| Mini Review of the Apple iPhone 3G |
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The iPhone it seems has risen to a status above its true station in life.
The iPhone is perceived by many as gift from god (which may be why it
garnered the nickname The Jesus Phone). However, it’s still just a
phone, and so in this mini-review (which was performed over a period of 2
hours at Square One in Mississauga) I attempt to look solely at this
model’s suitability as a phone. I will however comment on auxiliary
aspects of the phone where applicable. The iPhone 3G is available through Rogers and Fido. Last Updated: 15-Aug-2008 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
The phone was tested at the same time as a Nokia N95 (review pending), along
with a few other assorted Nokia models that Howard Chu brought along with him to
the meet, though the iPhone was not his.
RF Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
RF Sensitivity: Tests of this aspect of the phone
were performed in the Hall of Shame at Square One, but penetration
of the Rogers 3G service into that hall turned out to be so good that we
couldn’t even get the phone to show even the tiniest signs of weakness. We
therefore took the phones to the washrooms near the old Hall of Shame
(off of the center court). I knew those washrooms were deep inside the structure
of the mall (on the lower level) and they proved to be a great way to reduce the
3G signals to almost nothing. In that location both the iPhone and the N95
performed exactly the same, as they both began to breakup at exactly the same
place, and to exactly the same extent. Even when the iPhone was forced onto the standard 2G
network, the RF sensitivity was still top-notch.
Both the iPhone (and the N95) exhibited performance that was above-and-beyond
what I’ve found with almost any previously-test models. However, there have been
many news stories from the US about people complaining of poor service with the
iPhone in 3G areas. It isn’t clear if this is just a matter of misreading the
signal bars (which display very low on the iPhone) or a case of those phones
being lemons. Either way, the iPhone I tested had no trouble with 3G at all and
was (along with the N95) one of the best I’ve ever tested
Over-the-road Performance: I was unable to take the iPhone for a drive, and so I
wasn’t able to measure this aspect of its performance. In 3G mode of course,
there are no audible handoffs like in 2G (see What is UMTS) and UMTS has proven
to have a much more resilient CODEC than EVRC in CDMA networks. Just the same,
I’m not really in a position to guess how the iPhone would have behaved.
Audio Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Tonal Balance: I’d never had a chance to test the
original non-3G iPhone, but I’d heard plenty of horror stories about the sound
quality. By the same token, I’d also ready many reviews of the new iPhone 3G,
which praised the audio quality as being much-improved from the original. The very
first thing I did when I was handed the phone was to make calls to a few of my
standard reference recordings to judge the audio quality. I’m happy to report
that the iPhone’s sound is quite good. In fact, the tonal balance is almost
perfect, with no detectable flaws. It has just the right amount of lows and
highs to render a very pleasant and well-balanced sound.
Sound Reproduction: This aspect of the phone is
also excellent, because I could hear no added distortion or excessive hiss from
the earpiece. There was no sibilance on voices and coupled with the excellent
tonal balance the iPhone 3G is one of the best-sounding models I’ve tested in
a while. It’s certainly one of the best-sounding 3G model I’ve tested.
Earpiece Volume: Unfortunately the accolades
concerting audio end here, because the earpiece volume on the phone, while
hardly pathetic, is just too low to comfortably use the phone in noisy places
(such as Square One when it gets crowded, or out on the street). Apple would be
well advised to either increase the maximum volume of the earpiece, or at least
add a volume-boost feature such as we find on virtually every Nokia model out
there. If you don’t use your iPhone in noisy places all that often however, the
audio level is quite acceptable.
Outgoing Audio: Outgoing tonal balance is very nice
and your voice will sound clean and natural to your callers. It doesn’t do a
particularly great job of blanking out background noise, but it your voice will
always be clear and distinct no matter where you use the phone. I wasn’t able
to test the phone in a noisy car however, and so I can’t comment on how well it
would perform under such circumstances.
Speakerphone: This aspect of the phone is just
average. While the sound quality of the built-in speaker is good, the volume is
too low for use outside of a quite environment. I didn’t really get much of a
chance to play with this feature, but it seemed to work well enough to allow for
comfortable speakerphone conversations to take place in office or home
environments.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: Since ringers on most phones these
days rely on the same speaker (or speakers) as those used to play other audio
content, the loudness of the ringer is often directly proportional to the volume
of the speakerphone. The iPhone is no different in this respect, though the
volume generated should adequate for most situations.
Keypad Design: This is the first phone I’ve ever
tested that had no keypad whatsoever. I’d tested other phones that used virtual
keypads for most functionality, though not all. Other phones usually had
dedicated TALK and END buttons on them at the very least. The iPhone still uses
physical side-mounted buttons for earpiece volume, but everything else you do
with the phone is done on the touch-sensitive screen.
Throughout most of my testing I found the touch screen was a fairly good
substitute for a physical keypad, except of course that there was zero tactile
feedback. It is therefore important that you watch the display to ensure that
each key you press is accepted. Occasional key-presses were not accepted during my
experiments with the phone, but overall the accuracy and reliability was very
good. I even found that my hands were large enough to hold the phone and
operated it (for making calls at least) with just the one hand.
Display: What can I say? This is by far the best
screen to ever grace a mobile device. It sports an eye-popping resolution of 480
x 320 pixels on a screen that measures 3.5 inches diagonally. The backlight is
super-bright and the overall clarity of the display is stunning. The display
looks good even in direct sunlight. For multimedia on a small device, this is probably one of the
best screens to watch stuff on, bar none.
Icing on the Cake
Camera: The camera in the iPhone is only 2
megapixels, and while it produces reasonably nice photographs, they just don’t look
much better than those produced by any other everyday 2 megapixel camera phone.
In addition, and this is really surprising, Apple does not allow you to record
videos with it. I’ve heard that this feature is in there and can be used on
a jailbroken phone, but for the average iPhone user this is hardly of much
consequence. For such a multimedia-centric device, the mediocre camera and lack
of video is a huge oversight.
Operating System: Another big plus of the iPhone
for most users is the remarkably well-conceived operating system and user
interface. Even complete dummies can get the hang of most phone functions and
the user experience is everything Apple hypes it to be. For the average Joe this
phone is amazing, but for computer geeks (like me) however, the system leaves
much to be desired.
One of the most surprising aspects is that you can’t run applets as background
tasks. You can only open one thing at a time and it must be CLOSED before you
can run something else. The OS is a multitasking environment, but for some
reason they don't allow users to take advantage of this fact. Don't under
estimate how crippling this can be.
Another aspect that’s annoying to geeks is the way Apple is handling the installation of 3rd-party applets onto the phone (though thank god they actually have those things now, since the original iPhone didn’t allow such applets at all). The only official way to install an applet onto the iPhone is through Apple’s own store, and they only sell (or give away) applets that they approve. Experimental cutting-edge stuff will have to wait until Apple deems that appropriate.
You can of course jailbreak the phone and install whatever you like, but it’s recently been admitted by Apple that the iPhone has a "kill switch" that will allow them to remotely disable any undesirable applet. How many computer geeks are going to tolerate a BIG BROTHER approach like that?
Also, the iPhone doesn't provide any form of
cut-and-paste, making it necessary to retype everything. This is something that
users complained bitterly about in the original iPhone, but nothing has been
done to address this oversight in the 3G model.
Bluetooth: For a multimedia-centric phone the
Bluetooth implementation on the iPhone is primitive. It exists almost solely to
connect a standard Bluetooth headset and nothing more. It doesn’t even support
A2DP for high-quality stereo Bluetooth headsets. Apple got a lot of flack over
that in the original iPhone, but it obviously just rolled off their backs.
Laptop Tethering: One would
normally expect a 3G mobile device to have the ability to tether a computer to the phone so
that it can use the 3G connection to access the internet. This is yet another feature
that the phone is apparently capable of (with a bit of effort, this can be done
on a jailbroken iPhone), but Apple has decided that regular folk don’t need or
want this.
Conclusions
For me at least, the Apple iPhone is both a desirable
product and a letdown at the same time. However, I’m rather picky, and thus the negative
aspects of the phone (such as low earpiece volume, mediocre camera, no video recording,
closed application development environment, so-so speakerphone phone, lack of
tethering, and poor Bluetooth support) just don’t seem to outweigh the positives
in my mind.
Perhaps part of the problem for me was the Nokia N95 I was testing at the same
time. While certain aspects of the iPhone leave the N95 in the dust, such as its
gorgeous user interface and big & bright high-resolution screen, the
now-equally-priced N95 is a geek nirvana by comparison.
So before you run out and buy an iPhone 3G, make sure that you can live with the
restrictions placed upon you. If you can, then the iPhone will certainly please
you, because the positive aspects of the phone are quite amazing.
