Part 2 - E-Mail

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:24:12 -0500

Hit the space bar and accept the prediction.

The error correction is much more robust than on my Blackberry, but it isn’t perfect and there are some significant things that Blackberry does much better. For instance, on the Blackberry if I type “im going ” it will reformat it to “I’m going.” Adding two spaces to the end of a sentence with a Blackberry puts in a period. With iPhone I have to tap the punctuation/numberical button. That’s seriously annoying and I’m hoping for a software update to fix it. iPhone will capitalize “i” at the beginning of a sentence and most proper names if they’re in your contacts.

But back to Mail.

Mail has some serious shortcomings. There is no Junk Mail filtering that I have been able to discover. So, as on my Blackberry, I get about 100 messages a day I don’t want to read. Again, I’m hoping for deliverance via a software update.

Once you’re deep into a mailbox, there is a lot of back button tapping to get back to your list of mailboxes. You can’t jump from the top of a message to the bottom, you have to scroll through the whole thing. Annoying for really long messages.

But these are basically quibbles. On the whole, it’s without a doubt superior to the other forms of mobile e-mail I’ve used. Fix a couple of things, Apple, and this will actually as close to perfect as I could hope for.

Part 1 - Introduction

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:25:19 -0500

I'm going to have to post this in several parts, as I just don't have the time to do a comprehensive review in one sitting...

I heard that I'd have an easier time of it if I got an iPhone from an AT&T store instead of an Apple store. I drove by at 10 am on the 29th and there were 2 people waiting in line, so I decided I'd wait until after lunch to get in line. When I arrived I had about 10 people in front of me. After another couple of hours, there were this many behind me.

Eventually (about 5 hours later) I walked out with an 8 gig iPhone. There was one disappointment - while the Apple store was limiting purchasers to 2 iPhones, the AT&T store was limiting purchasers to just 1. This thwarted my goal of surprising AJ with her very own iPhone. On the other hand, the AT&T store handled the crowd beautifully - with diligence to make sure everyone who showed up early got a phone - they also handed out chips and soda. When I got inside they were professional and courteous despite about 60 people lined up at 6 o'clock who were *very* eager to get in. They even let people in the queue use their (not public) restroom. Nice.

This is what the iPhone is replacing.

Followed by a couple of views of the
iPhone packaging and contents.

Sorry, but I didn’t have the auto-focus
set up properly on my camera, and
these images came out a bit blurry.

After I hooked up the dock to my Mac, and plugged in the iPhone, I was ready to go.

Unfortunately, my computer was not ready. Note - you need to not only download the the most recent version of iTunes, but you also need to have the most recent version of Mac OS X (if you are a Mac user). That’s OS X 10.4.10 for those who are counting. If you don’t, you’ll get these:

Now everything is working. Later I'll post a comprehensive review of each of the major systems - starting with e-mail, but I'll end with this short summary:

It really is an amazing device and it's light years better than my Blackberry at virtually everything it does. The EDGE speed is better than I expected - it's definitely faster than it was on my Blackberry - but it's nowhere near as fast as Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi implementation is seamless - it will even hop from one open Wi-Fi network to the next as your drive down the street. It's very full featured and customizable. It feels nice in your hand, but it's a little heavier than I expected - lighter than my Blackberry (by feel) but it feels very solid.

It comes with a dock, battery charger and headphones. The headphones have a small button and mic built in so you can answer calls, hang up and talk while wearing them. Sound quality on the headphones is good, but the built-in speakerphone is tinny.

The keyboard was easy for me to get used to - index finger typing is as fast as two thumb typing on the Blackberry keyboard, but I have not mastered two thumb typing on the iPhone.

I'm having one problem - the accelerometer is definitely having trouble on my phone. When I move it from portrait to landscape mode, it only notices it about half the time. If I move it forcefully, it's fine, but I'd rather not have to do that. I see a call to Apple customer service in my future.

Battery life seems excellent. I used it for a solid 5 hours after I got it yesterday, usually with the screen active - watching videos, tooling around with features and settings, making calls, etc. I drained about 1/4 of the battery in that time. They say that after 400 charges, the battery will start to loose efficiency - and it's not user replaceable, so that means sending it to Apple to replace the battery for a fee. So I better only have to charge it every other day. We'll see.

Next up - Mail!

ireview iphone blog

Part 2 - E-Mail

Part 1 - Introduction