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First completed version of iphone two years in

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Wesley Moore 2010-07-15 18:33:06 +10:00
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Two years ago I wrote, "[iPhone 3G One Week In](/personal/2008/07/iphone-3g-one-week-in/)".
In that time I replaced the iPhone 3G with a 3GS, copy-paste and multitasking have been
added to the newly renamed iOS, iPhone 4 has recently been released and Android
has risen to be viable competitor to iPhone --- a lot has happened.
Two years ago I wrote, "[iPhone 3G One Week
In](/personal/2008/07/iphone-3g-one-week-in/)". In that time I replaced the
iPhone 3G with a 3GS, copy-paste and multitasking have been added to the newly
renamed iOS, iPhone 4 has recently been released and Android has risen to be
viable competitor to iPhone --- a lot has happened. I thought I'd go through
the original post and see where we stand now.
In the original post I reviewed things like typing on the onscreen keyboard and the
web browser. Nowadays these things barely enter into a review of a smartphone. They're
common and expected to work well.
> A friend asked the following today, the reply was big enough I decided to post it:
>
> > So Wes, you've had your iPhone for a week now - what are your initial comments?
> >
> > Pros / Cons?
> >
> > Has it changed your life? Has the battery life been crappy for you? Talk time OK?
>
> Its definitely the best phone I've had. Part of that is due to the tight integration with Mac OS X, which obviously very few companies were going to pull off. As a device its brilliant to use and full of functionality. I'm loving the apps and decent browser. The WiFi is really nice at home. The iPod part obviously works as well and better than any prior iPod.
Excellent Mac OS X support remains high on my phone requirements, although I
can see the phone becoming less dependent on a host Mac in the future. The iPod
app has improved a bit over time but it still [truncates song
titles](/technical/2008/08/iphone-gripe-trucated-song-titles/).
> The on screen keyboard is pretty much as described. You have to give it time to get the hang of it and you have to trust it. If you're typing a word that would be in the English dictionary you're best to keep on typing even if the word is way off. By the time you get to pressing space its usually selected the right word, which is selected automatically upon space. Two irritations with typing though. Its less likely to get shorter word right, particularly when there's multiple valid options. There's no way that I'm aware of to get a list of possibilities and choose the one you want. Of course being a small word means its not hard to fix and if you type it correctly in the first place then it isn't a problem at all. The other minor annoyance is when you get to the last word in a sentence that is mis-typed with a correct suggestion it appears the only way to accept it is to press space (and then delete the space) or grab a full stop.
So many words dedicated to the on screen keyboard. Nowadays the keyboard barely
enters into a review. It works well and saves a heap of space.
> I haven't missed MMS at all, especially with a decent email client built in that can talk to Gmail via IMAP and send photos to flickr that way.
MMS was added in iPhone OS 3 but my stance towards it hasn't really changed. I
think I can count on one hand the number of MMS I've sent. Email remains far
more useful to me.
> I have missed Todo functionality. I have no idea why Apple have not got this syncing. The support is there in iSync and todos sync with my old phone (Nokia 6280) just fine. I'm hoping that its one of these things that will make it eventually. There's two reasons I miss todo, one to track things to be done, the other is for reminders for things that don't have a duration (which can be put in as calendar entries). There is no way to do reminders without a duration at the moment. Having said that the calendar functionality is comprehensive. It supports multiple calendars, full editing, meeting acceptance and basically anything you can do on the desktop.
Two years later and built-in Todo functionality is still missing and it still
annoys me. Its part of the iCalendar### standard and Mac OS X has full support
for them in iCal and Mail. I continue to add 5 minute calendar entries with an
alert to get around this limitation.
> Another annoyance surrounds SMS. When on silent you only get a single vibration on new message, which is easily missed. My old phone did three, which was better. Also when you get an SMS my old phone would show an envelope on the black and white standby screen. With the iPhone you have to wake it up to see if you've got a message after the display goes back off.
The first of these problems has been addressed. iPhone will alert you of an
unread SMS twice after the original alert, which certainly helps. It seems this
feature wasn't universally loved as an option to turn it off was added in the
iPhone OS 3.x### update
> The AppStore is great, some of the apps are very well done. I'm really liking <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284946773&mt=8">Byline</a>, <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284967867&mt=8">Twinkle</a>, <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284919489&mt=8">Exposure</a> and <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284825922&mt=8">MoPhoTo</a>. I'm not much of a Facebook user but the <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284882215&mt=8">Facebook app</a> is very well done. It just the core parts of Facebook without all the crap. Of those five, three are free, one is free by ad-supported (with a pay for version available) and the other AU$12.99. I think that's a pretty good spread for some top quality apps. Some screenshots of these apps are scattered below.
The AppStore continues to be a great success and also a source of controversy
from time--to--time. Notably I'm not using any of apps linked here aside from
occasional use of Facebook. Perhaps not surprisingly the free Facebook app has
remained in the top 10 free apps on the AppStore since day one. Another thing
to note is the $12.99 price tag of Byline. On launch day the price of apps was
generally higher then they are now. The "race to the bottom"### has driven
prices down. For example Byline now sells for $3.99.
As for apps I'm now using, Tweetie, now the official Twitter app### replaced
Twinkle some time ago. The official Flickr app### replaced both Exposure and
MoPhoTo. I now use Reeder### instead of Byline for reading RSS. ### More apps
that I use.
> Battery life is nothing brilliant as has been reported elsewhere. You'd probably want to change it every day. Today I watched a video podcast on the way to work, send a couple of SMSs during the day, added a calendar event, got a call from Steve, called the dentist, listened to music, read in Google Reader via the Byline app, read and updated Twitter via the Twinkle app and used the timer to cook dinner and its showing half battery. It was off the changer all last night too.
The battery life remains bad when compared to previous phones I've owned that
could go the better part of the work week on one charge. However those phones
saw a lot less use and were far less functional. For me the battery isn't an
issue as I've come up with a workflow that keeps is charged. I have an iPhone
dock### at work that the phone remains on all day. That means through the week
its always well charged and I generally only have to remember to charge it once
over the weekend at home.
> A complaint of the old one was that the ringer and message volume was very low and easily missed. [Its] plenty loud enough and its only on about three quarters. Speaking on the phone the volume is good, although I haven't tried extreme environments like a club.
With the speaker volume up fully I have been able to hold a conversation in a
club although it certainly wasn't easy. This is certainly better than some of
my previous phone such as the Sony Ericsson K700i which just wasn't worth
answering a call with if in an even slightly noisy environment.
> One of the best built-in apps on the whole phone is maps. Whenever you want to find something, or get the details for a business, get directions, just bring up Maps and it will sort it out. Its as good as, if not better than Google Maps on the desktop. It has the same three views too: Maps, Satellite and Hybrid. The location awareness is great and there's some basic uses of it in the apps so far, hopefully more creative uses come out. One interesting one is an app called Exposure that is a flickr client with a 'near me' function. It shows photos near your current location. Doing so at home brings ups photos of St Kilda Rd, the fountain in the gardens out the front (Pictured above).
Maps remains one of the most handy apps on the phone. The printed map book is a
thing of the past (when in mobile coverage areas). Turn-by-turn driving
directions are sorely missing from the directions feature but this gap has been
filled well by third party apps such as TomTom.###
> Maybe I'm easily sold on such things but the UI is truly beautiful and being solely finger driven is revolutionarily (on a phone). I'm a happy customer.
The iOS UI continues to be good looking and functional but I can't help feeling
that its starting to show its ago. In the same way that Aqua from Mac OS X has
been gradually been toned down, refined, made more consistent and more elegant
I feel the iOS needs to start going the same way. The mix of colour and lack of
consistency across apps makes it feel a bit disorganised and toy like at times.
For example Calculator and Notes apps vs. Mail and Safari.### link to post
about replicating real things in UI.
Touch driven phones are also now considered quite normal however with the
exception of some Android phones I'm yet to see any other manufacturer provide
anything more than terrible experience. I mean an on screen T9 keyboard, that's
just stupid.
In the last two years Android has risen to be a serious iOS competitor. There
is also Palm webOS but it just isn't getting the traction that Android is.
Android has highlighted iOS's dependency on a desktop computer. The first run
experience is a screen telling you to plug it in so iTunes can do its thing.
The more Internet focussed Google has taken a different approach where nearly
everything can be done and synchronised over-the-air. In comparison Apple's
approach seems dated. It will be interested to see what comes of the now
serious rivalry between Google and Apple. Personally I just come to bring
myself to use a phone whose primary programming environment is Java. So it'll
be iOS for me for a while.