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Apple iPhone review and pictures

Well Apple sent Chris Moyles an iPhone on Friday but I wasn’t so lucky so had to go and buy one Friday night. Here’s my review and experiences…

At around 6.30pm on the day of launch, Friday 9th November I went to my local O2 store in Washington. Its situated in an out-of-town shopping centre that to be honest is full of pound shops and Greggs pastie shops - so I wasn’t expecting anyone queuing or any stock shortages. In fact I wasn’t sure if the O2 shop would even be open as the whole shopping centre shuts at 5.30pm. Anyway it was open and the shop was actually full of people for once, a pleasant surprise. Anyway the greeter on the door asked me how she could help, I told her I was here to buy an iPhone, she asked if I wanted a demonstration, I politely declined - nice to be offered though. So she went out to the back, brought a boxed iPhone out and proceeded to ring it up on the till. It was at this point that I asked if she wanted to see my drivers licence, passport and 2 utility bills that I had brought to prove who I am and for the credit checks etc. She told me that all that was done online when I got home, so I simply paid the £269 and left. I was in no longer than 2 minutes, now that’s how I like to shop, not being the most patient person in the world I wasn’t looking forward to sitting down and filling in all the paperwork etc that normally comes with buying a contract mobile phone.

So I get home, open the box, take out the iPhone and the USB connector and plugged it into my PC, I then fired up iTunes and waited. TBH it was at this point that I was expecting things to go terribly wrong. We’ve all seen it happen before, when a major product is launched and huge traffic spikes are sent to websites they crash. It happens every single Christmas to at least one or two major retailers. But it was my second time to be pleasantly surprised, iTunes detected the iPhone instantly and started the registration process. As I already have an iTunes account it knew who I was so most of my details were already pre-filled on the online forms. All I had to do was choose the contract I wanted (£35, £45 or £55) and fill in some bank details. Then about 2 or 3 minutes later I got an email saying that the phone was now authorised and here was my new mobile number. Champion!

iTunes then asked me if I wanted to start syncing my iPhone with iTunes and my contacts etc. The interface is really simple and you can choose exactly what elements you want or don’t want to sync with your iPhone. So I picked my options and within about 10 minutes I had my email, contacts, calendar details, photos and iTunes songs all synced on my iPhone. Sweet. I had read a review somewhere saying that the iPhone was a bit of a nightmare to sync with Microsoft Outlook but it worked with mine immediately. It even picked up my email accounts automatically so I was ready to go without having to manually input POP/SMTP settings and passwords etc. The iPhone also came fully charged so I was now ready to play!

So here it is, that’s the welcome screen with the neat “slide to unlock” thingymajig that ensures you don’t switch it on by accident in your pocket.

One of the features that I really like is the specially adapted for the iPhone, iTunes store. One press of the iTunes button on the phone takes me to the above screen. And as iTunes already knows what type of music I like it takes me straight to the R&B/Soul section. Wicked.

This is O2’s homepage that you see when you press the Safari browser button. As you can see it has links to specially optimised pages for Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Yell and the like. Really useful.

This is the RSS feeds page, again very useful.

Yet another cool feature is the way that the iPhone groups text conversations together as seen with my conversation with Frostie. BTW the whole “pretty” thing was started by Fiona who seems to think I’m some sort of pretty boy!

Click on the iPod button and you get the simply gorgeous interface to view/listen to your music and videos. Much has been written about this so all I’ll say is that the iPhone is very clever by changing the screen layout depending on if you are holding the iPhone landscape (as above) or portrait.

I was also very impressed and how good the iPhone displays videos. Take the above example of the gorgeous Alica Key’s new video for “No-One” (new album out on Monday folks). The screen is really watchable, not too small at all.

But the absolute best thing about the iPhone, and the reason you should buy one is just how damn good and usable the interface is. The menu system is really intuitive, and simple to use. A prime example, my mate came round Friday night and I gave him the phone to have a look at. Now he’s not technical at all, he can’t even send text messages despite using mobiles for about 20 years. Anyway he was absolutely blown away with how easy it is to navigate your way around the iPhone. Browsing web pages by “pinching” to expand the screen is just genius, likewise the scrolling function by just swiping your finger up/down the touchscreen. If like me you have seen the TV advert and thought that the demonstration of how the iPhone works was just a little too slick and polished then you’d be wrong. I originally thought the ad had been over-produced and wouldn’t reflect the iPhone in real life (a bit like comparing how a Big Mac looks on a TV ad compared to the soggy hamburger you actually get in a McDonalds). I’m glad to say I was wrong, the iPhone works exactly as shown on TV, no camera trickery involved!

There are loads of other very cool things about the iPhone. Visual voicemail is just so simple to use, I can’t understand why nobody thought of it before, a real time saver. And Google maps is just a joy to use, within a minute I could plan a route and get driving directions. And despite people moaning that the camera is only 2MP it actually takes a pretty decent photo, certainly better than the 2MP camera on my Motorola Krzr.

Let’s not forget just how good the iPhone looks and feels too. It just feels so sleek and solid in your hand, the glass and metal gives the feel of a real high quality gadget. I held it next to my Nokia N80 which just looks cheap and plastic in comparison.

The one thing that I can’t forgive the iPhone for is its lack of support for MMS messages. If somebody sends me a photo I have to log on to the O2 website to view it, likewise I can’t send any Now I’ll be using the iPhone for business use (web, voice and email mainly) so this doesn’t bother me. But if I was buying an iPhone as a main phone for personal use then the lack of MMS would certainly make me pause for thought. Sure, I can log onto the O2 site and view the photo from my iPhone but its a bit clumsy isn’t it?

For my purposes though I have to say the Apple iPhone is simply brilliant. Gadget of the year, and deservedly so.

What I’m listening to right now: Alicia Keys Feat Kanye West - “No One” (Remix)

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Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 5:44 pm and is filed under General Ramblings, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.