Apple ipod

10 things to love the iPhone

10 things to love the iPhone

I took delivery of my iPhone in early September, the beginning of a month that has seen personally, I effort Me Out of the Office for very long periods and only in touch with the world through my phone. It was a baptism of fire for me and for the device.

You seen the ads, played with her on the phone to the store looked over the shoulders of fellow travelers ", taken from his friend … great is not it? Or is?

In this article, I touch some of the best things about the device that completely seduced me. Or even just a little. And to keep the karmic balance I have a heavenly companion paper some of the things that make me absolutely crazy. There is enough material for two articles, I promise!

So here going in reverse order, 10 things you need to love the iPhone!

10. organizing voicemail

One of the nicest features of the device is the way it organizes your voicemail for you. More by calling voice mail, music all messages in your mailbox in the order of arrival to get to those who want to hear. They are there in a list, real names instead of numbers when the number is on your contact list. You can go directly to the message you want and avoid unwanted calls.

You are not limited to the terms of saved messages that your phone provider required – will remain on the device as long as you need. He even had to recover deleted files, deleted messages remain in the trash until you confirm the deletion.

9. Organization SMS

If you like the way the iPhone handles your messages, love, even the organization of SMS. SMS messages are organized by name of others, as before, but descends even better when a third of the messages themselves are displayed in the order as a series of appointments, such as instant messaging dialogue, so you can see the entire conversation. So good, so obvious, why has not been done before?

8. onscreen keyboard

One thing that hits you in the iPhone's lack of a keyboard or stylus. In fact, it is nearly devoid of buttons at all, which is one of the criticisms launched the iPhone.

Absence of a keyboard has been one of the reasons for delaying the introduction of the iPhone in the first place. I work in the office, probably 60% time and my PDA is often my only connection to my business, while I am out of office. Sending email through the T9 keyboard is not ideal, and most soft keyboards I see so far has been slow and frustrating. I had a couple of PDAs with slide-out keyboard and may be satisfactory, but are heavier, thicker and less attractive as a telephone handset.

The iPhone keyboard is surprisingly smooth sound. I've seen some demos on YouTube before I ordered the iPhone still had lingering doubts about how realistic. I need not have worried, though: It really is as good as the demos suggest. Auto-correction of the works by comparing what you type by pressing hit the button, if you hit a "h" instead of "g" to pick it up and correct their error.

It's not perfect, however. I have problems with consistency to reach the space bar and seem to hit the letter "b" instead. The correction is defective keys, but not necessarily going to correct an error spelling if you put too many or too few letters in the word. They should also be about 60-70% accuracy with keystrokes or algorithm gives up. Rejecting a proposal for self-correction requires that you press on the tiny x "at the end of the suggestion rather than a dedicated button or back as in most applications Windows, and can be very difficult.

But overall the keyboard works well and I must admit that it is more useful than the keyboards on most Windows Mobile PDAs I had. Do not know yet if I prefer handwriting recognition with a stylus, but I can live with it.

7. iPod Phone

Although lacks the intuitive touch interface of the original wheel and the iPod, iPhone, iTouch and, which is the interface for full-screen iPod that gives you faster access and direct media stored on the device. I prefer the iPod wheel but I confess that one and six half dozen of another.

Although memory of 8 GB or 16 GB iPhone is shared between features of the iPod and other applications that rely on storage, yet can store up to 3000 songs which is more or less my collection entire CD. I can read too many movies, and the screen is more than enough to do it, but typical movie takes up to 2 GB of storage, so Sure, "budget" it.

Across the iPhone serves me as a media player, particularly as BMW has integrated my iPod directly to the iDrive, so I can access my music collection through the car steering wheel and navigation screen.

6. Motion detectors and how landscape (one point)

The iPhone is full of sensors. Proximity sensors to know that you are using as a phone. light sensors to adjust brightness. Detectors of movement that is moving the thing around (much effect on "Lightsaber Unleashed" – a free demo on iTunes).

Motion detectors are used for greater impact in the Safari browser and the document to detect the tilt of the screen to view in landscape mode. Document too laterally readable on screen? Just the device and it will change the screen orientation. Cute!

The only problem is that the application of the function appears to be dependent the application and not always done in all applications on the device. Therefore, reading and electron capture does not benefit from the function, for example, while the accessories (see below) does.

5. Full web browser on a phone

Safari I'm not a big fan in general, prefer Firefox on Mac and IE on PC. However, the implementation of Safari on the iPhone is probably the best mobile browser I saw so far.

It supports CSS and Javascript and Silverlight support in the future, but does not support Flash at this time present. To rotate the screen in landscape mode, you can read most websites usually directly on the screen iPhone, while placing the "pinch" metaphor (two fingers on the screen and move all out) zoom to allow small text or fine details to consider. The touch controls on the screen as text boxes and zoom through menus on the control that allows you to fill out forms based on the browser. The browsing experience is any smooth, attractive and intuitive.

4. Native support for PDF and Office documents

In stained "in wool" Users of Microsoft, this feature has attracted more than me more than almost anything else on the device.

IPhone makes all "standard" standard Office formats (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) and, without any plug-ins. And not just Office 2003 – Office 2007 formats are supported extensible too! The iPhone is compatible with the rotation to view documents in landscape format, with a bit of zoom.

Unfortunately you can not edit Office documents as standard although a number of publishers are preparing to offer publishers of documents and spreadsheets future. However, 80% of remote work settings I can find device combination is perfect for me.

3. WiFi and cellular 3G

Parents interested IPhone appetite for mobile computing, but soon became disillusioned Europeans because of its lack of support for 3G. It is of course a thing of the past with the Mark II device.

I was very impressed by the Wi-Fi capabilities of the device, however. Although the battery consumption is far from ideal, Wi-Fi enabled, WiFi stack performs very well, especially in large offices and in public environments moving in and out of range or between access points, sometimes using different protocols, consistently. It needs to support a number of security protocols, including certificate-based TKIP WPA-2 and can interact with Microsoft focused on business security implementations.

You can configure the device to join new networks automatically and, of course, once you have configured access to a network, it automatically reconnects the next time you're within range. Operation is very, very well – so frankly you can afford to forget all that. What is the way it should be, really.

2. Ease of adding applications

IPhone Basic provides basic email, calendar management and contacts along the Safari Web browser, a camera and the iPod app. Also has an excellent aGPS and Google Maps, which is surprisingly good, although consumption of the battery with location services turned on the camera makes it almost unusable in my opinion. In other words, iPhone applications offers a very reasonable base for mobile productivity.

So what to do if you need more? The answer is iTunes AppStore, an online service accessible from the iPhone that lets you search and download applications that load your iTunes account. Until now I sample applications and especially useful items downloaded for free which is enough to get an idea of what exists and appreciate the simple installation and upgrade. I just bought implementation to date – iBlogger, a generic blogger to link to my blog and CMS. The process is simple and transparent, from the standpoint of the user, and is exactly what the user needs.

The idea of extensibility is a good thing. This is where the intersection of computer and PDA in the world of mobile telephony actually benefited consumers. But for consumers to fully benefit has to be an appropriate choice.

To date, Apple has managed to attract software companies for the game development kit with a powerful and simple distribution model. I understand the concern that some publishers are keeping the rope Apple in the distribution channel, like the Sony PlayStation, and time will tell if the engagement model developer Apple continues to attract the best developers.

Currently the iPhone does not have a standard is a tool for managing tasks with Microsoft Exchange and interfaces edition tools offering advanced basic functions like cut and paste (this is true, the iPhone does not let you cut and paste text when editing). I do not know if such claims exist in the AppStore and I have not seen it yet, because quite frankly I hope that these are provided by Apple as the standard and hope that a firmware upgrade will provide.

If I exceed my impatience, I am drawn to the AppStore and I'll probably find what you seek.

1. Great design (one point)

Apple has done a phenomenal job with the iPhone. It's beautiful! My iPhone is probably more elegant and emblematic object had. It is true, not only the most elegant phone, or PDA or laptop – as an exercise of pure physical design is excellent.

The glossy surface is difficult to keep clean and in a matter of minutes covered with finger prints, but I think that cleaning with a damp cloth lightly enough to restore its glory.

The difficulties in maintaining clean Moreover, it is also very robust and usable in day to day. I dropped several times on hard floors without apparent sequelae feels very solid in your hands. I do not worry about a case and just put it in my jeans pocket (front or back) and most often forgotten there.

The user interface is remarkable – more frequency. The pinch zoom and quick scrolling list are excellent. Add, delete and move application icons on the main screen is intuitive and can be mastered in minutes.

But the good parts of the user interface are so good that the guards in the design – the inability of the directory trees drop lots of folders mail, the absence a file manager, the absence of a cut and paste – are highlighted even more clearly and to highlight the genesis of the device.

The fact is that the iPhone is the product of a prolific group but very introspective and brilliant engineers. Is limited by any design concept of reality or in practice especially in the context of the company. In many ways, and I mean probably 80% of GDP in this case, the result is wonderful. 80% is so good that I can almost forgive Apple 20% of the absolutely essential features that are missing. For now!

About the Author

Stephen Oliver is Director of Expraxis Limited (http://www.expraxis.com), a consulting company that works with academics, entrepreneurs and inventors who need help bringing new ideas to market. We help people set their priorities, plan for their business, build relationships with partners that can help them, and work with them to help turn those ideas into reality.

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