Comments on: Apple iPhone 4GB/8GB Review

By: ryan

ryan — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:54:00 +0000

i like the review, i’d like to reuse your content please advise.
Ryan

By: wcl

wcl — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:20:22 +0000

I bought the 8GB and gave it my best shot.

In the end, the deficiencies noted here became deal-killers for me, and I am back on my 2-year-old Treo 650 and happy for it.

Two additional comments:

– One SMS deficiency that killed me: You can only put one recipient per message (Treo 600 4 years ago even did multiple recipients). Coupled with no cut&paste and no “quicktext”, and you will have no problem staying under your 200 message limit …

- The return process was painful for two reasons:
1. The stupid proprietary iPhone SIM means my original ATT Treo SIM was
killed, and I had to go into an ATT store to get a new SIM.
2. I bought the iPhone at an Apple Store, and the return policy is that
it must be returned to that SAME STORE, not any Apple Store … I work
close to one, but not the one with stock that I bought from. Very
inconvenient alltogether.

– Walter

By: mediaguru

mediaguru — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:55:52 +0000

I bought the 4G when it came out (work paid for it), but I agree with your review completely. I’m a Sidekick user mainly, and I cannot get used to poor text entry. I never really appreciated how error free the Sidekick was. I also take a lot of notes at meetings with my phone and the keyboard drove me nuts – why did they put the “Go” or “Google” or “Return” button so close to the Delete button? I’ll hang onto the phone for the next few months and see what updates come out of Apple. Right now, the VPN does not work *at all* (yes, I’ve tried everything) so I can’t get my work email.

By: kgelner

kgelner — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:32:42 +0000

I really don’t think you gave the keyboard a good chance – I found two thumbs worked much better than a single finger, and after just typing text with it for a while I found I could get a pretty good degree of accuracy without having to rely much on the auto-suggestion (at this point I mainly lean on it to convert phrases like “dont” to “don’t”). The key I think it to use the edges of your thumbs, and realize that a much smaller area of your thumb actually hits the keyboard instead of the whole thing – after a while you get used to where you will press. And then there’s also David Pogue’s invaluable period key tip:

http://missingmanuals.com/pogues_awesome_iphone_typing_shortcut.csp

At this point I generally prefer the iPhone keyboard to any number of smaller keyboards I have tried. But the thing I really love about it, is how the keyboard can be customized per-app. Currently only the browser keyboard really takes advanatge of this (having “/” and “.com” buttons instead of space) but I see huge potential there for tweaked keyboards.

I think we will see a lot of impressive updates coming down the pike though, including custom development – though that one may take a while, personally I think at least until Leopard arrives.

By: rob

rob — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:16:04 +0000

Hey Dan,

Yes, good job on this review. I have been looking for a detailed perspective from somone familar wiht the 8300 and Blackberry family. I agree with the importance of a focus on 3rd party development. Thanks for your work on this, I’ve subscribed to your RSS feed.

By: Dadz

Dadz — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:39:09 +0000

Nice job Dan. I probably wouldn’t have bought one anyway. I hate phones, lol. I’m also not a big fan of Apple hardware. I think its somewhat over priced for what it is. A good platform for a non-geek, which is what I think their target market is. I’m saying this as someone who supports Mac professionally and buys generic PCs for my own use. I like what Apple has done with computer management for a LAN environment, but it gets kind of dicey when you get passed the subnet. I priced a Xserve today for a school I’m working with and they wanted over $250 for a 1 GB RAM upgrade. This was for two 256 chips. What a waste of money and slots. I’m leaning toward TMobile as a provider for wireless phone if I ever get one, because they have good coverage in the city and I can call family members with no limits. I’m just not ready to be that connected.

By: dgeze

dgeze — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:47:14 +0000

I enjoyed your review as I too am a Blackberry fan but could not avoid the hype and sex appeal of the iphone. Friday night (June 29) i secured my phone from Apple. I have played with it and still own it as of Tuesday July 3.

You gloss over the keyboard function based on prior publications but the Blackberry consumer needs to really know that a “flat” virtual keyboard for men is something that just doesn’t work well. Steve Jobs will tell you to just type and trust the suretype correcting feature. But when you have words like “foe” and “for” missing the “r” for an “e” does not correct properly. Moreover — there is no way to go back to the exact spot to make a correction. Back space only will eliminate the last letter typed but what happens when you notice a mistake 10 words back? You can try to move the cursor to the exact spot by pointing with your finger but you can’t go exactly where you need to be and therefore have to erase other words to fix the mistake and then retype. There should have been an arrow to move the cursor back or forward. Missing the cut/copy and paste feature is huge since if you want to forward an e-mail with new formatting or eliminating a few words is impossible.

The screen is amazing and at 3.5″ so easy to read. The menu driven system always makes you leave your program to go the full menu and choose where you want to navigate. You cannot go directly from e-mail to voice mail without going through the main menu. You cannot go from SMS text to e-mail without going through the main menu etc.

Voice mail is the biggest technology advance. Being able to listen to specific voice mails in the order you choose without dialing into the system is amazing. The organization of the iphone is great and lists text; email or voice mail in a concise manner.

I will not comment on the ipod portion since it is very good and a nice addition to the iphone especially for business travelers but supplemental to the functions of corporate America.

Bottom line is that the iphone is a great personal phone that takes some getting used to but if you live by data instead of voice — I don’t think the iphone is the right smartphone for you.

By: tysonhy

tysonhy — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 06:12:44 +0000

This was a great review. It was very detailed in every way possible. I thought about getting one myself but I think gen.2 will be much better and hopefully it will be available to other carriers. I am a Verizon Wireless customer but I was willing to break my contract at one point and now after reading this, I think I made a good decision by just waiting till the next one.