release date: November 2007

CONTENTS

1. Review
2. Features
3. Prices
4. Similar Phones
5. Useful Links
6. Apple Phones

RATING

SUMMARY

Wi-Fi, large 3.5-inch Multi-touch screen, quad-band, threaded SMS, iTunes, iPod, motion sensor, Virtual QWERTY keyboard, 8 GB flash drive... Excellent build quality.

Phones with free gifts >>

Review

Apple iPhone. Big 3.5-inch touchscreen, iPod music player, auto-rotating screen, easy to make calls, threaded SMS, Wi-Fi, Safari Web browser and EDGE. Good build quality.

Apple iPhone v1 is missing quite a few key features other top-end phones have: No MMS, no video capture, only a 2 MP fixed-focus camera, no 3G, no GPS, no voice dialling, no flash support for Safari and no AD2P Bluetooth profile. Never mind. The new 3G Apple iPhone 3G launches July 11 2008.

The new 3G iPhone includes 3G, HSDPA - 3G means you can talk and browse the Web at the same time, GPS, Microsoft Exchange, App store, Bluetooth 2 + EDR.

Design

A pretty little mobile phone. It's thin (12 mm), has a brushed aluminium back (with reflective Apple logo) and has a nice solid quality feel to it. Black plastic is at the back bottom of the phone - the antenna is behind this. The iPhone weighs 135 g.

The left side of the iPhone features the ring/silent switch and volume buttons. The top features a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The 3.5mm jack is recessed, so many headphones can't be inserted without using an adapter.

The SIM card tray sits in the middle at the top. Insert a pin into the tiny hole to open the SIM card tray. Top right is the sleep / wake button . The 'home' hardware button sits at the base of the front of the phone. Press this button to return the home screen.

Scratch-resistant glass touchscreen: The Apple iPhone has an optical-quality scratch-resistant touchscreen. It's excellent. The glass covers the entire front of the phone.

YouTube and other video sharing sites feature lots of 'iPhone scratch test' and 'iPhone drop test' videos. Keys in pockets, passing a knife across the screen surface - no scratches at all. It is possible - but difficult - to scratch the iPhone screen.

iPhone drop tests - drop it on concrete and other hard surfaces from a good few feet and it could crack. No surprises there.

The iPhone has a 320 x 480 (HVGA) 162 PPI screen. Being glass, it gets grubby looking quick - fingerprints and other smudges. Apple are kind enough to provide a cleaning cloth.

There's no tactile feedback - other mobile phones such as the LG Viewty use haptic feedback - buttons give off a little vibration on touch.

There is no stylus - it's not needed. The buttons and icons are big enough to use your fingers. A stylus doesn't work anyway. The screen is capacitive - the glass screen is coated with a conductive coating of indium-tin-oxide - bare skin (or other conductive surface) is required.

You can adjust the brightness of the screen in the 'Settings' menu. It's a simple sliding bar. You can also turn auto-brightness on or off - iPhone adjusts the brightness of the screen for current light conditions.

Multi-Touch

Control the interface with your fingers. It's very easy, intuitive and fun to use. You can wait for scrolling to stop or tap the screen again to stop.

• Flick or drag: Scroll through menus, scroll around Web pages, photos, album covers, maps, email attachments and more.
• Double-tap: Zoom in to Web pages, photos, email attachments and maps. Double-tap the screen again to zoom out.
• Pinch: Do an outwards pinching movement to zoom in, an inwards pinching movement to zoom back out. Very easy.

3 Sensors

The Apple iPhone has 3 sensors - accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensor. The accelerometer (motion sensor) detects when you turn the phone - turn it sideways and the screen changes to landscape view. Turn it back to vertical and the screen returns to portrait view.

The proximity sensor is useful - it detects when you lift the iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches.

The ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the display's brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light.

Lock / Unlock

The iPhone uses a nifty slider graphic to confirm unlocking. To unlock, press the sleep/wake (or home) button, then drag your finger across the slider. Turning the phone off also features a slider - drag your finger across the red slider to confirm.

Locking the phone is simple - just press the sleep / wake button. You can still receive calls, listen to music and change the volume, but nothing will happen if you touch the screen. Locking the iPhone prevents it from accidentally being turned on in a pocket.

Home Screen

17 crisp and colourful application icons with text description beneath each. Just tap an icon application to select. The 4 icons at the bottom include: Phone, Mail, Safari and iPod.

The 13 icons above these are from top-left: text, calendar, photos, camera, YouTube, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Clock, Calculator, Notes, Settings and iTunes.

A very useful feature is the red circle indicators overlaying the top-right corner of the Text, Phone and Mail icons. The numbers in the small red circles tell you how many unread SMS messages, missed calls and unread voice messages and unread emails you have.

Call Quality

Call quality is OK. Could do with being a little louder.

Speaker Quality

OK. Loud enough.

User Interface

The interface is very intuitive - drag, flick and tap. The Apple iPhone has lots of cool transition effects - menus are flipped, sliding menus and other funkiness.

Icons and numbers are big and everything is very logical. The status bar at the top of the screen gives you information: signal strength, airplane mode, Wi-Fi, EDGE, lock, play, alarm, Bluetooth, battery, and Bluetooth headset battery.

All the applications are easy to use. Using the multi-touch interface is also enjoyable.

Features

Phone

Tap the phone button to make phone calls, view and add contacts and to check visual voicemail. 5 quick access buttons line the bottom of the screen - favourites, recents, contacts, keypad and voicemail. Just as on the home screen, small red circles overlay icons which have unread messages - recents and voicemail. Nice touch.

To make a call: Tap the 'keypad' button and dial a number (nice big number buttons). Alternatively, tap a name or number in the contacts, favourites or recents (recently made, received and missed calls) lists.

You can flick or drag through the lists. You can also tap a letter in the index pane on the right side of the screen. All very easy.

There's plenty you can do whilst on a call. Tap one of the 6 buttons - mute, keypad, speaker, add call, hold or contacts. You can browse through the contacts list, hold a call, dial a new number, add a call (to a conference call) - again, intuitive and easy. Press the 'home' hardware button and you can use other applications whilst on the call.

Contacts: For each contact, store a photo, name, email, number, Web site and address. You can send a text message or add a contact to favourites.

Headset: If you're listening to music, perhaps through the headset, the music fades and you take the call. The headset includes a microphone and button. Click the button to answer the phone. End the call, and the music fades back in. You can also silence and decline a call.

Conference calling: Supports up to 5 callers (4 other calls including yourself). Tap 'merge' to merge calls so everyone can hear one another. Simple. If another call comes in, you can merge, hold or ignore (the call goes to voicemail). You can put callers on hold, swap calls - all very easy.

Visual voicemail: See a list of voicemail messages and choose which ones to listen to or delete. There's no need to listen to prior messages - just tap the message you want to listen to.

Can you use the iPhone with one hand?: It's best to use both hands. Apple recommend using both thumbs to speed up typing on the QWERTY keyboard.

Currently, there's no voice dialling, recording or commands. These options will come in future updates.

Mail

The Apple iPhone has a rich HTML email client. It supports Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, .mac mail and other email POP3, IMAP and Exchange servers.

Email settings can be synced across from your computer - you can do this when you activate the phone. Setting up email is very easy - tap the 'settings' icon on the home screen. Enter all the details - SMTP, mail server address, name and password settings.

The mail client supports email attachments - photos, PDF and Microsoft Excel, Word. Photos and graphics are displayed along with the text in an email message. Tap attachment links to view them. You can zoom-in and scroll around the attachments in portrait or landscape view.

Deleting an email message is a cinch - swipe across the email, then tap 'delete'. Blue dots in the left-hand column show unread messages. There's no RSS support. 5 buttons across the bottom of the screen ive you easy access to the key options.

Composing emails: Easy. Type an email address or tap '+' to select a contact from your contacts list. You can also reply/forward email messages. To send to multiple accounts, press '+' again to add further contacts.

Safari Web Browser

Apple iPhone to the rescue. One of the best iPhone features is the Safari Web browser. View the "real" Internet - not stripped-down WAP pages.

You get the full HTML page (as you'd see it on your computer screen at home). The only difference being, the iPhone shrinks it (zooms out) to fit on the 3.5-inch screen.

You can't read the text, so you zoom in. Double-tap the screen (or pinch outwards) to zoom right in on the page. You can also scroll vertically and horizontally by dragging or flicking your finger across the screen. Double-tap to zoom out again. Tap a link to open it - far more usable than phones without a touchscreen - where you have to scroll through the links to select the one you want.

Turn the iPhone on its side to view the Safari browser in landscape mode - it's better. The QWERTY keyboard can also be used in landscape view in Safari browser.

Google search is the default search engine - you can change this to Yahoo in Settings > Safari. There's no Flash or JAVA support - if you want to view YouTube videos, use the YouTube player application.

URL entry / searching: Very easy. Tap the URL field, then tap the search button. A nifty feature of the QWERTY keyboard is that the bottom row of keys change to suit the application.

You get a @123, period, forward slash, a .com and a 'Go' button. This helps making type URLs faster. You can bookmark pages, use forward and back buttons and open a new page. You can view all open pages by flicking or dragging - very easy.

You can change settings in the Safari settings - block popups, disable JS, plug-ins and cookies.

Application Integration

As you would expect, many of the iPhone's applications integrate nicely. For example, tap a URL in an email and the URL opens in Safari. Tap a phone number in Google Maps or in an email - the number is dialled.

Text Input - QWERTY Keyboard

With a little practice, you should be able to type quite quickly on the iPhone's keypad. 25 WPM speed. The QWERTY touchscreen keyboard can be used in portrait view in all applications, and also in landscape view in the Safari browser.

Apple recommend you practice. It takes a little time to get speedy. Agreed. The keys are a little smaller and more tightly-packed in portrait view, but even with big fingers, you should be able to hit the keys accurately and type reasonably quickly... with practice.

Apple recommend you start by using your index finger. Once you become more proficient, try using both thumbs to type quicker. As you type, the letter appears above your finger. Get it wrong, just slide your finger over to another key, then let go.

Smart Keyboard: The iPhone's keyboard has a dynamic dictionary, and auto-correction. The iPhone tracks and compares what you type to its built-in dictionary.

The iPhone keyboard automatically suggests corrections as you type, to help prevent mistyped words. Suggested corrections appear just above or below the word you’re typing. To use the suggested correction, type a space, punctuation mark, or return character. The suggestions were correct most of the time.

To reject the correction, finish typing the word as you want it, then tap the word before continuing to type anything else. The second time you type the same word, and reject the correction this way, iPhone adds the word to its dictionary.

Editing text: This is a cinch. Touch and hold to see a magnified view of the text, then position the cursor.

A few other useful features include:

• Double tap the space bar to insert a period and space
• First letter after a full-stop is capitalized (in email)

The keyboard adapts per application: The bottom row of keys change for each application. Typing a URL, and you get period, forward slash, and .com keys, for example. Type an email, and there's a shortcut key (@123) to numbers/punctuation and symbols, a space bar and backspace button.

iPod

Excellent. Songs, audio books, podcasts, TV shows and video. 5 buttons line the bottom of the iPod interface - playlists, artists, songs, videos and more (albums, audio books, compilations, composers, genres, podcasts). You can edit these buttons - drag an icon from the more menu to replace an existing icon.

Stereo headset: Included in the box. It sounds fine. Has an integrated microphone and button.

8 GB flash drive: Good for a mobile phone. Doesn't compare well with 80 GB iPods. However, at let's say 6 MB per song, you could store approx. 1200 songs on the iPhone. The OS takes up some space, so you don't have the entire 8 GB to play with.

UPDATE: 16 GB Apple iPhone was launched February 5th 2008. At launch, it cost just £60 more than than the 8 GB version.

Cover Flow: Very pretty stuff. Turn the phone sideways to get into portrait view and flick through album covers. Tap an album to select it. You can drag/flick through the songs in an album, rate songs, shuffle and repeat. There's also a playhead and volume bar. It's also very easy to use.

iTunes automatically syncs content from your iTunes library to the iPhone each time you connect it to your computer.

iTunes Wi-Fi Store: Connect to a Wi-Fi network and download content from the iTunes store. Search for artists, view songs, albums, audiobooks, TV shows and podcasts - all from your iPhone. New releases, what's hot, genres, featured, top tens, downloads (status), top songs, top albums - it's pretty easy to find what you want.

Tap any song to get a 30-second preview. Tap the 'buy' button to buy. Songs will sync to your PC the next time you sync. ITunes Wi-Fi store - a nice little earner for Apple.

Apple iPhone and Starbucks: In the USA, Apple have a deal with Starbucks whereby you can access the Apple iTunes store for free in Starbucks coffee shops. There's no word yet on whether there will be a similar deal in the UK.

Text Messaging

Text messages (SMS) are viewed as conversations. The layout is similar to Apple's iChat application. View a list of conversations in a list - flick or drag up and down the list. Conversations with new messages have a blue dot to the left of them.

Messages you send are displayed on the right, messages received on the left. Use the QWERTY keyboard to enter a message. To start a new conversation, enter a phone number or tap '+' and choose a contact from your contacts list.

There's no MMS. Perhaps a deliberate move to push people to use email - Google, Yahoo and others can slap ads on email content.

Internet Access

Wi-Fi or EDGE (2.75G). Connect to your wireless broadband network at home, in the office or at one of the many Wi-Fi hotspots around the UK. You'll find Wi-Fi hotspots in restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, airports, hotels, city centres, railway stations and more.

The iPhone connects automatically when required - Mail, Safari, YouTube, Stocks, Maps and Weather. It looks for the fastest network (Wi-Fi or EDGE) and connects to it.

UK Wi-Fi Hotspot Speeds and Availability

Wi-Fi hotspots can offer speeds similar to those you get in your home or office. There are thousands of hotspots across the UK.

UK EDGE Speeds and Availability

EDGE speeds - up to 236.8 Kbps. EDGE is not very fast. Better than GPRS, but not up to 3G (384 Kbps to 1.92 Mbps) or HSDPA (3.6 Mbps +). O2 has 30% EDGE coverage at the time of launch.

EDGE is OK. Will you be happy with it? Depends on your expectations. Connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi should be faster - either at home / office, or at one of thousands public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Google Maps

Google maps provides interactive maps, step-by-step directions, search results for local businesses and satellite imagery. You can test Google Maps out at their Web site. You can zoom in and out, scroll and search for place names. It works well.

Currently, the iPhone has no integrated GPS - this will come in later iPhone versions.

Ringtones

The iPhone has 25 integrated ringtones. You can also get custom ringtones from the iTunes store. There's a ringtone column a iTunes - click a song with a bell icon and choose any portion of the song up to 30 seconds. Preview it, loop it, fade it in or out. Buy it, then sync it your iPhone.

Syncing the iPhone

Use the dock and cable. Insert the iPhone into the dock. To activate the iPhone, you need to download iTunes. Follow the instructions to sync the iPhone with your contacts, calendars, email accounts, and bookmarks on your computer.

Weather and Stocks Widgets

Yahoo widgets. Nice big weather display, search for cities, add them, re-order them. Simple stuff. Tap the Yahoo icon in the bottom-left of the screen to be taken to the Yahoo Web site where you can view city guides and other information. Same again with the Stocks widget - view the latest share prices, a cute graph, nice big graphics, green (up), red (down). Simple.

Clock, Calculator, Notes, Calendar

The clock has an alarm, timer and lap timer. It has a nifty scroll wheel - flick up and down to set the time. Add times for new locations. Simple stuff.

The calculator is very basic and it has nice big numbers. The Notes application is for - yes, saving notes. Yellow paper background, save the notes, mail them and more. Very basic.

The calendar: Simple. View today, list, day or month. Add events. Enter events on the iPhone or sync with your computer.

YouTube Player

Watch YouTube videos in the YouTube player. Quality is OK - YouTube has used H.264 video compression. View most viewed, bookmarks and search the YouTube site.

iPhone Battery Life

The battery is a non-removable lithium-ion battery. This is a negative for people who like to carry 2 (or more) batteries around with them.

According to Apple, the battery should retain up to 80% of its charge after 400 charges. Assuming a battery change every 2 days - that's 800 days (2.19 years).

Battery life:

• 8 hours talk-time
• 250 hours standby
• 6 hours Internet use
• 7 hours video playback
• 24 hours audio playback

Optimising the iPhone settings to increase battery life. Turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the equalizer. Turn on auto-brightness.

Connectivity

TV-out was introduced in the 1.1.1 firmware update. Connect the iPhone to the TV with an Apple AV cable and you can view videos and photos on your TV.

There's Bluetooth 2.0 - it supports handsfree only (use an Apple Bluetooth headset, or any other Bluetooth headset). It doesn't support OBEX file transfer or A2DP stereo bluetooth.

2 MP Camera

2 MP fixed focus camera with no adjustable settings. There's no autofocus, zoom or flash, and no settings such as white balance, image size, ISO, shooting mode, macro mode and others. There is no video capture. Yet.

Shutter lag is near-instant - there's a big camera shutter graphic when you press the camera button at the base of the touchscreen. Image size is 1600 x 1200 pixels.

When the iphone is in landscape mode, the photo is saved in landscape. You can email photos, use them as wallpaper, assign them to contacts or upload them to your computer. View a camera roll of photos - flick through the photos.

The iPhone camera image quality is OK when the photos are taken in good light and the camera has focus. The camera will get more features in future iPhone updates/versions.

Photos

A decent photo viewing application. Zoom in, drag, flick through the photos, assign to a contact, set as wallpaper and email the photo. Tap a picture, then tap the trash can icon to delete a photo - the photo gets sucked up the icon.

You can also view a slideshow. You can modify the slideshow transition effects in the settings menu - cube, dissolve, ripple, wipe across, wipe down. Pretty good.

Web Apps for iPhone

Web applications for the iPhone - Web apps are Web sites designed specifically for the 3.5-inch screen. View Web apps at http://www.apple.com/webapps/. It's a simple case of navigating to the Web application's URL in the Safari browser.

Settings

Nice, simple and usable. Settings menus are displayed in a list, separated into categories. In each settings menu, just tap or slide the option bars to change settings. Very quick and easy.

Update Log

Get software updates via iTunes.

1.1.1 - September 2007

1.1.2 - November 2007

1.1.3 - January 2008

16 GB Apple iPhone now available - Feb 5 2008

• Google Maps - hybrid map view
• Google Maps - pin your location
• Find your location in Google Maps - triangulation, get directions
• Send SMS to multiple people
• Customize icons on your home screen. Rearrange/drag icons. Multiple home screen pages - up to 9 pages.
• iMap support to Gmail
• Add Web bookmarks to home screen
• Home screen now supports pagination
• iTunes movie rentals - download movies to your iPhone. Navigate movies through chapters.

1.1.4 - February 2008

Bug fixes.

SIM free iPhone: No. O2 have signed a multi-year contract. 3 years perhaps. You can only buy a hacked unlocked iPhone.PAYG iPhone: There will be an iPhone on pay-as-you-go at some stage. No idea when.

Apple iPhone vs iPod Touch: Which to buy? The iPod Touch is thinner and lighter. It's Wi-Fi only and has none of the wireless features found on the iPhone. iPod Touch is available in 8 GB or 16 GB versions - the 16 GB version can be bought for £263 at Amazon.

Buy the iPhone - Where to Buy?

Buy online at O2. Download iTunes, register the iPhone and you're set.

Summary

Big screen phone, excellent user interface, good media players and virtual QWERTY keyboard. Missing some key features, including 3G and GPS. Wait for the next generation Apple iPhone 3G to be released on July 11 - the 3G iPhone has fast Internet access (HSDPA) and GPS.

Apple Phones

  =   coming soon

• iphone
• iphone 3g   new

Prices

Prices coming soon.

Cheap phone contracts >>

TAGS: touchscreen, fashion, music, wi-fi, smartphone, big screen, bar phones

Useful Links

Official Site:	iPhone - Apple Web site
Apple Web Apps:	Apple Web Applications
Apple iTunes:	iTunes for iPhone
iPhone Developer:	iPhone Dev Center
iPhone News:	iPhone News
Mac World:	iPhone - MacWorld
An iPhone Blog:	The iPhone Blog
Mahalo:	Apple iPhone Resources
Mod My iPhone:	iPhone Apps Directory
YouTube Videos:	Apple iPhone Videos
Images:	Apple iPhone Images

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