Skip to Content

iPhone First Impressions

by David Chartier Jun 30th 2007 at 12:30AM



It was difficult, but I finally tore myself away from playing with my 8GB iPhone to put together a First Impressions post. I tried touching on a few things that we might not have discussed before, or at least things that I particularly appreciate that might not have made it into the keynote or video spotlights. Given the complexity and depth of such a ground-breaking device, you can be sure this won't be the only first post of its kind from me or the rest of our team, but for now, read on for some initial thoughts on one of Apple's most anticipated devices of all time.
  • I just need to get it out of the way: Words cannot describe how incredibly wonderful this thing feels to touch and hold. It is an absolute marvel of engineering. Gorgeous in every way.
  • It's light; surprisingly so. Not quite as light as I remember my Samsung BlackJack being (one of - if not the - slimmest and lightest smartphones on the market), but considering how bad the BlackJack and Windows Mobile in general sucked, it's honestly a non-issue.
  • Amazingly, just about all facets of the phone's software work as advertised. Switching from the browser back to the Home screen is a snap; hitting the Home button the middle of a YouTube video is also a snap.
  • However, YouTube videos take a bit longer than advertised on TV to buffer and begin playing, even over Wi-Fi. Not too worried about it.
  • Google Maps is surprisingly responsive, even over EDGE (which wide reports are saying has received a significant speed boost in the last couple days. Hmm, wonder why).
  • The magnifying glass effect is quick and very, very cool. However, it unfortunately seems to negate the possibility of selecting a block of text for deleting. This would have been handy in instances like blowing away a URL already in Safari to start typing a new one; the only workaround for this is tapping at the end of the URL and holding the delete key down and waiting for each character to be deleted in succession. Kind of annoying. Update: Thankfully, a commenter pointed out the big grey X sitting in Safari's address bar, allowing for a one click deletion of an entire URL. Much handier.
  • The reader.mac.com app seems a little misleading - all it does is display a message on the iPhone instructing you to add a direct URL for a site's feed in Safari, in which case it will display that feed much like Safari RSS on a computer. It isn't a web-based app at all from what I can tell. Unless Apple has something more planned for reader.mac.com, I'm calling this another fumbled addition to the .Mac family (though, for the record: I'm a happy .Mac customer, I just increased my storage to 2GB and I fully plan to renew my account in October).
  • Have I mentioned yet that this seems to be a device designed and engineered by angels? Because it is.
  • Changing the ringer/phone volume or toggling the vibrate switch elicits a translucent Mac OS X-like volume feedback.
  • Seeing translucency on a phone with this gorgeous of a display is nearly worth half the price in and of itself.
  • The SMS app looks like iChat and almost sounds like iChat; it features a different sound for incoming SMSes, but the default iChat sound for sending SMS messages. My only question is: where is iChat!
  • YouTube H.264 videos look as gorgeous on the iPhone as they do on the Apple TV (remember: Apple got YouTube to convert a portion of their catalog for the iPhone and Apple TV into H.264 from the original uploaded files; this isn't a conversion from original > Flash > H.264). Note to YouTube: drop Flash, switch to H.264 video for your entire catalog. Now.
  • Snapping a picture on the camera features a virtual shutter that snaps shut and open again once the picture is done being snapped and saved. Kinda silly, but more entertaining than a 'saving' or 'please wait' message.
  • The 160 dpi display is even more gorgeous than in the videos and up on stage in a keynote.
  • According to John Gruber, the iPhone's UI is all done in Helvetica, which I am definitely a fan of. I also agree that Notes being done in some icky Comic Sans-y type is... weird.
That's about it for now. We'll hit up more of the (predominantly) wonderful impressions as soon as we can roll them out.

View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

Analysis / Opinion Features iPhone

It was difficult, but I finally tore myself away from playing with my 8GB iPhone to put together a First Impressions post. I tried...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

82 Comments

Filter by:
jtbandes

reader.mac.com is actually a web-based RSS reader. As it says, go to the URL of any RSS feed, and you're redirected to reader.mac.com with some GET vars that tell it what feed to fetch.

July 07 2007 at 9:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Chartier

David Chartier here, I wrote this post.

Just to confirm on the Nike+ kit issue: it officially does not work with the iPhone, at least not yet. Upon plugging in the sensor, a sexy little translucent popup on the iPhone display informs me that the accessory is not compatible with the iPhone. My only option is to unplug the sensor, in which case the iPhone keeps on truckin'.

Apple could easily alter this at a later date, and with how much I believe they have planned for the iPhone, I wouldn't be surprised in the least. However, for now - Nike+ and iPhone do not mix.

June 30 2007 at 7:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike B

itunes has been crashing on my while I browse with Safari. I'll try reseting to see if that fixes it. Otherwise, the phone is amazing... at&t edge service not so much.

June 30 2007 at 7:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
punkassjim

Go use one. It's clear that you haven't.
It's not what it does, it's HOW it does it.

June 30 2007 at 2:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
shawn

Okay, update on the AT&T saga...

We went into two AT&T stores today. The first one said we had to go to a corporate store so we drove to the second one a few blocks away. They split off the Mac person's phone number and left the Linux person's account alone (because I'm switching to T-mobile.) We were told to come home and plug the phone in and select the "update" function.

iTunes tells us that the phone is already fully updated. So now we are stuck...AGAIN... and on the phone in AT&T's nasty phone tree listening to ads over and over and over. Apparently, the guys at the AT&T corporate store have no clue how to help us.

Timeline so far:

phone bought: 6:45pm on Friday
phone connected to iTunes on Mac: 7:15pm on Friday
First phone call to AT&T: 30 mins long. (no answer)
Finally get email saying we need to go to a store the next day.
AT&T store #1: go to another store
AT&T store #2: fiddled with it, sent us home.
Second phone call to AT&T at 2:45pm Saturday...

Still no iPhone Joy.

June 30 2007 at 2:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
punkassjim

@74 Laura:

I'm pretty sure I saw brand new Nike+ armbands on sale at the Apple Store last night. Betcha anything the Nike+ thing works.

June 30 2007 at 1:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jonathan

Andrew-- I was having iPod crashing issues while browsing with Safari too. Restarting the phone seems to have fixed it.

June 30 2007 at 12:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Laura Moncur

No one has tried the Nike+. Would someone please just try plugging the receiver in to see if Apple will let me run with an iPhone. I would really love to trade in my Nano and my Treo.

June 30 2007 at 12:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Chartier

70: Not necessarily new, I just don't like typefaces that are designed to look like handwriting for any significant amount of text that I need to work with. They're cute for a title in an image or sometimes for a logo or something, but not when I need to write type - sometimes a lot - and read it later quickly and efficiently. I guess the functionality want outweighs the novelty of cutesy, handwriting-ish type for me.

June 30 2007 at 11:49 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
OlsonBW

"My biggest complaint and something I hope is addressed in the next 13 days is the lack of Exchange Support."

My guess is that the volume of traffic of people getting their iPhones setup is already huge. So adding Exchange would be just that much more.

Note that there are rumors that Apple is going to release an update (through iTunes) for Exchange soon.

PS: I wish my keyboard on my iMac would correct typing mistakes like the iPhone does. ;)

June 30 2007 at 11:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.