Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone
iPhone Experience: Real-world testing
Fully rested from Friday night's excitement, I grabbed my iPhone and hit the streets. How would it perform under real world, on-the-street conditions? I found out.I should note that I live in the middle of nowhere, so this post may be of particular interest to those who don't live in major cities.
My first test was a long shot, but I couldn't resist. Once in my car, I put my iPhone into my Belkin Tunebase FM and plugged it in. I mean, it's an iPod, right?
"This accessory does not work with iPhone," it said. That's what I expected, but I still had to try.
On The Street
I drove to a densely populated part of town on a cloudless day. The iPhone's display was more difficult to read in the bright sun. Cranking up the brightness level helped, but to be honest, it was never illegible.
On The EDGE
On Main Street there wasn't a WiFi network to be had, so I was riding the bleeding EDGE. With three bars, I launched Mail. It took maybe 10-12 seconds for the iPhone to find and retrieve 19 messages. A bit slower than WiFi, but totally acceptable.
Photos
I took a photo (above) and mailed it to my sister. This was surprisingly speedy - comparable to my MacBook Pro at home. The huge display made composing my shot very easy, and the view of my subject was interrupted only by a the button to snap the photo and another to jump to an album of photos taken with the iPhone. In fact, the iPhone's display is significantly larger than that of my digital camera. There's no comparison to a real camera, of course, but the iPhone is absolutely qualified for taking nice looking, on-the-spot snapshots.
Email And Web
I loaded a few websites, and some were quicker than others. For instance, the busy NBC.com was a bit slower than a few less "busy" weblogs. Interestingly, Newsvine.com automatically forwarded me to the mobile version of their site. Even though I was on EDGE, none of the sites I visited required an inordinate amount of time to load.
Needless to say, I was feeling good about the iPhone. Time to make a call.
The Killer App: Making Calls
The included headphones feature an integrated mic that is so impressive to me, I can't adequately explain it. It hangs just below the right earbud and seems too small and too far away from the wearer's mouth to be effective. Not so.
While listening to "My Morning Jacket" and strolling the main drag, I called my sister (mostly because she LOVES to talk, and as such would be a willing guinea pig). The music automatically faded out, and I put the iPhone back into my pocket as her phone started to ring. She answered, and we began to chat. In fact, she thought I was on my land line until I told her otherwise! Did I mention I was outdoors using the headphone mic? Awesome.
I switched to the iPhone's built-in earpiece and mic, then to speaker phone and back again, all during the call - she never noticed. The audio was clear and strong on my end as well.
With her chatting away on speaker (she REALLY likes to talk), I browsed my calendar, looked at photos, played with the weather widget...without effecting the call in any way. I was amazed.
I then asked her to call me. I ended the call and the music picked right up where I left off about 15 minutes prior. Soon enough, it faded again to "ring." With a simple click of the earbud mic I was back on the phone.
How Many Bars You Got?
My access varied from 1 to 5 bars as I walked around, but I never lost email or internet. Email was VERY slow at 1 bar, but it still did its job. Also, while phone calls got a bit "jumpy" at 1 bar, the call never dropped.
So, my day with the iPhone was satisfying and fun. The UI is so snappy, the display so bright and the screen just so darn fun to touch that I've fallen in love with this little computer. And that's the sense one gets: The iPhone is a portable computer that just happens to make phone calls, not a phone that performs a few tricks.
When I consider that this is the iPhone's initial release, I marvel: A few years from now, the iPhone as we know it will seem as archaic as the 1st generation iPod. Now that's exciting.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rafe H. said 8:00PM on 7-01-2007
I've been waiting for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, ... impressions. They're far more important! I gotta get an iPhone.
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miguel said 8:05PM on 7-01-2007
I am impressed how well it works. I am hard of hearng, so its important to have a clear call.. I am going to be waiting, but I will getting a iphone. soon rather then later
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Fritz Laurel said 8:09PM on 7-01-2007
I have to second that, Dave.
After two days now, I'm very impressed. I'm more impressed than I thought I would be, and I had high expectations. I love Apple products, but I don't usually get caught in the reality distortion field(s).
So, I put the battery to the real test yesterday and it did surprisingly well. I was on calls for about a total of 1 hour 45 mins, some with my bluetooth headset. When I wasn't on a call, I was listening to music or browsing or syncing something or just plain tinkering with the thing all day straight.
About 9 hours after unplugging it, it gave me a 10% warning. A few hours of minimal use after that, it gave me a 5% warning. About 30 mins after that of "tinkering," the screen dimmed and it shut itself off.
Important to note is that I had Bluetooth on almost all day and WiFi on all day. Not a scientific test by any means, but a real-world one.
Overall, the battery outlasted me, so I'm very pleased with it.
Cheers,
FL
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Nate said 8:28PM on 7-01-2007
I completely agree. The ONLY thing that is annoying is when you have multiple webpages open the key board gets super laggy. Hopefully that will be fixed in a software update.
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james said 8:36PM on 7-01-2007
If you use gmail,
Does the phone stay in sync with the gmail web client,
Or do i have to start using mail.app
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chris said 9:02PM on 7-01-2007
gmail blows on the iPhone because its pop. Yahoo converted me back with the push IMAP. Right now, the push email from yahoo is the "killer feature" for me. If only google could give me a way to not download my sent its through POP. There's nothing more annoying than sending someone an email followed 15 minutes later with a new mail alert only to discover that its the message you just sent.
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Linda said 12:11AM on 7-02-2007
I have purchased an iphone but it's still in plastic. I'm trying to get a sense of how people are finding using it as a pda. I'd like it to replace my palm and the calendar, address and memo functions are very important.
Any reactions?
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Rafe H. said 12:11AM on 7-02-2007
Can you do online banking on the iPhone at an institution, like Bank of America, that already works well with Safari on OS 10.4?
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Cowicide said 3:51AM on 7-02-2007
I'm very, very dissapointed that the iPhone doesn't work with Quicktime VR. I mean, c'mon... it's APPLE Quicktime VR and what perfect way to show off virtual tours for clients, etc.... whether real estate or interior design or whatever, the iPhone falls very, very short... sigh... Welp, I'm getting a Palm until Apple gets its act together and makes the iPhone work with their own plug-in properly. CRAP!!!!
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Fritz Laurel said 5:06AM on 7-02-2007
Update on my battery report from earlier--
I have since found out that the charger that came with my iPhone doesn't work. So, tack on another 8 hours of non-use to that total battery life I reported earlier.
When I got up, I disconnected the iPhone from the charger and didn't even notice any charge gone from the battery icon. But, it had not been charging while I slept like I thought it had.
Cheers,
FL
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Vishal Misra said 6:18AM on 7-02-2007
Yes, you can do online banking at bank of america with the iPhone.
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jasonkulas said 11:54AM on 7-02-2007
I like Apple products (use Macs at home), I still use my Newton occasionally, and the iPhone sounds cool, but argh, it doesn't even do cut & paste?!? How can you get anything useful done if you can't org/re-org lists & tasks? We need cut & paste...or a drag-able checklist like Newton's Notes.
If ONLY Notes were like Newton! I LOVED Apple's terrific Newton Notes with it's drag-able checklist/outliner feature (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton#Notes
Please, really, follow that link, see the 1 paragraph description and the screenshot, it's really a terrific bit of software.
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Benno said 5:41PM on 7-02-2007
Great ending: The iPhone in 5 years is going to be incredible. I squirm at the thought.
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Michael Coyne said 3:25PM on 7-25-2007
Dave, were you ever able to get your iPhone to work with your Belkin TuneBase? I get the same message about an incompatible device, but it will sometimes transmit to the radio for a few seconds before it switches to speaker phone. So it seems like it should be possible, but the iPhone gives up.
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