Apple iPhone: New Details, Good and Bad
With less than six days left before the Apple (AAPL) iPhone arrives, there’s a flood of press coverage but new details about how the gadget actually works are hard to find. A few drops of news are dribbling out, however.
The 24 minute “guided tour” Apple released late last week (see here) is basically an infomercial designed to head off any negative feedback from independent reviewers. Mostly it delivers the same information contained in the TV commercials, but at a glacial pace. But Jason Chen at Gizmodo scoured the video for fresh information and offered this summary:
• Confirmed in-line viewer for PDFs, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel docs in email. Microsoft complained about lack of support before. This is a huge deal, even if it is read-only.
• Turning off the phone requires you to slide your finger across the top (like unlocking it) to confirm.
• You can rewind voicemail like a sound file.
• You can finger-scroll through contacts using the alphabet on the right.
• The special iPhone headphones have volume and call control.
• IMAP/POP support confirmed
• Typing with two thumbs actually looks manageable
• Limited amount of ringtones can be selected from the settings menu. Doesn’t look like songs can be used.
• Confirmed turn by turn directions and up-to-date traffic info for Google maps. (link)
Over at rival Engadget, Ryan Block pried a few less-than-flattering reactions from “a very trusted source” who has spent time with a pre-launch iPhone. His summary:
- The keyboard was simply described as “disappointing”. Keyboarding with two thumbs often registers multiple key presses (two or three at a time) resulting in a lot of mistakes. The best way to type is with a single finger (as shown in most of Apple’s demos), but two thumbs is supposedly very difficult. After trying it for a number of days our source gave up using their thumbs.
- The text auto-correction only works well for simple words, but doesn’t work for proper names. We can only assume this bit will get better with time as Apple fills out its predictive text dictionary.
- “It won’t replace a BlackBerry. It’s not good for text input. It’s just not a business product.”
- The touchscreen was said to, in general, require somewhat hard presses to register input, and needs some getting used to. [A reader contradicts this item; see Frankie’s comment below.]
- In addition to its dock, the iPhone comes packaged with a polishing cloth (the thing’s supposedly a fingerprint magnet, no surprise) and the usual smallish power adapter.
- The Bluetooth headset will debut in the $120 range, and will come with its own dock for charging both the phone and the headset. The headset will feature a miniature magnetic charging interface á la MagSafe.
- The Bluetooth headset has a hidden LED and is supposedly a very small and elegant device. Sound quality is said to be “typical”. There is no clip; like many headsets you’re expected to just let it hang out of your ear, as previously shown.
- The browser “worked well” but page load speeds on EDGE were just as slow as expected. It sounds like 3G users will have a tough run with this.
- Users must scroll through the address book (or use the alphabet-drag on the side) — one cannot bring up the keyboard and type in a name, as many of us are used to.
- Shocker: YouTube over EDGE didn’t work well at all, and will basically necessitate use of WiFi. (link)
Finally, there are these observations from Balsu Thandu, one of the 200 AT&T (T) field technicians who reportedly spent the past 10 weeks putting the iPhone through its paces incognito (see here). According to Mobility Today,
Techs also did a lot of walking. “Many people don’t realize it, but walking gives you the worst channel conditions,” Thandu says. Cell signals tend to bounce off buildings, causing interference, and background noise is a constant problem in cities.
Feedback from the field was relayed to Apple, sometimes hourly, Thandu says. Early on, he says, technicians discovered that the iPhone’s audio was “not loud or clear enough.” Apple designers quickly fixed the problem, he says.
Though “iTesting” will continue on an ongoing basis, Thandu says he is comfortable that the device is good to go. “For the launch, I think we are there.” (link)
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