Iphone 4 Review: First Impressions Good, but some Drawbacks

I just picked up my Bell Canada Iphone 4 yesterday and although I haven’t had it for a full 24 hours, I put it through some rigorous testing last night and thought I’d jot down some of my first impressions. My first thoughts are this is one seriously cool phone but it has some drawbacks. I’ve summarized the pros and cons below.

The Good
Easy to use and set up, and lives up to the hype with all the features like camera, video, Ipod, music store, Apps, WiFi, etc etc.

The Bad
Doesn’t sync with MS Exchange Notes and Tasks, small screen & fonts hurt the eyes, lack of customization, lack of horizontal view and spellcheck in many apps, online music store is limited, no auto-on feature(?), ringtones are limited (and expensive to buy), no default calendar reminders (a minor point), surfing the web is tricky sometimes, no Adobe Flash, and of course typing on it will make you crazy!

(By the way, I should say that I ditched an old Blackberry for the Iphone, so I'm sure some of my experience is related to the switch of platforms. I would also consider myself an average “business” user. While this review may focus on the negatives, I haven't focused on the positives because these are well covered in the media and the phone delivers as advertised.)

Out of the box it is a really cool phone: very small and light, bright screen, and sleek lines. In fact I was surprised by how small the box itself was. The woman asked me in the store if I was excited, and I must confess yes, I was like a little kid at Christmas. It’s silly that one phone can generate this much hype but of course because the phone is so hard to get it makes it even cooler! (I have been trying since launch date in Canada and was on the waiting list for the last 2 weeks). Mostly it lives up to the hype and I was impressed how easy it is to use and setup. I was expecting that it would take me a few days to get it set up but it only took a few minutes and then I could actually get down to the business of using it.

My first disappointment came when I discovered that it won’t sync with MS Exchange Notes and Tasks, which is something I use frequently. I will need to develop a work around for this. Email, calendar and contact were a breeze to sync with MS Exchange server and our IT guys set this up quickly. Another small complaint I have is the default calendar reminders – when you set up an appointment on the iphone there is no option to allow a default reminder and you have to set one up as another step in making an appointment. Also, the minimum reminder is 5 minutes, where on Blackberry I often used the 0 minutes reminder for some appointments. There is also no "snooze" function on calendar reminders. Minor points but will take some getting used to.

Of course typing on the phone is a pain, but I don’t need to elaborate and people say it gets easier. It is especially difficult though through the setup because many WiFi keys and passwords can be quite long with upper and lower case letters and numbers and they must be typed in exactly or they won’t work. Once I got through that everything else was pretty easy. I went onto the Itunes store and made some purchases – it was easy and then later synced to my computer easily. Surfing the web is such a different experience on the Iphone over Blackberry. It was generally very good, although because the text is so small it makes reading tricky. When I blow up the web page by pinching the screen, it then requires scrolling back and forth, and in many cases I end up selecting the banner ads by mistake when I do this (which then opens up a new window.) I think that will get easier to use over time.

My biggest complaint is the small screen and fonts. After heavy use last night testing it, my eyes are really strained. I hope this gets better because I don’t want to keep the device if this continues. I should add that because I work for long hours in front of the computer my eyes are sensitive anyway, and anyone who has looked at home theatre equipment can appreciate when I say that DLP projectors also hurt my eyes.

No Adobe Flash is a pain also, as the sites where I watch TV all use Adobe Flash. This was no surprise, but it was still disappointing to get the pop up message from Adobe saying “Apple doesn’t support our technology”. Get it together people!

Lack of customization – maybe I’m just being picky, but on the Blackberry nearly everything is customizable, such as different ringers for different message types or volume levels, etc etc. The Iphone 4 is great because it is so simple and most of the pre-set settings are the ones you want, but sometimes I’d like to be able to customize things a little more. It will take some getting used to. (or maybe I’ll look into jailbreaking!)

The online music store is limited. This was especially apparent in the ringtones and TV sections. It was easy to find the Top Ten ringtones or TV shows, but then to scroll through categories was frustrating and in some cases brought up empty categories. It seems I will be surfing the music store on my PC and then syncing from there as the selection is much better.

This next point will make you think I’m stodgy. I wanted to pick a “normal” ringtone, but the only one available is the old style telephone ringer and I know many people in my office who use that already. Most of the ringtones are fun, but not really suitable for a business setting. Not to mention, $1.29 to buy a 10 second ringtone? I can buy a whole song for $0.99 - how do you spell profit?

Perhaps I’m nitpicking over some things, but the lack of horizontal typing and spellcheck in many apps is a pain. I’m not sure when I can use the horizontal screen and when I can’t, so I’m always rotating the device and waiting for the display to turn but sometimes it doesn’t. Because the typing is so tricky I wait for the auto-correct to kick in but many times it doesn't either. I'm sure that will improve over time.

Lastly, I should say that I set the alarm to go off this morning but the phone was off and so the alarm didn't go off. Maybe there is a way to turn it on with the phone off, but I couldn't find it. Blackberry allows you to set the auto on/off feature for the phone. I will keep playing around with this. At least you know with the Iphone there are enough online forums out there I'm sure I can't be the only one with these issues.

That's it in a nutshell as far as first impressions go, so hopefully this is helpful. Overall it's a great phone and I will probably keep it, although it does take some getting used to!

Keywords: iphone4 review, blackberry, iphone 4

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