Apple iPhone review – Smartphone Round Robin

It was dark and rainy night back in June 2007 while my two oldest daughters and I huddled under umbrellas as the first people in line at the AT&T store waiting to buy the original iPhone. I had my Mac in the car so as soon as I bought the iPhone I went online to activate it and get it up and running. I still remember that first minute when I turned on the iPhone and how it radically changed everything I thought and experienced on smartphones to date. The iPhone just flew like wind with immediate response and reaction to my finger presses. I remember how easy it was to take a call and then switch between Bluetooth, speaker, and headset speakers. Then there was the drop dead way to transfer music and video content to the iPhone and enjoy it on airplane trips. The iPhone has only gotten better over the last two years and I enjoy most everything about my iPhone 3GS, except that it doesn’t work with 3G on T-Mobile. I had the pleasure of talking with and getting to know Rene Ritchie from The iPhone Blog to hear more about the iPhone since he lives it every single day. I posted some questions over on a TiPB forum to see what his readers had to say about the iPhone too. I’ll give my take on the iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS below, but also make sure to check out the TiPB full iPhone 3GS review too.

Hardware: iPhone 3GS

The original Apple iPhone was an elegant device with sleek aluminum back and the first capacitive multi-touch display we were ever treated too. The iPhone 3GS is only slightly different than that first iPhone with an oleophobic display and better 3 megapixel camera. The display on the iPhone 3GS (480×320 pixel resolution) was outstanding a year ago, but with new devices showing higher resolutions that look fantastic Apple needs to update to higher resolution soon. There is a single front button, volume button, ringer switch, and power button on the iPhone 3GS, which is much different from Nokia devices where we see buttons everywhere. I love the fact that Nokia is standardizing on microUSB connectors and wish Apple would adopt this standard, but they are standardizing on a fairly typical 30-pin iPhone connector.

The iPhone 3GS has an ARM Cortex-A8 processor similar to what we see in the Nokia N900 and it is very fast. The 3 megapixel camera takes surprisingly good photos, but is not as good as the 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss cameras we see on higher end Nokia devices. 32GB of internal flash memory is good to have, but the flexibility in also having a microSD card slot is something I would like to see in the future. The iPhone models also all have integrated non-removable batteries and thus you need to have some kind of external battery source for extended periods of use while you can simply just carry extra batteries with Nokia devices.

Software: iPhone OS

The Apple iPhone OS is based on Mac OS X and in the year after its initial release Apple literature stated it run a version of OS X. It is now referred to as the iPhone OS though to differentiate it from what we see on Mac computers. In the first year, there was no support for 3rd party applications and Apple emphasized that you could use “web applications”, web sites optimized for the iPhone, as a way to get added functionality on your device. After the first year they released the SDK and support for 3rd party applications, which has taken off and the Apple App Store is easily the dominant smartphone application store in the market. The iPhone OS is heavily focused on ease of use with support for accelerometers, multi-touch finger manipulation, and multi-tasking limited to only Apple’s own applications.

Thoughts on current version, 3.1 The current iPhone operating system supports background notifications, cut, copy & paste, landscape keyboard, MMS, spotlight search, voice memos, Bluetooth stereo, Notes sync, shake to shuffle, and more. There were definitely several usability improvements and combined with the iPhone 3Gs there is a lot to like in the current iPhone operating system.

Text input is only through the soft input keyboard and I have to admit that the keyboard is very good and I am very fast at entering text using this method. I have tried software keyboards on other platforms and NONE can beat the iPhone keyboard. I could honestly probably get by with this keyboard and forget hardware keyboards if I didn’t have other choices.

What I would like to see in the future As a guy who has used every smartphone operating system I am also quite frustrated with the iPhone OS because I know Apple can do better as they have shown glimpses of in the past. One of the main things people mention with the iPhone OS compared to other smartphone operating systems is the lack of multi-tasking with 3rd party applications. I can understand how Apple wants to control the user experience, especially after seeing how some developers create apps that have problems multi-tasking, and this isn’t one of the major issues I have with the operating system. I personally would like to just have multi-tasking for one to three applications and am thinking primarily of playing Slacker in the background while doing other things.

Personally, the major thing I want to see in the next version of the iPhone OS is support for some kind of Today or status screen where I can put widgets or parts of applications on a single screen so my key information is glanceable without having to dive into applications. Other mobile operating systems all have this and I know Apple has the potential to make it better than even the rest.

Another area I would like to see addressed is notifications. Palm’s webOS and Google Android have the best implementation of notifications while the iPhone’s is pretty poor. If you don’t have your iPhone in hand when something comes in you won’t even see the notification. Again, I think Apple can come up with a much better notification system and with these other two operating systems showing off great implementations Apple can improve on what we see already.

S60 and Maemo comparisons with Apple iPhone OS

Apple is the young buck in the smartphone world, but they really shook things up in 2007 and IMHO they set the bar for usability and everyone else seems to be playing catch up. Others might say they have been working on similar functionality, but you cannot argue that Apple beat them to it and now everyone else looks like copy cats. Let’s take a look at the S60 and Maemo in comparison to the Apple iPhone.

S60 While I like using Nokia S60 devices for many reasons, it is hard not to like the iPhone with the fluid performance and drop dead ease of use. There are thousands of applications for S60, but honestly they cannot compare to those we see on the iPhone and one reason I keep going back to my iPhone 3GS is the quality and variety of applications. I don’t like that the iPhone only comes in a singular form factor though and would like to see an iPhone with a QWERTY keyboard. I mentioned the lack of true multi-tasking and this does bug me at times so I would miss this if I gave up the S60 platform for good. The iPhone 3GS camera is decent, but Nokia still leads in media creation capability. I don’t think this advantage will last much longer though if an iPhone with a 5 megapixel camera comes out soon.

Maemo We here all know that the Maemo 5 web browser is the best on any smartphone today and it beats the iPhone browser that set the bar a couple of years ago. Maemo is more open than the iPhone so I think there is a good chance that Nokia and developers will be able to improve the N900 and future Maemo 6 devices faster than the iPhone. Then again, the iPhone developer community is huge and they keep pushing the limits of the iPhone so they can add capability faster than Apple. I personally have my iPhone 3GS unlocked and jailbroken so I can use it on the T-Mobile USA network and the jailbroken world is much more open like Maemo with interesting developments taking place.

The N900 has good media creation and does a better job of integrating services throughout programs while the iPhone doesn’t yet support this advanced service integration.

Wrapping up Apple iPhone week

Apple rocked the smartphone world in 2007 and then in 2008 started the mobile application revival and we are seeing all other mobile companies working hard to match and beat what Apple revealed. As we get close to celebrating the third year of the iPhone, we are seeing innovation in Android and webOS while the iPhone is starting to look a bit dated. Even though things may be a bit dated, iPhone performance is still top notch and the OS is fluid and responsive.

People often ask me what device to buy and after some back and forth with them about their needs and desire, more often than not my recommendation is for people to check out the iPhone. Nokia has a very limited presence here in the US so it is not easy to recommend their devices and in most cases if a person is not a geek looking for all kinds of functionality and multi-tasking the iPhone should meet 90% of their needs. One of the major problems with the iPhone is the AT&T network and constant dropped calls. Nokia reigns as the leader in RF reception and I never have dropped calls with my Nokia devices.

Applications are awesome on the iPhone while there are just a few select applications for Nokia S60 and Maemo that I would say are on the level of the iPhone. Gaming is also a million times better on the iPhone, even with the Nokia N-Gage project attempting to bring gaming to Nokia devices.

Apple is doing amazing work with the iPhone and Nokia and others have their work cut out for them. While Nokia leads the world in smartphones and is the current leader with plans to innovate in the future, Apple is hot and will continue to improve as well. It is great to be working in the mobile space and 2010 is shaping up to be very exciting.

If Apple could roll out the iPhone on multiple carriers here in the US I think it has the possibility of dominating the US market. I sincerely appreciate meeting with and spending time with Rene last month and love reading about the iPhone on The iPhone Blog. I am thankful that Apple raised the bar in 2007 and look forward to seeing what Nokia comes out with to win fans over to their platforms.

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