Unvarnished thoughts on the iPhone

A fellow blogger (and fellow former Treo user) sent me the following query the other day:

I would greatly appreciate it if you would be willing to share your unvarnished thoughts on the iPhone. I am thinking of replacing my loaner RAZR with something a little more familiar and smartphone-like, but I have some trepidation about the iPhone. As a fellow Treo user I am particularly interested in how you feel it stacks up against the standard smartphone form.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the iPhone. It's not perfect, but it's more than just a step-up from my old Treo. There's a bit of apples-and-oranges there, though, as I didn't have a data plan on the Treo (Bell's data rates when I got the Treo were obscene), while I do have a data plan on the iPhone. Some of the things I'm busy loving about the iPhone may not impress you as much as they do me on that basis. There's also the unfairness of comparing the Treo 600 directly to an iPhone 3G: they're from different generations of technology.

How would you rate it in terms of:

- Phone signal strength

About the same as the Treo, although I've not had the iPhone drop a call on me. The Treo was a bit more likely to drop calls if the signal attenuated too much. But I don't use either device primarily as a phone (I've had the iPhone since August and just last week went over an hour of talk time . . . in cumulative time, not per month).

- Voice clarity

The iPhone is better than the Treo on call clarity. I've also found the volume adjustments to be more sensitive on the iPhone: the Treo seemed to only have three "real" settings (Quiet-Normal-Loud), while the iPhone has a more adjustable range.

- ease of Bluetooth pairing
- Bluetooth clarity
- stereo Bluetooth headset use, for music etc (if any)

I can't address Bluetooth issues as I don't use that on the iPhone and didn't use it on the Treo. Hearsay is that it's good, but that's from folks like your other friends who've gone Apple-philic.

- Wired headset use (for phone or music)

The Apple earbuds were okay, but I replaced them with a set of Bose earbuds which are significantly more comfortable for me to wear (but also more expensive: I got them at the same time as the portable sound dock mentioned below). Sound quality is vastly better on the iPhone than on the Treo. In some ways, the Treo's music playing reminded me of my very first transistor radio (that'd be about 1969, for reference).

- Texting functionality (how's the touch keyboard?)

Better than I expected it would be. I thought I'd have problems getting used to the touchscreen keyboard, but I've found I'm happier using the touch keys than the physical keys on the Treo. A few minor limitations like only having the portrait-style keyboard available in the built-in email client (which I hope will be addressed in future firmware updates). The landscape-style keyboard is better for typing, but the portrait style works.

Minor beef: the frickin' angle brackets are buried on a tertiary keyboard, which makes writing HTML code even more of a pain than it usually is. Most people won't ever notice this.

Another minor beef: we're still waiting for cut-and-paste functionality between applications (a few apps support local c'n'p, but there's no support for it in the iPhone generally).

- GPS functionality

Adequate, but I don't use it enough to really say whether it'd be sufficient by itself if you're used to a stand-alone GPS unit. I don't think it'd be good enough if you need turn-by-turn directions, but it's fine for general GPS use. The Location Services eat battery power quickly, so I leave it turned off most of the time. Google Maps, BTW, is a brilliant app on the iPhone. I had a pay-per-map service on the Treo that didn't live up to my expectations, but Google Maps is a killer app on the iPhone. (Yeah, I'm sure it'll also be a killer app on Android, etc.) Being able to search for a business, see the location on the map, and save the contact information (address, telephone, URL, and email) directly to my address book is wonderful.

- Availability and functionality of add-ons/3rd party applications that you like

There's a mind-croggling number of applications available for the iPhone now. 90% of which are utter crap, of course, but there's a nice selection of gems in the remainder. I'm still using the base browser (Safari), email client, and some other tools. There are other browsers available, but I'm holding on for either Opera or Firefox.

I have my iPhone calendar synched with my Google calendar, I have my to-do list synched with my Gmail tasks list, and my contacts list similarly synched with my Gmail contacts list. This is a brand-new feature as of last week . It works very well, once you've got it set up, and I'm delighted with it. This addresses a weakness of the iPhone compared to the Treo: no desktop client for basic functions like this.

Specific apps I've paid for:

— SplashID. I also had this one on the Treo, and it has broadly the same functionality on both devices. It saves passwords, PINs, and other data you want to keep private. It's password-protected, and there is a desktop app available at extra cost. I haven't tried it (it's twice the cost of the handheld app).

— HanDBase. Replaces MobileDB which I used to use on the Treo. Pretty good, although there are things MobileDB did a bit better (searching for individual records was slightly easier on the Treo, IMO). I use it for pretty pedestrian things like my booklist, wine reviews, and model railroad information. It works well, could be improved in a few areas.

— Evernote. Another brilliant app. It requires that you set up an account on their website, with free and paid flavours. The free account limits the amount of data you can use each month. It's a synchronized notebook, allowing you to save information from your desktop or laptop and save it to your iPhone. For example, I have relevant chunks of the GO train and regional bus schedule saved on Evernote. You can capture web pages (including live links if you want), email messages, images, photos, audio clips, and probably other things I've not encountered yet. It also allows you to create text or "drawn" notes.

— Pocket Money. Another refugee from the Treo. I've been using PM as my financial tracking software for years: couldn't live without it. Works a bit differently on the iPhone than on the Treo, but still an essential for me.

Free stuff I've downloaded and found worth keeping:

— WeatherEye. The Weather Channel's replacement for the built-in Weather application. It may just be me, but the forecasts for my area seemed more accurate compared to the base app. I also preferred the UI.

— Wikipanion. Direct link to Wikipedia. I use this all the time.

— Google Apps. Quick access to all the Google mobile apps. Very useful. Google search results show up in the Safari browser.

— Stanza. Very nicely done ebook reader. The first reader I've tried that works for me. I've only read half-a-dozen books on it so far, of the three dozen I've downloaded (all public domain stuff so far: I'm both cheap and broke at the moment). Most of H. Beam Piper's science fiction works are available . . . as are some of Orwell's and Kipling's works.

— Air Sharing. Cool little app to allow you to use your $200+ iPhone like a $20 thumb drive. Okay, that's a bit harsh. It is a useful app, and if you need to carry documents on your iPhone/iPod, this is a good way to do it.

— Fring. I only use the Skype-connectivity in this app, but it supports a lot of other VOIP/IM style accounts.

— eBay. Fairly useful application if you use eBay at all. I haven't done a lot with it (once again, being broke at the moment).

— Facebook. One of the best apps I've found, in the sense that it gives you the key parts of the Facebook interface without all the clutter. I actually prefer accessing Facebook through this, rather than on the PC.

— Shazam. Very cool app, although I don't use it too often. It takes audio samples of music that is playing around you and tells you (with a great deal of accuracy) the song, artist, and album. It is limited to recorded music, however, and can't figure out what the bar band is attempting to play.

Games

I'm not a big fan of gaming on the iPhone, but there are folks for whom it's the bomb. I've downloaded a few pay games (Bejewelled, Jewel Quest) and several freebies. I play now and again, but it's not essential to me.

Feel free to include any other stuff you want too, like "stuff I love about the Jesusphone" and "stuff I hate about this P.O.S".

I do love the device, although I think I'm still able to be rational about it. Battery power isn't what I'd hoped: unlike the Treo, I can't go several days between charges. Turning off things like Location Services (GPS) does make a difference, but I still need to charge the battery daily. It's less of a hassle, though, as I bought a Bose portable sound dock, which allows me to play music while I'm charging the battery. We barely ever turn on the stereo since I got the Bose . . . six CDs in a changer can't compete with 12 gigs of music.

I still feel like the unwashed barbarian any time I go near an Apple store, however. I just don't "get" that "There is no computer but Apple, and Steve Jobs is its prophet" thing they emanate.

Technovangelists can be scary.

I have some friends who had Treos and moved on to iPhones as well, but they are dedicated Mac-heads, and they'd love any Apple product even if Steve Jobs personally came to their house and murdered their families. It is useless to ask them because mentioning Apple immediately initiates an ode to the worthiness of The Phone and The Jobs.

Speaking of which, has the phone brought about any changes for you, personally? Notice the development of that San Fran "Apple can save the world" attitude?

I'm not quite able to say that the iPhone is the only device I need, but it's far closer than I thought it would be. I can do most of my basic online activity using the iPhone, even including blogging . . . but it's painful doing HTML markup that way.

I'm sure there's more I could say, both positive and negative, but I think I've hit the best of the highs and the worst of the lows (for me, anyway).