The iPhone (3Gs) is bloody beautiful! I still can’t believe some of the stuff it does, it does those things so well — and it’s a phone! I’ve owned an iPod Touch for almost a year and gotten to know many of the apps, its general workings (does being able to almost touch-type count for anything?) and, those who know me will know that I’ve been pining for an iPhone for the longest time. To be able to have internet anywhere and not wander the streets in search of wifi like a twat. No more.
Of course the good far outweighs the bad, but that’ll be for another post. Yes, I would find fault with any device, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t voice those issues. Two days ago I posted a series of tweets detailing a number of gripes I have with the device; nothing major, just little issues, one or two were resolved, or work-arounds explained by those on Twitter. Each of these tweets began with “Things I don’t like about the iPhone:”.
It became apparent that one or two people had become irate at this line of tweeting and told me off for whining, asking why I bothered getting it, and with threatens of unfollowing. They were in the vast minority, and after being told to continue, I did. I got plenty of fantastic responses, and it was great to know that, although a little late to the game, I’m not the only one with minor issues as to the way Apple do things.
Here are each of those tweets with my reasoning behind each:
This is purely an aesthetics issue. On the iPod Touch, the headphone lead comes out from the bottom, which is less conspicuous than protruding from the top, white lead swinging to and fro when using it.
It would be very rare that I would send SMS messages to many people (unlike the bands and promoters who send one each week to inform of whatever gig and event is happening that evening to a list of those who likely aren’t interested). However, on this occasion I did find myself sending a txt to a large number of people to inform them of my new number and was simply irritated by the way this works. In the long-run I can see how it is a good thing.
A few times I have hit the “home” button only for nothing to happen. Unlike on the iPod Touch where there was a definite *click* when pressed. I’m certain this has been the case on other iPhones I’ve used. Not a major issue of course.
Of course I’m not trying to be a pervert, what about taking a photograph during a classical performance, play or other generally quiet event where sound would be heard. It certainly would appear that simply turning all sound off will solve this problem. Not what I was expecting, but it was a unanimous vote.
Lesson learned. Don’t get too distracted while walking!
So you can create your own ringtones (Mine is currently the intro to Certified by Calvin Harris), but only given the option of 7 tones for txt messages. I’m currently using “Glass”. Oh and I don’t permit options which require jailbreaking the iPhone.
Being quite limited on space, it does take quite a while to carefully select the music I want to listen to, which differs greatly depending on my mood. But when I selected “sync ringtones” followed by ‘apply’ only to find that this action had unticked “manually manage music and videso” and in turn removed all the music from the device, I was indeed a little pissed off. Lesson learned.
[admittedly these "tweets", as created using code from Blackbird Pie, don't look great in an RSS reader, maybe I'll just stick to screenshots from now on.]
Other than the fact that the Lock button isn’t as prominent as I was used to on the iPod, I guess there isn’t really much else (at the minute), well besides the battery life, but I’ve always been aware of that and may well look into one of those battery life extender things I’ve heard something about, and will ensure to always have a mains charger on me at all times.
I will may follow this up with a post of what I like about it, which will include the feeling of walking through busy streets listening to music when suddenly it lowers to have the ringtone audible; press the button on the remote, and begin talking. Click to hangup and music starts again. Curious of the time? Hold down the remote button and say “time” only to have the time told to me — and that was done as a complete guess.
I may also scrutinise the Vodafone plan/tarrif when I get a chance, and will be interested to see how their voice and data roaming holds up, especially in terms of cost.
The camera ain’t too bad either, here’s a photograph I took today, complete with a small bit of cropping using the Photoshop iPhone app:
