The iPhone is not a great mobile phone, but I still love it.
This post is my reply to Jude Rattle’s own post, titled “I don’t love my iPhone”.
I actually agree with many of Jude’s points:
1, 2 & 5) Typing is in some ways harder than it used to be when you were used to physical keys and T9 text-prediction.
3) The switch between portrait and landscape mode can be annoying, especially when lying down. There should at least be a preference to disable for in each app.
4) When the iPhone is off, it is off, and will not start itself up on time to wake yourself up as an alarm clock. Which also means it is totally off, not in some standby mode.
7) The battery life is not great: my iPhone 3GS last little more than a day in normal use, years ago I had a Nokia 3210 that lasted 4-5 days.
So the iPhone is not a great mobile phone, I would actually agree with that.
Many users who only need a simple basic mobile phone, would be better served by cheaper and less fragile devices, such as my old Nokia 3210.
But what surprised me in that post was that it was not mentioning what makes an iPhone so much more than a mobile phone.
The iPhone is not just a mobile phone
The iPhone is a mobile phone (calls, SMS), but that is not all.
It is a song jukebox (the iPod app).
It is a live TV (see (live UK TV).
It is a TV/VCR combo (the videos in the iPod app).
It is a photo album (the photo app, or Flickr’s app).
It is a pocket translator that speaks foreign words for me. (iSpeak serie).
It is a networked computer (mail, safari).
It is a photo camera.
it is a video camera with built-in editing facility.
It is a book that can display thousands of titles (Classics).
It is a map that always knows where I am and how to go where I want to go (Map app with GPS, Sat Nav apps ).
It is a game console (too many games to link!).
And all of this in the volume of a deck of cards.
For me, the small dose of usability that has been lost from simpler phones is much more than compensated by everything else that this device can do. Even in Star Trek, they didn’t foresee such advanced technology.
The iPhone is not perfect and there are tons of things than it could do better. But yes, for everything that it does, I do love my iPhone.
Thanks for the comeback Fabian, I also find it’s a great toy to keep children amused. What i wanted to do with my post was keep it controversial and I agree with you, my blog is focussed around the iPhone as a phone. Other people i know see their iPhone more as an iPod or iTouch so the product is a chameleon. There are lots of very vocal iPhone lovers in the world so I wanted to offer a different perspective.