IPHONE. CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISMS.
All in all, the iPhone has changed my life. Seriously. It's been 2 weeks, and 3 countries and I can confidently say this is a revolution in your hands. Everyone has sang the accolades of the iPhone. Far and away it is better than ANY phone available on the market. But that doesn't mean it's perfect, and thankfully, Apple realizes this. But I thought I'd offer some constructive criticisms after my first 2 weeks of use with the iPhone.
Before I begin, I want to give a huge shout to the INCASE TEAM for hooking Staple up lovely with a bunch of their dope accessories. To be honest, I am typically not a fan of protective cases. I feel like for some strange reason, it is the duty of a device to deteriorate over time. Its like that family that used to put vinyl plastic over their sofa. I always thought "why?" BUT, these INCASE sleeves for the iPhone actually improves the performance of the phone! And I am all for increased efficiency. You feel less dainty with it. Like you can chuck it around more. Its not slippery in your hands and in the black version they sent me, it looks sleek as hell. Thank you Tony.
Ok now to the rants:
(in no particular order)
1. Let me see how many new SMS and e-mails i have from the "locked" screen.
The pop-up SMS feature is great...but something small up top, like next to the EDGE icon would be nice to see at a quick glance.
2. CONTACTS: Finger scrolling is fun, but give me the option to just type in a search field to find a name.
3. First you endanger my unborn babies by burning my balls with the MacBookPro...Now you're killing my brain cells with the iPhone! This phone gets pretty damn hot!!
Interestingly, I've heard from some users that their phone never gets even warm. And others have reached boiling points even while the phone is not active nor charging.
4. If you have the iPhone retrieve your emails directly from your server, something will get become screwy with your iMail/desktop mail app settings. I instead decided to forward my main emails to a secondary email address and have the iPhone check that exclusively. Problem solved. EXCEPT!............
5. The iPhone's Mail feature does not allow you to customize or change the REPLY TO: email address in your sent emails. This is a VERY basic feature available in almost all other PDAs.
Which means if you send an email from your phone and the person replies to that email. You will only get it on your phone and you won't get it on your main computer.
6. Deleting emails is fun in Mail App. (A simple swipe and tap.)
But you should also offer a DELETE PRIOR feature like they had on Blackberry's. Emails should be separated by the day you received them so you can choose to delete an entire day's emails in one shot. I get over 300 emails a day and swiping out each one, one-by-one is a biatch!
7. No copy and pasting of text?!?!!
8. AT&T customer service is very poor compared to T-mobile. Just FYI.
9. Can't adjust and modify ringtones and alerts to your liking. I'm not big on T.I. as my ringtone, but I'm saying, give me some different options. I mean,the songs are already on there, why not just link them to the phone? I assume money and chargebacks are at the root of this problem. In addition; if you want to set up an alert for SMS's, you have 2 options. ON or OFF. And if you want it ON, you're stuck with what they give you. Overall, the sounds and alerts are a little subtle. And I assume that's just Apple being design-y and all minimalist. But when it comes to alerts, I just really want to hear when someone is trying to get a hold of me!
9. Volume is a little low overall. Both in calls, ringers, alerts, speakerphone, etc. At maximum volume, its juuust perfect. But if I'm in a noisy area, a little extra playing room would be good.
10. AT&T International voicemail is WACK. For some reason, the message says "re-enter the phone # of the person you are trying to reach." I mean, most people are on speed dial so to have to look in your address book and remember the number and retype it in is a pain most of my clients are not gonna bother with. Very user-UNfriendly. I called AT&T about this and that's the way it is. Booooooo.
11. In the RECENT LIST on the phone; make little icons that represent 'incoming', 'outgoing', and 'missed' calls. (The red color to indicate missed calls is a little kindgergarten.) You can still see if the call was incoming or outgoing but currently you have to click once to see. Better if I see the whole list at one glance.
12. In the locked screen, you show the clock in a nice big font. But you don't show me AM or PM! I know it SHOULD be pretty obvious. But when you wake up in a foreign land, in a dark hotel room, with crazy jetlag, and it just says 5:06...it can honestly be either AM or PM and you can't tell the difference.
13. Allow me to customize the home screen. Why assume everyone needs a STOCK or YOUTUBE icon on the home screen?
14. Camera is great but some basic settings would be great. Like night shooting, ISO settings etc.
15. No iChat feature yet, but its pretty obvious why. AT&T, you greedy bastards; trying to squeeze every last nickel for the SMS's.
16. Not sure if this is a result of being in a foreign network (in Barcelona, the service provider switches between Vodafone and Moviestar) but I find that at least once a day, the Mail app gets stuck trying to download mail. The mini pinwheel at the top of the screen continues to spin as if trying to get mail. I find that when this happens, its able to get the emails but the contents of the email are slower to come thru. The fix for this is to just restart the phone which always works. But that little annoyance takes me back to my T-Mobile Dash Windows Mobile days. Boooo.
17. Change the color of the CALL button or the TEXT Button. No reason they both are green. And I always mix the two up.
18. Please add a button on the home screen for ADDRESS BOOK. As of now the only to access it is via the PHONE which is a 2-3 button process.
Well, that's it for now. Can you iPhone users out there think of anything else? Leave a comment! (on Darrin Hudson). You'd be surprised to think that Apple actually reads this stuff and the comments help in future software upgrades. That's the beauty of the iPhone. They can make changes over-the-air.
Over and out.
posted by jeffstaple | 3:23 AM
21 Comments:
Good review, some new, some old.
For basics, more major downsides forcing you to adapt than major "impressive" pluses imho...plu a heavy price tag, self sustaining college student, is hard to bear.
apple will probably go the way of sony and slash the 4 gb, and update w/ a 10+gb one i preict or a iPhano aka iphone-nano combo....
you forgot typing is horrendous, especially w/ one finger. thumb qwerty is out of the question due to fat thumb syndrome.
I'm hoping for a To-Do application, the Notepad app just doesn't do it for me.
Also, the mail app needs folders and filters. Something that I'm sure they will work on, but it reminds me of when I used to use Pine mail on UNIX back in the day.
All in all, your points are all good, great thing is as you mentioned is that with updates the iPhone can only get better.
Typing is quite intuitive if you trust it.
Couple personal requests:
- Faster syncing of music/media would be nice.
- iChat...
- SMS to multiple recipients
- "mark prior as read" like on blackberries for mail
- cut/copy/paste
- There's a glitch with removing the headphones while in sleep mode where it sometimes keeps the ear speaker muted so you could only hear through the headphones or on speaker phone. Had to do a factory restore to get it back.
- Full size picture caller ID when pics are chosen in Address Book and not photos on the phone's camera.
- More volume
- Email to actually come to the phone instead of it having to be downloaded when it's clicked on. More "push" like on the Blackberries.
- Safari crashes a fair amount.
- Start loading youtube video and then go to home screen and do other tasks and then come back and still have the video be loading.- Typing in name and having it find it in Address book
- Why have a camera phone if you cannot send the pics MMS or SMS them to other phone users? Having only email as an option is silly.
- When texting, turning the iPhone horizontally should reorient the keyboard (more to a sidekick inpt style). This would solve fat thumb syndrome, though I have had no problems typing.
- I agree with the other criticisms covered by author and other posters
In general I still believe it is so far ahead of other phones and very updateable.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/business/14nocera.html
read about how apple will charge you for a loaner phone. then your data will get deleted once you get your phone back from being repaired...
everything you all have said is right on. its such a rad piece of technology and it can only get better. remember the first ipod? being a long time blackberry user there are definitely some things that this phones lacks, but it does so many things that other phones don't. i just hope the updates are on their way
let´s hope Apple has fixed all the bugs until the end of the year, so we in Europe get V2.0 of the IPhone ;-)
Can't really believe you think the iphone is better then the 8800.
as a avid hardcore mac lover, i know it's easy to be winned over, but come on... iphone is super fun to play with, but the 8800 damn awesome to use.
19. Please update the WEATHER to have an hourly forecast. When I'm out and away from my computer, 99% of the time I could not care less what the weather is going to be like next week, but I WOULD like to be able to find out if it will be raining when I get to the park, or finish dinner.
the incase case is definitly improving the iphone and makes it feel like a solid little computer in you hand, but when somebody takes a picture on their cell and sends it to me on the iphone, I get a message that I can look at the picture on line with some crazy password? WTF?
jeff - any word on whether the reports i've read (that the case scratches the chrome bezel) are true? if so, is the scratching relatively minor?
I've found that when you call someone who is using an iPhone, the ambient noise around that person is way too loud in relation to the person on the phone. god forbid i call you and you're standing next to a road or inside a starbucks - i can hear everyone except the person i'm trying to talk to...i still think it looks sexy though and that's what matters the most in life
- Support for multiple calendars on the iPhone
- and sync them with iCal
no idea why someone should re-order new appointments after a sync or why you can't have different "categories" of appointments right on the phone
iChat
More official widget's / apps
Great review, Jeff. I have the same case (Red, tho. I figure, if it's rubber, let it be RUBBER) I had the exact same thoughts about cases being like sofa covers. But Pulling that slippery thing out of my pocket while riding my bike up Ave. A, or trying not to drop it while taking a picture - Whew, too stressful. So now I have the bright Red "My first iPhone".
Points:
If they had just made the case polished, like an iPod, it would be much less slippery. I held the phone side by side with Genevieve's iPod, and was amazed at how much more grippable hers was (but how much smaller mine seemed).
Basic camera functions like brighter/darker, and fake zoom would be great! I must say, my crappy LG had a better camera. Macro lens, no less. And I always hit the home button, instead of the virtual shutter.
How About selecting type? I can type pretty well on it (I get as many mistakes on my computer's keyboard) but going back to correct my mistakes? Ugh! The magnifying glass is cute, but can't there be some little arrrows on the keyboard, or a way to select a word or multiple words?
Umm, widgets? I'm starting to see some nice apps, like beejive (for IM) but widgets always struck me as something apple came up with for mobile devices, and just tacked them onto the OS. I would love to just have acces to the ones I already use, and a quick way to get to them from the home screen. ( instead of bookmarking in Safari? )
We could come up with million rants, but I have faith that software updates will come. Really impressive for a 1st generation device! Thanks, Apple.
switch to the 24 hour clock (aka military time), then you won't have problems differentiating between AM/PM
I've been using a lot of the Bookmarklets for some quick utilities. They are a little lo-fi but they solve some problems. The MMS thing is a little annoying but I have a feeling that it is a security issue. Also, not being able to attach multiple photos to an e-mail is kind of lame.
Overall though, anyone just needs to use their old phone/PDA again for about 5 minutes to see just how good the iPhone is. You can't really classify it with anything else. Complaining about the little shortcomings is like bitching that Lamborghini's don't come with a factory installed radio.
I hope u got this for free.
I couldn't agree more with your observations. I would only add the following:
1. Having been a BlackBerry user before, I would like to see text short cuts implemented like on the BB. For example a double space would automatically insert a period, space and capitalize the next letter typed. Also like the way contractions are handled on the BB. eg. wel will become we'll, etc.
2. iChat, but multiprotocol (MSN, Google, etc. Probably coming with Leopard as iChat is getting a major overhaul).
3. To Do list (I have the feeling this is coming when Leopard ships as Mail app will include notes and to dos.)
4. Search in mail. While I love the scrolling, it sucks to have to go through every email trying to find you flight number...
5. When in podcasts, and a video podcast is selected, I'd like to see the video, not just the audio. It's a hassle to jump over to video, then find the podcast. Either that or don't have video podcast appear under the podcast option.
6. I'd like the ability to email multiple photos.
7. and better integration with iCal. eg. the ability to select a calendar when entering an event.
jeff- change your mail from POP to IMAP. That solved my problem and it filters my junk mail. For iChat right now check out flickim.com
I also bought the same protective case for my iPhone and initially loved it but I find that is has since stretched and doesn't have the same secure fit I once had. And that kinda stinks. But I love my iPhone!!!
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home