Our full review explores the handset that's arriving on November 9 - first up, the exterior and using it as a mobile phone.
There are two sorts of people in the world: those who have played with an iPhone, and those who haven't. It sounds a bit like a bad joke, but – for now, at least – there's a grain of truth in it.
After months of waiting for Apple's flagship to land in the UK, we're finally going to get it this Friday. In the meantime, the hype cycle seems to have gone full circle: first excitement at the US launch, then disappointment with the lack of third-party support, a backlash from some quarters, and finally tentative excitement again.
Most of the comments were thrown out by people who fell into the second group (those who hadn't played with an iPhone) and, thanks to Apple's restrictions on mobile networks, none of them came from people who had actually used a fully-functioning iPhone in Britain. But for the past few weeks, however, the Guardian has been testing a British iPhone – with all the bells and whistles on O2's network. So what's the UK iPhone like?
For a start, it's pretty familiar. A software update delivers a few minor changes – more international language support, some security fixes and so on – but if you've seen or used an American iPhone, then you know exactly what you're getting. Similarly, anyone who's had their hands on an iPod Touch will also have a good idea of what to expect.
For those who have only seen the pictures or been barraged by the advertising, though, it's worth taking a look around.
On the outside, there's little debate that the iPhone looks good. It's a typical minimalist gadget, all polished black and silver. It has just one button on the front, complimented by a volume control and silent mode switch on the side, with a headphone socket and the on/off switch on top.
As a phone it's thin enough, but a little longer than desired. It's been sitting in my pocket for the past two weeks, but hasn't yet really become comfortable to carry.
You can blame any unwieldiness on the screen, which is about the size of a credit card and one of the crucial weapons in Apple's armoury. That's because multitouch technology is the soul of the iPhone, informing everything you do – and because is it so far superior to anything else on the market right now.
Place a digit on the surface and the phone recognises it instantly; stroke a finger sideways and the device responds exactly how you would expect. No fudges or "good enough" answers here: nothing else comes close.
The screen itself is bright and crisp, but far from invulnerable to scratches. Although it's more robust than some of the earlier iPod models, it's certainly not tough enough to be treated with a carefree attitude: this is a gadget that demands protection.
The touch interface draws you in right from the start, with the "slide to unlock" mechanism that starts you using your iPhone.
Steve Jobs calls it three devices in one, and in a sense he's right. Despite the services – phone, internet, iPod – often being interlinked, the different functions of the iPhone feel quite separate, each of them used in a slightly different way.
The phone functions are more or less bog standard: call and text. You can use an on-screen keypad to dial numbers, or access the contacts list and use fast fingered scrolling to zip through your numbers with ease. A couple of other little touches make life more bearable too, such as text messages appearing in chat-like conversation format.
Elsewhere, if you need to look something else up while on the line, an on-screen button allows you to flip straight back to your conversation – no more accidental hang-ups. Conference calling is easy (you can patch incoming calls straight into your existing one) and "visual voicemail" – where you can zip backwards and forwards inside your messages – is an improvement of kind, not just degree.
There are some bizarre omissions that have yet to be fixed – the iPhone has no support for picture messaging, for example, and it still doesn't allow texts to be sent to multiple contacts. The feeling still comes across from time to time that this is a phone built for the American market, or with standards so lofty that it sometimes finds it difficult to remember the basics.
On the subject of SMS, it's worth examining the keyboard – one of the iPhone's most controversial elements. Gone is the old number keypad or the Qwerty buttons, ditched in favour of a touch-sensitive onscreen replacement. This has plenty of doubters, and they're not entirely wrong, but Apple has done a lot of work to try and mitigate.
It's certainly a league ahead of other devices I've used, where the buttons were nigh on impossible to hit for those who aren't trained marksmen. Typing is helped by the intelligent predictive text and intuitive auto-correct function, and you won't have to spend any dreary afternoons training the dictionary.
A few extra additions would have improved life, but remain absent: all punctuation remains on a secondary screen (not even a solitary full stop or comma is close at hand) and the inability to customise the keyboard could prove irritating for those who have peculiar needs.
I doubt hardcore BlackBerry addicts will ever achieve the speeds they can manage with a Qwerty keyboard – after all, a good typist can feel when they've made a mistake just from the position of the keys under their fingers – but after a few days of use I was pretty happy with my abilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment