Apple iPhone Review - Features

Features

iPhone's most immediately recognizable feature is its multi-touch display. The giant front-mounted display is a touchscreen with a twist - the screen can recognize more than one touch at a time, and is also programmed to process gestures. You can place two fingers on the screen and pinch them open and shut to zoom in and out on a photo or Web page. Or you can flick a fingertip up and down to scroll through a contact list, or left and right to flip through a photo album. Apple has earned their legendary status in the field of user interface design, and they've taken what they've learned from all of those years of making Macs and iPods and applied it to iPhone with great success. The bright, colorful, intuitive user interface is perhaps iPhone's most noteworthy feature. But it's far from the only one.

Much as a handset like Nokia's N95 packs nearly every feature a phone geek could hope for in a single handset, iPhone packs a ton of features that the average consumer will be dazzled by, and many of the more geeky types will appreciate at the least. The phone runs on a version of Apple's OS X operating system - the one that current Macs use - and so is theoretically capable of supporting a wide variety of applications. Apple shipped iPhone with a bunch of apps including a YouTube viewer, Weather and Stocks widgets, a Google-powered Maps app with search and traffic updates, and, to quote Apple CEO Steve Jobs, "the best iPod we've ever made," complete with 8GB of built-in memory (the original 4GB model has been discontinued). The iPod functionality is really great, though it's notably lacking any sort of external controls for controlling media playback; the included stereo headset does have a single-button remote control that can play/pause (single press) and skip to the next track (double press) during music playback, and pick up and hang up on incoming calls.

The company isn't supporting third party software development for iPhone (yet), but a group of self-supported hackers and developers have pieced together the keys to the system and developed software for everything from unlocking the handset to run on non-AT&T networks to a virtual-GPS application that uses cell phone towers to triangulate a user's location. I've tried both of these apps (and a bunch of others) and they work. The "Navizon" GPS app isn't perfect, but it put me within a few hundred yards of the runway when I tried it while waiting to deplane at the Salt Lake City airport a few weeks ago.

Speculation fueled by various comments made by Jobs and other Apple execs points towards an official iPod software ecosystem emerging from under Apple's watchful eye sooner or later. In the meantime, the company has thwarted third-party development by way of at least one official software update that adds new iPhone functionality - including Wi-Fi based access to the enormously popular iTunes Music Store for over the air purchase and downloads - while also disabling all third party applications installed on your handset. Additionally the first software update from Apple rendered unlocked iPhones more or less useless, locking them back to AT&T and requiring reactivation.

As such it's hard to really call iPhone a "smartphone," as it doesn't support user-installable software to extend its functionality. Still, iPhone does a ton all on its own. Visual Voicemail is an AT&T/iPhone exclusive that lets you pick and choose what voicemails to listen to in much the same way that you manage an email Inbox. Calendar and contact apps are simple but effective, very user-friendly, and easy to read on the giant display. The iPod features are second to none, and flicking through album covers via the "Cover Flow" feature, or viewing photos and videos on the widescreen display is really a treat for the eyes.

iPhone also makes use of an accelerometer that automatically rotates the display in certain applications (Web browsing, photo viewing, and music selection) when the handset is physically rotated. It's pretty slick, and while Windows Mobile devices can accomplish the same basic feat via a menu selection, iPhone's sensor-driven magic is just more fun. Similarly, the phone features a front mounted sensor that tells the phone display to deactivate when it's near your face (during a call), and re-activate when you've taken it away from your cheek (after a call). This feature both eliminates unwanted "face dialing" and helps preserve battery life. If there's one thing Apple's designers know, it's that genius lies in the details.

However, iPhone is lacking certain features that power users might not be able to do without. There's no GPS, no voice dialing, no support for stereo Bluetooth and ... this is typical Apple and entirely absurd ... the battery is not user replaceable. That last point is definitely a sore spot - not only will you have to ship the phone back to Apple when your battery needs a replacement, but heavy users who rely on extra or extended life batteries while traveling are entirely out of luck.

The two megapixel camera built into the iPhone is about as simple an affair as possible, and somewhat overwhelming given the state-of-the-art device that it's built into. There's literally one control in the camera software - capture. That's it. You point and you shoot, period. There's no flash, no image or resolution settings, and the focus is fixed. To take a photo you line it up on the display (which makes for about the best viewfinder anywhere) and tap the button on the touchscreen - a stylized animation then imitates a shutter closing and that's that. Again, phone geeks may hate it but Mom and Dad sure won't be confused by all the bells and whistles.

Image quality was somewhere around average for a two megapixel shooter. Photos tended to suffer from some color inaccuracies, and shutter lag time was a little longer than many phones (though the camera boots up faster than that on almost any other phone I've tried), but most shots taken in good lighting came out pretty decent - certainly well enough to view onscreen or send off in an email. Forget about taking photos at night or in dark bars, though. And there's no video capture.

iPhone excels at after the photo activities like organizing and viewing pictures and using them in emails, contacts entries, and as wallpapers. If your photo came out well, it'll look great on iPhone's display, and zooming in and out of snapshots on the high-res display is really fun. It's like carrying around a high-tech photo album - you can sideload photos from your computer to iPhone, and then view them by album as thumbnails, full-size shots, and slideshows. Tapping an icon while looking at a photo brings up a clear, easy to read menu of options for use. Want to use a photo in an email? Tap a button and an animation shows the shot being resized and dropped into a new Email message. MMS messaging is not supported, however, and you cannot do anything with your photos via Bluetooth - no sending to other phones or computers, no printing, no nothing.

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