The Web Critics have spoken, and the verdict on the iPhone is:
If Only.
If Only it wasn’t just on AT&T If Only it had 3G. If Only it had GPS. If Only it had a real keyboard.
Now I can’t address the first two, except to say that I think all of the cell phone companies have some level of suckitude. As I said to a friend the other day, I suspect if AT&T becomes a problem, some execs are going to wake up in the middle of the night to find Steve standing over their beds, knuckles cracking.
As for the data network…There’s no EvDO where I live and I’m not sure about 3G either. I’ve been using Sprint’s “old” data network so EDGE might actually be faster than what I’m used to.
As a Treo 650 owner, I can, however, speak to the idea of having GPS in a cell phone and having a real keyboard (see below).
Cell Phone + GPS + Reality = …
The first Bluetooth device I bought for my Treo 650 was a GPS, about 18 months ago. It has a separate GPS receiver but the Treo screen is used for the display.
Before we begin, let me say that I love convergence in devices. I bought the Treo because it let me go from Palm and Cell Phone to Just The Treo. Woot! Life is good.
I bought the GPS for the same reason.
And it was great.
Except when it wasn’t.
We were in Indianapolis (a city I’d never been to before) looking for a restaurant in busy traffic.
I realized that we were going to be late, and I needed to call the person we were meeting to tell them.
Note the flaw inherent in the system.
Ideally it would work like this:
1) Pause GPS 2) Launch phone app 3) Make call 4) Switch back to GPS
Sounds easy enough, right?
Here’s how it really went:
1) Read GPS instructions for upcoming turns and try to remember them
2) Launch phone app
3) Look for phone number
4) Wait, was it the 3rd or 4th street that we were supposed to turn left onto? 3rd. Wait. 3rd is one way. Should I take the 4th?
5) Switch back to GPS
6) Wait for it to reacquire signal
7) Wait for it to recalculate directions
8) Oops it was the 5th street I guess.
9) Launch phone app
10) Look up phone number
11) What’s the next turn?
12) I don’t know, I’m making the call. Great. Got voicemail. Wait for outgoing message. No I don’t want to leave a callback number. OK, here’s the beep. Left message. Hey, how far are we? I don’t know the GPS is off. I think it said about 10 minutes?
13) Switch back to GPS
14) Wait for it to reacquire signal
15) Wait for it to recalculate directions
16) TURN LEFT TURN LEFT NOW. Crap, we missed our turn. Try to make a U-Turn. Yeah I know it’s bumper to bumper traffic.
17) Ok, we turned around. GPS recalculating.
18) Incoming call. Crap, do I answer it or let the GPS finish?
19) Oh great, the phone is locked up.
20) Pull battery
21) Wait (forever) for Treo to reboot
22) Wait for Treo to turn radio back on
23) Wait for Treo to acquire data network
24) Launch GPS
25) Wait for EULA telling me not to drive while using GPS because I could die and if I die it’s not their fault because they told me not to use it while driving. May contain peanuts, wheat, and Phenylalanine. For external use only.
26) Click OK
27) Tell it to recalculate last directions
28) “You’ve got voicemail”
By this point we had pulled over into a parking lot waiting for all of this to settle down. We ended up being at least an extra 10 minutes late. Mind you this was somewhat easier than normal because my wife was driving so I could give my full attention to the GPS and phone.
Sure, sure, the iPhone GPS system would never crash or lock up the system, and it would immediately acquire a GPS signal, and it wouldn’t lockup when a call came in.
Yeah, you know what, I can’t remember the Treo GPS ever doing those things any other time either. Murphy’s Law of Running Late strikes again.
The last straw was one day my Treo went into some kind of permanent crash loop, and when it came out, the GPS software no longer worked (needed to be reinstalled).
I bought a Garmin standalone GPS (Streetpilot) which is 10x better than any cell phone GPS is going to be. It’s faster, it has a bigger screen, dedicated buttons, better software, etc etc etc.
Convergence is great and wonderful, and one of the things that makes iPhone so wonderful, but realize that sometimes the whole is less than the sum of different parts. Also realize that GPS is going to be a big battery drain (which, of course, could be mitigated by having a car adapter).
A Real Keyboard
The other complaint I keep hearing about is that the iPhone doesn’t have a “real” keyboard. You might not be aware of this because it hasn’t been widely reported </sarcasm >
What I haven’t heard anyone mention is that this might not be as bad as you think in the long run.
In their “Get To Know iPhone” videos ( and ), Apple repeatedly mentions that you need to give yourself about a week to get used to the new keyboard.
Short term loss.
There are problems with “real” keyboards too.
My first Treo, the , lasted less than 6 months. When I pushed any of the keys on the top row of buttons on the keyboard it would think I was pressing the touch-screen at the bottom where the screen met the keyboard. This caused minor problems like sending emails I wasn’t finished writing.
My current Treo 650, which was replaced within the last few months, has occasional problems with the “W” key. No, I don’t have any idea why. You’d think maybe the E or the I or the A. It’s not like I actually type “www” when going to websites so that’s not it either.
You’d be surprised, I think, how often a W comes up in the course of normal writing. You’d probably only notice when it wasn’t there, like I’ve been doing for the last two weeks.
Having a touch-screen keyboard may have some drawbacks ( “Dude, I can’t stick my hand in my pants and sent a text message without looking! iPhone is teh suk!”) but you know what? I’ve been typing on the Treo keyboard for 4 years now, and I still make mistakes.
The difference is that PalmOS doesn’t care, doesn’t offer to help (no spell checking available), and hasn’t really gotten any better. With each new version of the phone they fiddle with the keys a little bit. I read a review of the Treo 680 which said that it took the author a few days to get used to it because they had moved some of the 680 keys around compared to the 650. Yet he somehow survived.
So therefore anyway
I haven’t seen or used an iPhone, so I can’t say how it will compare, but from an experienced user of The Other Way of Doing It I can tell you that it ain’t all sunshine and puppies. Every time I hear someone criticize the lack of a physical keyboard I keep waiting for someone to say “Not that smartphone keyboards are perfect.”
So far I haven’t seen that said anywhere.
That’s not even to mention the people who will be coming from those diggity dang little phones which only have a dial pad (press the “2” key three times for the letter “C”) who will love having any full keyboard. Haven’t heard any reviewers mention those users either. Apparently the only potential buyers for the iPhone are 150 wpm One Handed Blackberry Thumb Ninjas.