Through the 2007 festive season, I took a decision to buy the Apple iPhone. I had been keenly aware of the technology for some time as press coverage and the might of the Apple marketing machine had blitzed all manner of media.
Purposely, I decided not to pre-order for the launch day, and I didn’t go for a look in any of the stores as the desire for a new gadget could potentially overtake the rational mind.
Throughout December I kept an eye on the forums, making sure that there were no major glitches with the hardware or software. All reports were favourable, but I already had a business Blackberry 8310 and really couldn’t decide if I’d make use of the iPhone at all.
I was reading the PC PRO Awards 2007 magazine, and the iPhone received the 2007 Technology Innovator award. It wasn’t so much the award that roused me, but the quote that went with it;
The iPhone made every other smartphone on the market look like yesterday’s
technology, with its stunning touchscreen, intuitive interface and flawless
build quality.
With an accolade like that, how could I leave it?
I headed to a Carphone Warehouse and discussed it with the sales staff. We talked about existing number migration, and the now notorious O2 18 month contract. I was still hungry for the iPhone, and signed away £35 a month for the next 18 months. The iPhone itself was £269.
On the journey home, I unboxed it to see what features were available – the only thing was an emergency phone call. All functionality on the iPhone was unavailable until it had connected to iTunes and been registered with Apple.
So I installed iTunes 7.5 and connected the iPhone and was presented with a series of menues for registering a payment card with Apple (for iTunes purchases), and registering with O2. I already had a PAC code from my current network provider to port my existing mobile number to the iPhone, and entered this accordingly. I was allocated a temporary mobile phone number until the existing number had been ported and informed that I would get an SMS message letting me know when this would happen.
Next I had to set options for synchronising email, calendar, notes, browser favourites and iTunes. When complete, iTunes started synching to the iPhone.
One of the things that interested me was the minimal user guide that accompanied the iPhone. As a technologist I’m used to reams of pages in pdf files, often sent on CD. There was no such material with the iPhone – all you get is a Finger Tips quick start guide. This was either a major oversight, or the device was so good that you didn’t need a manual. Time would tell.
It was heartwarming to see the iPhone ask for the encryption key for my home wireless network, and then using that data conection for sending emails and browsing the web. I have to admit that typing messages was a highly error-prone experience at first, but as the quick start guide suggested, the automatic spelling correction just needs to be trusted.
The tech specs show that the operating system is based on OS X, and after using Apple Mac desktops and notebooks for a couple of months I can clearly see the similarities. The Safari and Mail applications are identical to their full blown counterparts, with the iPod application utilising the touchscreen technology. Scrolling though lists in portrait mode is easy, and coverflow takes the crown in landscape mode. It’s a beautiful way to browse your music collection.
The Phone application is very intuitive, and closely tied into your contacts. Voicemails are converted to audio files and downloaded directly to the handset. There are buttons for Favourites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad and Voicemail. With your contacts on the phone, it’s a case of touch the number and click call. You can even call numbers directly from a web page. Again, all you have to do is touch the number and click call. Considering this is the core application, it was important for Apple to get it right. The ease at which you can make calls is amazing.
Overall I’m very impressed with the iPhone. Although the data speeds are only capable of 384k max through the EDGE data services, this is more than compensated with the excellent wifi connectivity. The 8Gb onboard flash is enough for the time being, but I have several gigabytes of digital content and I’d like to get it all onto a single device. I’d imagine that once larger capacity solid state devices become cheaper to manufacture, the newer iPhones will have much more disk space.
Will it replace my beloved Blackberry? It’s too early to tell, but I’ll be writing about that in the near future.
Posted by Noel 
