Notes on the iPhone
Posted by Ben Rometsch on 18 March 2008
Having struggled with Windows Mobile Devices for a couple of years (they were good but crashed ALL the time, like when you had an incoming call) and a Nokia E61 (solid but oh so boring) I finally took the plunge and bought an iPhone.
I didn't have an iPod, so the cost factor was offset to a certain degree on that account, and fortunately O2 tripled the number of free minutes I get a couple of months ago, without me asking, which was nice. That puts the monthly tariff pretty close to what I was paying T Mobile with a similar package, and the O2 network is much, much better than T Mobile, but I digress!
Cutting through all the"Jesus Phone" hoo-haa, I have come to the conclusion that it is, indeed, a magical device. It's magical for three reasons.
It doesn't have GPS, but it knows where you are...
A recent free software upgrade by Apple provided a location based service on top of google maps. Now, the phone doesn't have a GPS chip, and it figures out where you are based on a combination of cell tower triangulation and Wifi hotspot database cleverness, but the bottom line is, I can be anywhere in London, hit a button and have the device show me, to within about 10 yards, exactly where I am.
At first I thought that it was just lucky at guessing where I was, but as I have come to use it more often, I can safely say that it is actually *better* than GPS. Why? Because I don't need to have a clear line of site to the GPS satellites, it doesn't take 5 minutes to get a signal lock and the accuracy is more than "good enough".
The other day I got a bus that I don't normally use, and wasn't sure which stop to get off at. I had the destination post-code entered into the Google Maps application, so the phone knew where I wanted to be. Every couple of minutes (and this was sat on the bottom deck of a double decker, try that with GPS...) I'd hit the "find me" button and it would update my location. No stress, no hassle, and I knew exactly where to get off. Brilliant.
It isn't 3G but is faster than my old 3G phones.
Huh? Really, it's true! 3G networks are a bit creaky, and the technology is still maturing. The network coverage is not great, and if you are on a train your 3g phone will spend most of the journey bouncing between 2G and 3G like a yoyo. Don't try and use it when it is doing that! The bottom line is that, when you need to get hold of some information on a mobile, having 3g isn't much of an advantage. In fact, I think it's a disadvantage.
The Edge/GPRS/Wifi connection stack on the iPhone is really superb. It can handle moving from Wifi to Edge to GPRS without a hiccup. You get the best connection available to you at the time. This, along with the simply superb implementation of the Safari Web Browser and hand gestures mean that it is actually *quicker* to get access to information online with the iPhone than it was with my old Windows Mobile Device (and that was using HSDPA, which is meant to be "faster" than 3G!).
It is an inanimate object, but it makes me smile.
The quality of the interface design is truly astonishing. I've had the phone for months now, and use it a LOT, but I am still finding all these little interface embellishments that make me smile. The windows mobile devices used to make me angry, on a daily basis. The iPhone makes me happy on a daily basis.