before I decided to open the newly purchased iPhone (I had a 14 day period I could return it for full price - unopened).
Once that was issue was eliminated, I opened up the box, took out the phone and it’s accessories (it comes with a connection for the computer as well as an AC adapter for traveling and a set of ear buds for hands free/listening to music/videos) and connected it to my Mac laptop. Within 5-10 minutes I was connected to AT&T via the iTunes application and had run through the process of keeping my existing phone number and becoming an AT&T user. Over the next 30-40 minutes I downloaded music, videos, a movie, contacts, email, bookmarks and photos - all taking up about 7 gigs of space on the 8 gig iPhone. Extremely simple.
During this time I could make calls from the phone, but for a short period (1-2 hrs) any incoming calls came into my old T-Mobile line.
Ease of setting up
Remember the days you went to the cellphone store, looked over product, talked to a salesperson, then decided on a plan that best suit you and finally went through a sales clerk taking 20-30 mins to register you, call and verify your data, print out 8 receipts, rebates, etc?
Well with the iPhone, you eliminate all of that (if you wish). You can buy the phone from an Apple store or from an AT&T/Cingular store. You take it home, remove it from the box, connect the dock to your computer, set the phone on the dock and it opens iTunes. You are then walked through a very simple process to register (either as an existing AT&T customer or as a new customer) and whether you want to keep your existing number from your old carrier or add an additional line (for families).
This process took me about 5-10 minutes and was extremely simple. The fact it was all managed on my computer via iTunes was really cool.
Functionality
If you are already a mac user, you will feel right at home. If you aren’t currently a mac user, you will be amazed. This phone is extremely intuitive and very easy to navigate around and make choices. It’s hard to make a mistake. The iPhone has very, very few buttons. Three buttons on the side and top of the phone to control volume, turn off the ringer or power down the phone). The main button is the “home” button at the bottom center of the iPhone. This is your “hub” … it will always bring you back to the main screen.
The front of the phone is essentially a screen. Everything you do is by touch. Key’s, icons, web pages, photos, music … everything is by a touch, a tap, a flick or a pinch. The screen is very sensitive, but not overly sensitive. For example, when you are in a photo library or your contacts, with a simple flick of the finger, you can scroll quickly down the screen. Then with a simple tap you can select and open a photo or contact name.
Surprisingly you see very few fingerprints on the screen surface, especially when the iPhone is “on”. When it is off and the screen is black, you can notice more fingerprints, but these can be easily wiped clean with the cloth provided.
The screen has been touted as being very scratch resistant, which is a good thing, because this whole phone is a thing of beauty and you wouldn’t want it to get scratched or cracked. The phone has a beautiful look to it, but one thing they need to do different is put some small rubber bumpers on the sides - primarily for grip. The case is very “slick” like a bar of soap. I bought a third party cover that goes across the back and sides - great protection, but it takes away from the nice look of the phone.
Features
Well here is the short list …
Phone
Internet (true internet - Safari web browser)
Video iPod (music, movies, tv shows, podcasts)
Google maps
Photos
Stock Widget
Weather Widget
World clocks
My Razr phone was a pain the “ass” to setup phone books/contact info. This is the lamborghini of doing so. First you can do all this on your computer and then sync the phone and it all downloads to the phone. Done. It’s quicker that way because you can type with the full keyboard on your computer at home.
But doing all this in iPhone is really quick too. You can have a contact name, add a picture (that shows up full screen size when they call), assign a ringtone (again, one of the iPhone equipped sounds, not music - yet), add as many phone numbers as you would need, put a title for the contact (like a company name), assign multiple emails, put in notes (birthday’s, kids names) address (which can then link right to Google maps when you click it) and the list goes on. Any time you change a contact, when you sync back up at home it will tell you that something has changed and do you want to accept it or not.
The photo’s and internet functions and google maps functions are very, very cool. The fact that you can zoom in, go into landscape format, etc. is really remarkable. The clarity is exceptional. Even in full sunlight, you can still see the screen exceptionally well.
The keyboard is slick. The key’s are small, but you easily get used to them and they “enlarge” as you select them. It has taken me no longer to get used to this keyboard than it does anytime I get a new phone. The only difference would be that you have no actual “feel” so on your phone you might have sensory memorized where a button was - on this one, you can’t.
The only ‘glitch’ I ran across with the google maps/internet feature was it was crashing on me after about 8-9 days. I did some searches on the Apple site and found that I needed to just power down the phone completely and restart it. Apparently the cache builds up and causes it to crash when doing those intensive features. When I say ‘crash’, it would just kick you back to the homescreen. I know power the phone down every few day’s once in the morning and voila, no issues. This can (and probably will be) addressed in a future upgrade via iTunes.
That is another great feature to this phone is that it can be continually upgraded via iTunes. If they decided to put in GPS to go with Google Maps, then it will most likely be a hardware change which would require a new phone, but for 99% of the other things, a software upgrade via iTunes will be the trick.
Speed
This, most likely, will be the biggest concern for most buyers. I haven’t ever used the Verizon or Sprint networks that are 3G capable, so I can’t compare it to those carriers, but I can to my home wireless. The EDGE network (2G) is about like dial-up. If that is what you currently have at home, great - you’ll be used to it. But if you have had a taste of hi-speed iternet, you might be disappointed. I believe this is something that AT&T will address very soon - they will have too. 700,000 first time iPhone buyers will make that happen. I didn’t buy the iPhone to be my internet tool of choice, but it’s a great added feature and with but a very few exceptions, it has worked great. I hated my T-Mobile internet. It was super slow and it was bland. Even if I have to occassionally wait for Safari to load on iPhone, it’s heads and tails above anything else to look at.
Texting, calls, email - all are just fine and that is what I will be using 95% of the time. Will I be watching a lot of YouTube over the net? Doubt it, as I don’t do a ton of that even on my home system with hi-speed. With more and more areas going Wi-Fi, I think this won’t be as big of an issue as many are making it out to be … and again, I think AT&T will move to a higher speed network sooner than later.
Complaints
My complaints are few and I think I would classify them more as annoyances. Primarily my complaints have to do with sounds. The iPhone shipped with about 25 sounds that are built in. Honk, Old Phone, Robot, etc are some of the names. They are fun and are great for sound effects, but not as great for a phone call. You also can’t personalize a contact name with a song like you can on virtually every phone on the market these days. I’m sure this will be addressed in the next release and again, it’s minor in this one, but just something I was used to with other phones. You also can’t change the sounds for voicemail, email or text alerts. It’s like those are hard coded and you can’t change them from the original. Kind of a bummer.
For many, email will be an issue. I have a .mac account and a Comcast.net account - both work just fine. I can’t get my work email through Outlook (yet anyway), but honestly, I don’t need that and hope I don’t. When I leave work, that’s where that needs to stay - at work.
Battery life:So far, it’s been great. Of course running the iPod with music/videos and using the Photo’s feature or Google Maps is going to take more battery life. I haven’t done any actual tests, but it seems using those functions a lot, it is getting me roughly 3-4 hrs. Just using primarily the phone features would get me a few day’s between charges. This is still the one area that I think Apple needs to improve. If they could truly get a 6-8 hour battery for running web/iPod and a 15 hour phone (talk time) battery - that would be awesome.
Overall, I think Apple kicked some serious butt with this phone. They will get better over time and I’m sure we will see many knock offs. I’m a die hard Apple guy, but I also work on a PC at work. You simply can’t beat the look, feel and experience of an Apple product. Their designs are second to none and I believe that there technology is getting stronger all the time.
Is it the Jesus phone? Well, not really sure what that means since they didn’t have phones when Jesus was around. I’m sure he did just fine with two cups and some string : ) It’s a great phone and the best iPod out and it’s super nifty web browser… that’s all i know. Two weeks ago I went to Texas. I took my MacBook Pro laptop, my Razr phone and my iPod - all in a Laptop bag that I had to empty out at Security. I can now travel home and take just this phone and have all those same items. Right there - it’s worth $599.