The Apple Inc iPhone is one of the worlds most advanced smart phones out there with its touch screen and operating system which is Mac OS X. This phone has an iPod, a camera, email, calendar, Internet, Google maps, stocks, weather, and access to the iTunes store via a WiFi connection. This phone, despite all of its high technology, does have its low points and its very very high points. These and more will be covered in this review of the iPhone.
Interface
The interface of the phone consists of the home screen and the dock. The dock contains the main features of the device such as the phone, email, internet, and the iPod functions. The home screen has everything else such as SMS messaging, Google maps, YouTube, and more. When most people pick up my phone they are confused at first (they can’t figure out how to unlock it) after I tell them how to do this they seem to pick up on it fairly quickly and say, most of the time, “wow this is a lot easier than the interface of my RAZR” (or what ever phone they have.)
The interface does have some problems at times; such as the keyboard people with big fingers beware this takes getting used to because these “buttons” are pretty small and it can get pretty frustrating with the auto correct feature, which can’t be turned off unless you have your phone hacked.
The hardware
The iPhone has some nice hardware in it and some not so nice things that can annoy some of the people along with myself that own this device. The touch screen works like the track pad on any laptop. The screen will only work with the touch of the body not with a stylus or a finger with gloves on. The glove problem has really frustrated me a lot because I would have to take a glove off to answer the phone and to use it. The speaker for the speaker phone and listening to music while you are not using headphones is decent but is a really quiet speaker phone. Also when used with the iPod there have been cases of people blowing this speaker because of them playing their music too loud.
The phone used to have two models a 4 and 8 gigabyte; they now only have the 8gig at the price of about $400. The size really doesn’t matter because they only difference between the two is storage space everything else is the same in every aspect. The Blue Tooth feature is, well in my opinion, useless unless it’s connected to another iPhone or a computer. Don’t even try connecting to your buddies cell because you can’t transfer files like that.
The best thing about this smart phone, other than its tech is the battery life, is that it boasts 10 hours of talk time, 250 hours on standby, 6 hours for internet, 7 hours for watching video, and 24 hours for listening to music. I charge my iPhone 2 to 3 times a week, which is actually better than my old RZRS’ battery life because I had to charge that thing once a day or every 2 days. The other hardware this device has is its 802.11b/g Wi-Fi capabilities, EDGE Internet, GPRS, and its GSM quad band.
Features
The features of the iPhone are many, but alas this is the part of the phone that let me down the most. The major killer for me was the lack of customizations, this was major because it’s an Apple product and normally the ability to customize to me is synonymous with Apple (well at least with their OS). I got this and was hoping I would be able to add some of the ring tones I made for my RZR via Blue Tooth. That was a big WRONG!!! Because the Blue Tooth worked but I was not able to transfer files that way so Blue Tooth is basically useless until they do something to improve it.
The standard ring tones you receive are the crappy standard ring tones that a lot of older phones would have; SciFi, dog, classic phone, alarm, they were all really weak ring tones. It took Apple almost 2 months to give us custom ring tones but there was a catch they had to be bought from the iTunes music store for .99 cents, if you had the song already you had to buy it again but in ring tone form. Then you also can’t change the icons and the way they are organized. This was fixed when, about a month after the iPhones release, the firmware was hacked and AppTapp and Installer.app were introduced which gave people free ring tones, games, custom themes and sounds, and all the things this phone should have been able to do.
This doesn’t mean the standard features are bad, they are actually fairly good but very few. You can sync all of your contact, emails, and web addresses with the phone through iTunes, as well as having access to a very good camera that is built in. You have a calendar and a notes feature, an alarm clock, and a calculator, basically the required features of a phone. The ability to have your main email, all your contacts and visual voice mail are great but are not numerous enough to what was lacking in the features.
This is a great phone over all, I get great reception, the ear piece speaker is great, the interface is very simple, and provides me with the means of checking my web sites and email on the go. The largest problem is that of the lack of common features that you have to hack this phone to get and it also only being available through the AT&T service plans which I think was a really dumb move for Apple. It is a great piece of technology and is a little costly but for what I paid I think it was well worth the investment despite me having to hack it to oblivion.
My final score is a 8.5
This is because of the lack of features that should have been there in the first place.
P.S. There are actually 3 real buttons and a switch on the iphone one locks, one is the home button, the other controls the volume, and the switch puts it on vibrate or ring.
Evilbob2200 Contributing Writer Gamer's Perspective
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