10 Things to Love About the iPhone

10 things to love about the iPhoneiPhone screen, while the "pinch" metaphor (placing two
I took delivery of my iPhone at the start of September,fingers on the screen and moving them together
the start of a trying month personally that saw me outapart) zooms in or out to allow small text or fine detail
of the office for very long periods and only in touchto be viewed. Touching on-screen controls like text
with the world via my phone. It was a baptism of fireboxes and menus zooms in onto the control making it
for me and the device.easy to complete browser-based forms. The whole
You will have seen the adverts, played with it in phonebrowsing experience is smooth, intuitive and engaging.
shops, looked over fellow commuters' shoulders,4. Native support for PDF and Office document
borrowed your friend's ... great isn't it? Or is it?formats
In this article I touch on some of the best things aboutAs a "dyed in the wool" Microsoft user, this feature
the device that have wowed me completely. Or evenhas wowed me more more than almost anything else
just a bit. And to maintain the celestial karmic balance Ion the device.
have a companion article on some of the things thatThe iPhone renders all "standard" Office formats
drive me absolutely nuts. There's enough material for(Word, Excel and Powerpoint) as standard, without
both articles, I assure you!any plug-ins. And not just Office 2003 - the extensible
So here we go, in reverse order, the 10 things that youOffice 2007 formats are supported as well! The
should love about the iPhone!iPhone supports rotation to view documents in
10. Voicemail organisationlandscape format, complete with pinch zoom.
One of the cutest features of the device is the way itSadly you cannot edit Office documents as standard,
organises your voicemail for you. No more phoning thealthough a number of publishers are planning to offer
voicemail number, listening to all the messages in yourdocument editors and spreadsheets in the future.
mailbox in the order they arrived to get to the onesHowever for 80% of remote working scenarios I find
you want to hear. There they are, in a list, with realthe device suits me perfectly.
names instead of phone numbers when the number is3. WiFi and 3G stacks
in your contact list. You can go straight to theThe original iPhone whetted appetites for mobile
message you want and avoid the junk calls.computing but soon disappointed Europeans due to its
You aren't limited to the time limit on saved messageslack of support for 3G. That of course is a thing of the
that your phone provider imposes - they will stay onpast with the Mark II device.
your device as long as you need them. It's even gotI have been more impressed by the device's WiFi
deleted file recovery, with deleted messages staying incapabilities, however. Although battery consumption is
your trash can until you commit the delete.less than ideal with wireless switched on, the WiFi
9. SMS text organisationstack performs really well, particularly in larger office
If you like the way the iPhone manages yourand public environments where you move in and out
voicemails, you'll love the SMS organisation even more.of range or between access points, sometimes using
SMS messages are organised by third party name asdifferent protocols, on a constant basis. It supports a
before, but even better when you drill down by thirdnumber of security protocols including certificate-based
party the messages themselves are displayed, inWPA-2 and TKIP and can interact with
order, as a series of quotes like an instant messagingMicrosoft-centric enterprise security deployments.
dialogue, so you can see the whole conversation. SoYou configure the device to join new networks
good, so obvious, so why hasn't it been done before?automatically and of course once you have set up
8. Onscreen keyboardaccess to a network it will reconnect automatically the
One of the things that strikes you about the iPhone isnext time you are in range. It works really, really well -
the absence of any keyboard or stylus. In fact it'sso well that frankly you can afford to forget all about it.
almost devoid of buttons altogether, which is one ofWhich is how it should be, frankly.
the criticisms I would level against the iPhone.2. Ease of adding applications
The absence of a keyboard was one of the reasons IThe basic iPhone provides basic email, calendar and
delayed switching to the iPhone in the first place. Icontacts management alongside the Safari web
work out of the office probably 60% of the time andbrowser, camera and iPod application. It also has a
my PDA is often my only link with my business while Isuperb aGPS and Google maps which is surprisingly
am out of the office. Sending email via a T9 keypad isgood, although the battery consumption with location
not ideal, and most soft keyboards I have see to dateservices switched on renders the device almost
have been frustratingly slow. I have had a couple ofunusable in my opinion. In other words, the iPhone
PDAs with slide-out keyboards and these can beoffers a fairly reasonable set of basic mobile
satisfactory, but they also make the device heavier,productivity applications.
thicker and less attractive as a telephone handset.So what do you do if you need more? The answer is
The iPhone soft keypad is surprisingly good. I watchediTunes AppStore, an online service accessible from
some demos on YouTube before I ordered the iPhonethe iPhone that enables you to search and download
yet had nagging doubts about how realistic they were.applications that are charged against your iTunes
I need not have been concerned, however: It really isaccount. So far I have mostly downloaded sample
as good as the demos suggest. The auto-correctionapplications and free utility ware, which is enough to
works by comparing what you type with the keysget a feel for what is out there and appreciate the
around the key you strike, so if you hit an "h" insteadvery straightforward installation and updating process. I
of a "g" it will pick this up and correct your mistake.have only bought one application so far - iBlogger, a
It isn't perfect, however. I have consistent problemsgeneric blogging writer to connect to my CMS and
reaching the space bar and seem to hit the letter "b"blog. The process is seamless and transparent, from
instead. The correction picks up faulty key presses, butthe user's standpoint, and exactly what the user needs.
won't necessarily correct a mis-spelling if you put tooThe idea of extensibility is a good one. This is where
many or too few letters into the word. You also needthe crossover from computing and PDAs into the
to be around 60-70% accurate with your key pressesworld of the mobile phone really has benefited the
or the algorithm gives up. Rejecting an auto-correctionconsumer. But for the consumer to benefit completely
suggestion requires that you hit the miniscule "x" at thethere has to be adequate choice.
end of the suggestion, rather than a dedicated key orTo date Apple has been successful in attracting
backspace as in most Windows applications, and thissoftware publishers to the game with a powerful
can be really difficult.development kit and simple distribution model. I
But overall the keyboard works well and, I have toappreciate the concerns that some publishers have
admit, is more usable than the keypads on most of theover the stranglehold that Apple maintains over the
Windows Mobile PDAs I have had. I'm still not suredistribution channel, rather like Sony with the
whether I prefer it to handwriting recognition with aPlayStation, and time will tell whether the Apple
stylus, but I can live with it.developer engagement model continues to attract the
7. iPod on a phonebest developers.
Although it lacks the intuitive touch wheel interface ofRight now what the iPhone lacks as standard is a task
the original and best iPod, the iPhone, like the iTouch,management tool that interfaces with Microsoft
makes up for it with its full screen iPod player interfaceExchange and a more advanced set of editing tools
that gives you faster and more direct access to mediathat offer basic features like cut and paste (that's right,
stored on the device. I prefer the wheel of the iPod,iPhone does NOT allow you to cut and paste text
but I admit it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.while editing). I don't know if any such applications exist
Although the 8GB or 16GB memory of the iPhone ison the AppStore and I haven't looked yet because
shared between the iPod features and otherfrankly I would expect these to be provided by Apple
storage-dependent applications, I can still store overas standard and hope that a future firmware update
3,000 songs which is more or less my entire CDwill provide them.
collection. I can play movies too, and the display isIf my impatience gets the better of me I will go and
more than adequate for doing so, but a typical movielook in the AppStore and I will probably find what I am
takes up to 2GB of storage so of course I have tolooking for.
"budget" for it.1. Great design (to a point)
All in all the iPhone serves me well as a media player,Apple has done a phenomenal job with the iPhone. It is
especially as my BMW has the direct iPod interfacegorgeous! My iPhone is probably the most elegant and
built in to the iDrive, so I can access my music libraryiconic object I have ever owned. That's right, not just
through the car's steering wheel controls andthe most elegant phone, or PDA, or mobile computer -
navigation display.as an exercise in pure physical design it excels.
6. Motion sensors and landscape mode (to a point)The glossy surface is hard to keep clean and within
The iPhone is jam packed full of sensors. Proximityminutes is covered in finger marks, but I find that wiping
sensors so it knows you are using it as a phone. Lightwith a barely moist chamois leather is enough to
sensors to adjust brightness. Motion detectors to knowrestore it to its full glory.
you are waving the thing around (used to great effectDifficulties in keeping it clean aside, it is also pretty
in "Lightsaber Unleashed" - a free demo game onrobust and usable day to day. I have dropped it a few
iTunes).times onto hard floors with no apparent ill effects and
The motion detectors are used to greatest effect to init feels really solid in the hands. I don't bother with a
Safari and document browsers to detect when you tiltcase and simply slip it into my jeans pocket (front or
the screen to view it in landscape mode. Documentback) and usually forget that it's there.
too side to fit readably onto the screen? Just rotateThe user interface is remarkable - mostly. The pinch
the device and it will change the screen orientation.zoom and fast list scrolling are excellent. Adding,
Cute!deleting and moving application icons on the home
The only problem is that implementation of the featurescreen is intuitive and can be mastered in minutes.
seems to be application dependent and is notHowever the good parts of the UI are so good that
consistently deployed across all applications on thethe gaffs in design - the inability to collapse large
device. So reading and typing mail does not benefitdirectory trees in mail folders, the absence of a file
from the feature, for example, while email attachmentsmanager, the lack of a cut and paste feature - stand
(see below) do.out even more starkly and underline the genesis of the
5. Full web browser on a phonedevice.
I'm not a great Safari fan in general, preferring FirefoxThe point is that the iPhone is the product of a prolific
on the Mac and IE on the PC. That said, theand brilliant yet highly introspective group of engineers.
implementation of Safari on the iPhone is without doubtIt is design untrammelled by any notion of reality or
the best mobile browser I have seen to date.practicality, particularly in the corporate context. In most
It supports CSS and Javascript and will supportrespects, and I mean probably 80% of the product in
Silverlight in the future, but it does not support Flash atthis case, the outcome is wonderful. The 80% is so
present. With the screen rotated to landscape modegood I can almost forgive Apple the 20% of absolutely
you can generally read most websites directly on theessential features that are missing. For now!