This is a proxy review of my partner’s brand new iPhone.
I am impressed. My biggest concern was that this new “smart” phone would have loads of features and suck as a phone. This would be like 99% of the “smart” phones on the market and thus no big surprise. I am thrilled to announce that my presumption was completely wrong. The Apple iPhone works very well as a phone. Listening to Erci’s voice picked up by the iPhone and heard on my Nextel i580 and through the Prius speakers sounded clear. Putting the iPhone to my own ear, other people’s voices were clear. The audio quality is excellent, and not just by my small sample and subjective hearing, objective tests bear this out. Furthermore, it works as a full-duplex speakerphone, yay! Previously only Nextel got this right. Ad-hoc conferencing of multiple calls is awesome too. So first and foremost, this new mobile really works as a phone. It’s about time.
Now for the sad news, as a PDA it is not quite ready to replace my Palm Tungsten C. The Notes application fails give me what I want, and it fails to reproduce what I already have. I want lots and lots of plain text notes available in my hand-held that sync up to the desktop computer automatically. Palms do this pretty well (though the 4kb character limit, the lack of search within a note, and perennial sync problems are all annoying). The new iPhone does not have any sync yet, the note application is hobbled by this and the fact that it looks hard to search/navigate/read. I could not even figure out at first attempt how to create separate notes (Edit: I was foolish, pushing the + button adds new notes/memos, but still no sync yet).
This could be fixed easily in software. I think I could even fix it via habit by just using Safari to hit my own blog sites and use blogs as notes… but that means new habits. Must think on this a little.
Datebook works well and it does alarm for meetings (which is the main reason I still use my Palm).
Now I want an iPhone, but am I willing to break an 20 months (remaining) contract with Nextel, or eat the cost of having two phones? Perhaps I’ll wait for version 2.0. Decisions, decisions…
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