Thoughts on the 3GS

Just about everyone I know in the past few weeks has asked me if I'm going to upgrade to the iPhone 3GS. The answer is short, and simple - No.

The 3GS has the makings to be a fantastic device. Some might argue it's the first iPhone that can shut up its critics. The pundits will probably find a way to harp on the non-removable battery and lack of support for flash cards, but my 16GB 3G averages around 5GB free, and I can count on one hand the number of people who I've known who carried a second battery, regardless of the phone manufacturer.

If you've got a 3G, is it worth forking out another 3 bills for an upgrade, knowing there's going to be an even faster iPhone in around 12 months? I'm probably one of those weird edge cases - a gadget freak who avoids using his cell phone. My beloved 3G is an insanely handy device. Having used more than a few WinMo phones in my life, I can live with what is now, by 3GS standards, a sluggish phone.

My 3G is more of a substitute for a missing computer than a do-everything mobile device. Unlike many of my peers, I'm not a prolific tweeter, texter or mailer. To them, their phone is their primary electronic communications device.

In all my years of WinMo phones, there was always something that really made you want to upgrade a phone a year later. Mostly because it was a pain to get firmware upgrades that would stabilize the phone, or to get features that made the phone easier to use. The iPhone isn't like that. Free OS upgrades are regular and free. The 3.0 upgrade offers many of the features of the 3GS, and that goes a long way in eliminating buyer's remorse.

With the 3G being better than most other smartphones on the market, I don't think people should be swarming to get on the upgrade bandwagon just for the sake of upgrading. Remember, there's going to be an even faster, more capable phone next year.

Lotus Notes on iPhone

I'm probably the last Lotus Domino fan on the planet, but it's nice to see that IBM is working on a version of Lotus Notes for the iPhone.

Some iPhone Devs Sharing Numbers

Not surprisingly, it is possible to make good coin on iPhone Apps. Perhaps even more coin than for Mac apps.

iLounge: Every Sudoku for the iPhone Reviewed

iLounge has a nice compendium of Sudoku reviews, if you're into that. I've been reluctant to buy a Sudoku game until I saw one that at least meets the standard set by Nintendo's Brain Age game for the DS.

Update: The lone app that got an A from iLounge - Platinum Sudoku, is a winner. Very close in quality to Sudoku in Brain Age for the Nintendo DS.

My iPhone Review

So here is my two week perspective on my new favorite toy.

The Phone

The general operation of the iPhone is extremely well thought out. There is a clear sense that the designers of the iPhone put the core phone functionality ahead of all other features, sometimes to the chagrin of those iPhone developers who would like to run their apps as background processes.

Reception is satisfactory, and the speakerphone works fine, although it's definitely not in the class of my Jabra bluetooth speakerphone. The phone is generally fast, although on occasion, you are left with a craving for teh snappy. Most features are easily accessible from a few taps, although like my Windows phone, the Bluetooth control is buried within the settings. One nice touch is that when dialing or answering calls, you can actually choose the device on which you would like to talk.

One feature that I like is the alarm clock. It's easy to set, and it works. The built-in alarm on my Windows phone was flaky at best. I've been using a retired Nokia phone as my primary alarm clock for the past few years because it works so well (the unlimited snooze helps).

Boot time is slow, although it does seem to be a hair faster than Windows Mobile. The phone does crash occasionally with some third party software, but it still is much more stable than my Windows phone.


User Interface

There are only four hard buttons on the phone - power/sleep, volume, silence and home. Minimalist but effective.

On the software side, the user interface is intuitive, but I did have to watch the 30 minute video on Apple's site to learn some of the finer points of operation. Still, I managed to pick up most of the basics without reading a manual.

It's easy to dismiss the bouncy effects of the user interface as eye candy, but they do provide valuable user feedback. It's nice to know that the phone is working at responding to your inputs.

The Screen

The screen is absolutely beautiful. It has a weird look to it in the sense that it looks like it's a backlit transparency of a fake screen as opposed to a live LCD screen. It's hard to describe, but it just doesn't have the same look as other LCD screens. The glass is nice and hard, but is a little prone to face smearing after a greasy lunch.

Safari

If I were to pick the killer app on the iPhone, it would be Safari. Flash and Java support aside, it is the best mobile surfing experience you could possibly imagine. The scale and zoom works so well that I have yet to find a reason to surf in landscape mode. If you're sitting back in a couch, the iPhone provides a better surfing experience than a small laptop.

Keyboard

The keyboard is a learning keyboard. At the outset, I did find that precision was a little tough. After two weeks of use, I'm surprised that I can type at about the same rate of speed as I could on the QWERTY keyboard on my HTC smart phone.

The one thing that really bugs me about typing on the iPhone is the autocorrect feature. I'm used to tapping on the suggested word to accept, but in the iPhone, you tap on the suggested word to reject it. I can understand some of the thinking behind it, but it's still annoying.

Wi-Fi

The iPhone is smart about Wi-Fi, in that it seems to prefer Wi-Fi traffic over cellular data traffic. If you don't have an unlimited data plan, this is definitely A Good Thing.

Camera

The shutter lag is shameful, but comparable to most other smart phone cameras. Calling it inferior to most other phones is like calling out a C- student in a class full of Cs.

The GPS

I didn't expect to be wowed by the GPS, but I was pleasantly proven wrong with the selection of location-aware applications being developed.

Syncing

Syncing is basically the same as for any iPod. Where sync time increases, however, is when the iTunes is backing up the applications. It's not very snappy, and you'll find yourself getting impatient really fast.

The iPod

Since the iPhone isn't really a dedicated iPod, you will encounter occasional hiccups if you attempt to multi-task, but they're usually for a fraction of a second. In my non-scientific test, I didn't notice any degradation of sound quality compared to my 1G nano in real world use (i.e., my daily commute). One nice feature is that you can still listen to your own music while playing many games.

iTunes Store/The Apps Store

Apple has done a fantastic job of providing iPhone users with instant gratification. While the end goal for Apple may be revenue generation, it's a boon for end users.

I don't think any other phone platform (or mobile platform, for that matter) can compare in terms of user experience. The closest thing I can compare it to is the online purchasing experiences for the XBox 360 and the PlayStation3. In any case, I can see iPhone users blowing a lot of money on music and apps directly on the iPhone. I already have.

Battery Life

Since I didn't carry a spare battery with my power sucking Windows Mobile phone, having a phone with a non-replaceable battery was no big deal to me. As I'm also used to charging nightly, battery life was comparable to my previous phone.

The Apps

There are a lot of worthwhile applications for the iPhone. My favorites include:

• Evernote
• Facebook
• Urbanspoon
• Things
• Remote
• Tipulator
• Midomi
• Shazam

Games

I don't really intend to use my iPhone as a gaming platform, but there are some nice little games available. The ones I like:

• Tap Tap Revenge
• MotionX Poker
• Imangi
• Dizzy Bee
• Mondo Solitaire

My Take

Despite its foibles, the iPhone is a magnificent smartphone. In the areas that matter, the phone simply shines. That I'm no longer using the Windows Mobile Task Manager to kill applications is a deep breath of fresh air. This is probably one of the best gadgets I've ever acquired.

Low Fi Browsing

With the iPhone rapidly on pace to sell 10 million units worldwide and data plans finally coming down to almost reasonable prices, it's not surprising to find more and more people surfing on their phones.

Clearly, the iPhone isn't the only phone capable of browsing, but the fact that Mobile Safari provides the best mobile surfing experience today has pushed the competition in improving the offerings on other smart phones.

I'm still not seeing web experiences optimized for small screens (think qvga, guys) and non-flash browsers. I've been harping on universality for the past decade, mostly to deaf ears.

I have no issue with Flash; it enhances user experiences, facilitates cross-browser development, and simplifies the delivery of video over the Internet.

Still, companies need to wake up and fork out the extra cash to their agencies to ensure that site content degrades gracefully into low-fi content. Customer experience is that much more important in a declining economy, as consumers are more likely to comparison shop.

I tried hitting Honda.ca and Toyota.ca with my iPhone, and I didn't get very far at all. I can't be the only one who was irked by this experience. Arguably, Apple is at fault for not offering Flash support, but the problem with Flash on a mobile device is that battery life and data packets come at a premium, especially if you live in Canada. Having secondary low-fi content is absolutely essential to building relationships with your increasingly tech savvy customers.

7 Things I Don't Miss About My Windows Mobile Phone

1. The Task Manager - It's ridiculous how the battery will mysteriously drain on a WM phone. Usually it's the apps that don't close themselves when you switch applications. And to think, iPhone developers were in an uproar when Apple declared a rule that all apps had to quit when losing focus. Crazy!
   
2. The Mid-Call Crashes - No need to explain.
   
3. No Notes - The iPhone's Notes may not sync to the desktop, but at least the app is there, and it's free.
   
4. The Beachball of Doom - Not very different from the BeachBall of Doom on the Mac.
   
5. The Start Menu - Sorry, Microsoft - a phone is not a computer.
   
6. The Browsers - You really don't appreciate the iPhone until you spend about 5 minutes with the Browser.
   
7. The Home Screen - whoever at Microsoft thought that the My Outlook for Today page would make a great home screen for a phone should have been fired for even suggesting it.
   

Boy Genius: Blackberry Bold vs. iPhone

The Boy Genius's Verdict:

It really comes down to what you need more in a phone. While the Bold certainly has improved media and other consumer features, it really is a business device at the end of the day. The iPhone 3G is a consumer device that happens to play nice with a lot of corporations, and we honestly think you won’t find many people dropping their BlackBerrys for an iPhone. They’ll carry both as long as they can afford it.

iPhone... Finally!

Well, I managed to get my lily-white iPhone last night, and while I haven't had that much time to play with it, I am quite impressed with it already.

In terms of the iPhone's shortcomings...

• I don't use voice dial. I've had 3 other voice dial phones, and on each phone, I've had issues with recognition.
  
• Cut and paste isn't a priority for me
  
• Expandable memory is overrated. My Windows smartphone has expandable memory, and I expanded to only 1/8th of my iPhone's memory
  
• Built-in battery. I don't normally carry an extra battery on my Windows phone, which is dumber about power management than the iPhone
  
• No Stereo bluetooth support. If you care about your music, you probably wouldn't want bluetooth headphones anyways.
  
• No video camera. I rarely used the video camera on my last two phones. No major loss.
  

The best thing for me about the iPhone is one handed surfing of Google Reader. I can actually go through the stories faster than I can on a laptop! The usability and effective use of screen real estate kick my Eee's @ss to the curb.

Data and wifi access have been snappy. There are some "lulls" in application execution, but nothing worse than I've encountered in Windows mobile. I'm about 100 times more productive on my iPhone than I was on my Windows phone.

The only thing I wish the iPhone had was a hard keyboard. I'm learning to cope with the dodgy on-screen keyboard, but because I'm not an e-mail or texting freak, it's not a deal-killer for me.

I think that many of the iPhone's major shortcomings will eventually be addressed in a firmware/os update, but the one thing it has going for it today is the App store. There are a lot of quality apps selling for reasonable prices. While there is a lot of crap (i.e., ports from the Windows Mobile world), hopefully the insistence of Mac/iPod users for quality GUIs will force the "clue"-challenged devs into putting more consideration into user interfaces and interaction.

With respect to Windows Mobile: Windows Mobile fans have spent the last year mocking the iPhone about app support. Having been a Windows Mobile user for the past 3+ years, I have to call these guys out as idiots. There may be thousands of apps available for WM phones, but 90% of those apps are pure and utter garbage. The overall operating system usability of WM phones is weak at best, and if you ask me, people who are into WM-types of phones would be better served getting a Blackberry or waiting for an Android phone.

Wired: Why iPhone Games Will Rule

Wired has some linkbait on why the iPhone will kick @ss as a gaming platform. Here are my thoughts on Wired's bullet points.

The iPhone's processor thinks almost twice as fast as the Sony PSP's brain.

The PSP thinks way faster than a Nintendo DS, but the Nintendo DS has sold way more units than the PSP, and the quality of the games have something to do with it. C'mon, you can do better than that!

Its touchscreen is more responsive than the Nintendo DS's, recognizing subtle finger taps, pinches, and spreads.

Overrated. When you touch the screen, you obscure a part of it with your finger. In my opinion, that takes away from the gaming experience. There's a reason why the touchscreen DS has dual screens.

The three-axis accelerometer, like the one in the Wiimote, could replace the thumbstick — Sega has already exploited this ability for an iPhone port of Super Monkey Ball.

Tilting the phone also tilts the screen, sometimes making it hard to see what's happening on the screen.

Wi-Fi could make for mean multiplayer mayhem.

And how is this different from the PSP and Nintendo DS?

Cell-tower triangulation could be used for location-aware games.

This could be a neat point, but will it make the iPhone rule as a gaming platform? Dunno about that.

In any case, there will be some good games on the iPhone, no doubt. Will the games be a hyberbolic leap forward, I highly doubt it. The writer of the Wired article forgets an important thing - the iPhone is a phone first and foremost. Do you think people really want to be draining their potential talk time for cpu intensive games?

The iPhone Wait, The App Store etc.

I wonder how long I have to wait before I can upgrade to an iPhone? Supplies are low, and it seems like new accounts are favored over existing customers.

I think that Apple miscalculated the number of 16GB phones required. Given a choice, I think most people would rather spend the extra $100 for the extra storage.

Personally, I don't even have capacity issues with my first generation 4GB Nano, and the syncing is usually related to cycling the podcasts that I listen to every day. 8GB is probably satisfactory for me, but if I get an iPhone, I expect it to last a few years, and who can predict what I'll be using it for 2 years from now?

I was going lukewarm on the phone (because of the rates) until I started browsing the iPhone app store a couple of nights ago. I remembered that there are going to be some key apps that I want (Evernote, Things) that will fill in address the shortcomings in my current Windows Mobile device (I did think about getting an iPod Touch and keeping my phone, but that seems a little unwieldy).

There are some questionable apps in the App store, however. The most notable one being a "Contraction Timer" for pregnant women. Priced at $9.99 (are you kidding me?), it seems to be on the very expensive side, considering that it's a limited use application. The fact that the screen shots fail to impress lead me to think that sales will not be brisk. Given that Apple won't be paying out until the total amount payable reaches $250, I suspect the author will be waiting quite a while before he gets a check cut from Apple.

Speaking of iPhone Apps, I received a mailer from TapTapTap, a new iPhone company started by Sophia Teutschler, of CoverSutra fame, and their little suite of apps is attractive (think Delicious Generation), well priced, and useful.

Merlin Mann Summarizes iPhone's Load Issues on Day 1

Merlin has an excellent compendium of stories of those activation issues for new iPhone buyers around the world.

Good thing I decided not to wait in line!

Being a new Evernote Devotee, he also has a first look at Evernote for the iPhone. I want an iPhone just for Evernote and Things.

iPhone Hubbub Continued

Even Consumer Reports is weighing in on all the negative Rogers hype. I don't think I've ever seen a backlash on a Canadian company this huge (this is now bigger than the Bell Canada net neutrality controversy). There are definitely some corporate communications lessons to be learned in this post-blog, post-social media world.

Bell and Telus... Jealous of Rogers' Bad Publicity

Not content to allow all the bad PR around Rogers to steal their thunder, Bell and Telus have found a way to take back some of that negative attention that Rogers' iPhone plans are getting.

iPhone Lust Fading

With all of Rogers' negative press and my own reluctance to get shafted in an expensive 3 year plan, I'm finding my desire to buy a 3G iPhone waning rapidly.

To provide some context, I hate my current Windows phone. Actually, I don't hate the phone, I just hate the OS (Windows Mobile) and can't stand using it. At this point, I'd rather be stuck with my despicable phone than to fork out another huge chunk of cash to my cellular provider.

You definitely won't see me lining up this Friday, that's for sure.

Rogers & iPhone - The Plot Thickens...

I've decided to wait a week or so before pulling the trigger on the iPhone, and it seems like there might be good reason. AppleInsider is reporting that Apple isn't too pleased with the plans available:

Blogger Daniel Smith claims multiple sources, including a senior Rogers representative, claim that Apple has diverted a significant amount of its initial iPhone 3G Canadian deliveries to Europe in retribution for the carrier's steep rate plans, which at similar prices offer a third fewer minutes and limited data compared to AT&T.

Stores may be getting just 10 to 20 iPhones each and are being told to "exercise caution" not to promise ample stock on launch day, according to the rumors.

New Clamshell Blackberry Rumored to Sell for $49

If the rumor is true, I tend to think that this phone will eat up the low-cost phone segment. The key is that the phone live up to the quality expectations that are typical of RIM phones.

Since I'm on the topic of Blackberries, I have to say that I'm getting sick of quote-whoring phone analysts talking out of their backsides.

There is no such thing as an iPhone killer. There is no such thing as a Blackberry killer. And no, Palm is not on its last legs.

There's a huge segment that wants an iPod/iPhone experience. That segment is not going to be swayed by any phone offering an iPhone-like experience. The same applies for Blackberries. And if the popularity of the Palm Centro is any indicator, Palm is finally starting to get back on its feet. The phone market is huge, and if you're to believe that there is such a thing as a Long Tail, then there is plenty of room for everyone to make money.

Roger's iPhone Early Cancellation Fees a Typo?

Daring Fireball posted an update to his note on Rogers' suspiciously egregious early cancellation fees:

Apparently it was a typo that has since been corrected. The page now reads: “The ECF is the greater of (ii) $100 or (iii) $20 per month remaining in the service agreement, to a maximum of $400"

8 Days Left

The iPhone officially arrives in Canada on July 11.

While I'm glad that the iPhone is finally coming, I'm a little less excited about the plans being offered.

So many "wonderful" things have been said about it that there probably is no need for me to talk about it.

Michael Geist: 1, and 2

Daring Fireball: 1, 2 and 3

Ars Technica

The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Gizmodo

Printable iPhone Wireframe Templates

This is a little stale, but still useful. iPhone developers might find these printable templates for sketching UI wireframes useful.

iPhone... Finally!

So Mr. Jobs and Mr. Rogers are finally bringing the iPhone to Canada on July 11. The details are sparse, hopefully those prices are not subsidized and the data plan is reasonable.

Ars Android Summary

Ars has their expectedly well-written summary of the recent Android showings at Google I/O.

While not a direct competitor to the iPhone, it is definitely going to be a force to reckon with in the smartphone space. Especially if your name is Microsoft. Just today, on an important business call, with a fresh battery, my Windows Mobile phone died on me in mid-sentence... a very embarrassing situation indeed.

Mr. Rogers, WHERE IS MY iPHONE!?!??!