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Apple iPhone

Posted by T3 Online on Tue 30 Oct 2007

First UK Review: Is the wonder phone all it's hyped up to be?

Has there ever been a more hyped invention than the iPhone? According to Apple's acolytes, their mobile music, communications and web-browsing device was more important than fire, the wheel and the Roncomatic Nose Hair Trimmer put together. But it's finally available in the US, and despite boasting some amazing innovations, we're not blown away.

With an industrial design and hardly any boring old buttons, it's a monolith amongst mobile phones; a slice of design wizardry worthy of Apple's glorious tradition. The hotly-anticipated touchscreen is as wondrous as hoped, even if its glass front makes you want to wrap it up in cotton wool. You manipulate it with natural movements; a pinching motion for zooming in and out, a flick up or down for fast scrolling and single and double taps. Typing takes a bit of practice - the keyboard is small, so mistyping is easy, but software that's like predictive text 2.0 means that accurate typing isn't always required to get perfect spelling.

Hello, caller

This is, of course, a phone first and foremost. Call quality is clear but a bit muted, with no static or dropouts. When you get a call, the iPhone displays the caller if they're in your contact list. With visual voicemail, a list of chooseable messages means you can decide who you listen to first - your mates, the office, or the man in Mumbai who has some very exciting news about replacement double glazing.

Whether you're listening to music or checking email, when a call comes in, you can take it and when it's over get back to work without losing your place, or any data.

As with the iPod, the iPhone battery can't be removed. It lasted about seven hours in our continuous talk test, with music playback clocking in at nearly 23 hours and videos a few minutes over six hours. All pretty good.

That's entertainment

The quality of the 3.5-inch screen is terrific; you can easily enjoy a two-hour movie. Colour bursts from the screen, and text detail is also some of the best we've seen on a phone.

You browse music by skimming through CD covers with your finger - iTunes drops the art in for you, although its image database is by no means exhaustive. Sound quality is generally good, although you may not be surprised to learn that the supplied earphones aren't amazing. As good as the cover-browsing is, it's not a match for the iPod's Click Wheel if you have a large amount of music on board.

Syncing swimmingly

The iPhone works seamlessly with Mac and Windows (though not with 64-bit Windows). You use iTunes to manage your data, tunes, videos, photos, and bookmarks. It's also compatible with Address Book, iCal, and Microsoft Entourage on the Mac, on Windows, it works with Microsoft Outlook.

Be selective about what pictures, music, podcasts, and videos you put on the iPhone. We've already half filled our 8GB iPhone - that's with 205 photos, 333 songs and podcasts, and two movies, one iTunes movie, the other ripped from a commercial DVD.

Tangled web

The browser on the iPhone is excellent when connected via Wi-Fi, displaying web pages in their full glory, not WAP versions. There's no need to squint to read text, just double tap or use a pinching motion to zoom in or out. However, there's no support for plug-ins such as Flash - bad news if you want to view a lot of online video, for instance.

The greatest flaw of the iPhone, though, is the 2G EDGE network that it lumbers you with, although a 3G version is expected here in the UK. Running at little more than dial-up speeds, it kills your browsing experience pretty much stone dead.

Supported email services include Yahoo!, Gmail, .Mac, and AOL. You can also enter settings for non-webmail services. You can view HTML emails, but you can't mark spam, and there is some lag when typing mails.

Wi-Fi generally works well, although isn't as fast as on a laptop. Bluetooth is severely limited, though. It can only be used with a phone headset, not to transfer files, sync, or listen to the iPod via Bluetooth earphones. The iPhone headphone jack is also recessed, preventing you from using some chunkier third-party earphones without an adaptor - unfortunately, these tend to be the better ones.

The iPhone is elegant and exciting and the first device in a long time that we've had a hard time putting down. However, with Flash and network issues, the non-replaceable battery and the lack of 3G, it's not the all-conquering, do-everything device we'd hoped for. Apple has some serious kinks to iron out before this hits the UK - starting with adding 3G support.

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