In this third installment, Philip Berne packs the iPhone in his briefcase to decide if it could make a good business phone, or at least lighten the load.
Editor's note: Part 1 of this feature series can be found here.
The big question
The most common question about the iPhone I get from friends and family is "would you recommend it?" My stock answer is "read my review," but that answer makes me sound like a jerk when a simple, one-word answer would suffice (and besides, I'm not giving the phone the official infoSync rundown until next week). So, what I've been telling people is this: if you already know that you're going to love the iPhone, go for it. Otherwise, read the reviews, and know what you're getting before you buy.
So the next question is always whether I like it. My reaction, I suspect, is similar to a lot of people who conspicuously cover the phone industry. I love it. It confounds me. It will change the industry and the way we look at cell phones and even handheld devices. It has already set us back five years in carrier – customer relations.
A convergence device?
After almost three weeks with it, I carry it with me always, but it hasn't truly replaced any device. I still carry my Treo for tethered networking and Good Mobile messaging, which our company uses for push e-mail. I still carry my iPod nano to listen to long audiobooks, which I fear would drain the battery on my iPhone and leave me stranded. I still carry a DSLR camera and a sub-compact laptop, and a tangle of cords to connect them all and charge them. Though I had an existing AT&T account, I never used the RAZR associated with it; instead, I usually used the SIM card to test review units. So my iPhone hasn't actually replaced a phone, in my strange case.
If anything, my iPhone replaced my 80GB iPod video, which I used mostly for watching movies while traveling, but I wouldn't throw out the 80GB player, as it contains my entire music collection and about 20GB backed up from my work laptop. The iPhone does a much better job with video, but I wasn't actually carrying the large iPod in my pocket, except on rare occasions.
Thankfully, I can still confirm that the iPhone does not need a case, so even though it takes up extra room, there is no need to add bulk. I had my first, and hopefully only, 'experimental' drop onto concrete, a result of the iPhone clinging to the headphones as I pulled them from my pocket. The screen came through completely uninjured, with only a few scuffs on the chrome bumper, but not the touch screen itself. Better than any other touch screen I've seen, easily.
For business?
Perhaps the best thing that will come from the early iPhone models will be the features Microsoft mimics. With the right interface tweaks and navigation, Windows Mobile could learn a lot from the iPhone's calendar and address book apps. I'm not saying the iPhone has any of the real power of fully synchronized smartphone, but at least these programs show some modern design thinking.
The document viewer in the Mail app works nicely, but I'm disappointed with the lack of ability to create, well, anything. Besides just office documents, it seems like Apple missed a real opportunity with this device. The device has accelerometers, proximity sensors, light sensors, a multi-touch screen and what could be the fastest processor on the consumer market. Where are the creative apps? Where is garageband for ringtones? Where is Keynote for MMS messages?
A lousy phone if you drive to work
Finally, occasionally I don't take the train from New Jersey, I drive. Beyond my complaints about the headphone jack, which means I must remember to bring an adapter to listen to the iPhone on the way to work, the iPhone just isn't meant for drivers. There is no speech recognition. Because there are no buttons, there is no one-touch dial. Granted, it is far more civilized to tap a person's name to call them than it is to hold an impersonal digit, but civility can't help while I'm making a call driving through the Holland tunnel and trying to read which label says: "Mom . . . mobile." Bluetooth pairs easily for hands free calls, once you've dialed on the phone, but the lack of buttons or tactile feedback means you won't be comfortably making calls from behind the wheel. Maybe that's a good thing.
Our upcoming review
In infoSync style, our review will not be an encyclopedic dissection of the iPhone and its various parts. We'll be focusing on its abilities as a multimedia smartphone. We'll save comparisons for another time, after we've looked at some formidable opponents. In the future, the iPhone may change the way we look at reviews, but in our in-depth look, we'll decide how it stacks up to our current expectations for what a multimedia smartphone should be.
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