As a phone

As a phone, the iPhone has reasonable RF performance. It seems to outperform my Samsung T809, but is around or just shy of Motorola’s best such as the PEBL and RAZR V3xx. It definitely is not as good as something like Sony Ericsson w810i. Still, this puts the iPhone in the middle-tier of performers.

Sound quality is clear when used as a handset, as a hands-free setup, and even as a speakerphone although the iPhone definitely is optimized for use with the headphones. The contact list works as advertised, allowing quick and easy access to your contacts. It can synchronize with the usual Outlook/Entourage software but also with the Yahoo Address Book. The iPhone lacks voice dialing support which makes Bluetooth headsets and in-car connectivity less useful. Without one-touch quick dialing, it’s impossible to use this phone to make outgoing calls while driving. Bluetooth is also severely crippled in this first revision of the iPhone software. Other than BT headsets, I was not successfully able to pair the iPhone with other devices. The iPhone also lacks custom ringtones, although this is rumored to be added in the near future. There is no one-touch speed dialing feature, but you can have a list of favorite contacts.

As a SmartPhone

The definition of a Smartphone is loose. Everyone seems to agree that a Treo, Windows Mobile device, and Blackberry with push email are smartphones. But what about all of those phones running Symbian OS without push email? Or phones like the 3 year old Sony-Ericsson Z600 which could run Java applications and allow you to download POP email via GPRS even if it were being displayed on a 128x160 screen? Is the smartphone just a phone with a big screen? One with a keyboard? One that can access the internet? Rather than struggle with the definition, I’ll just go over the basics.

Personal Information Management runs well enough. The calendar does not synchronize with Yahoo! or Google yet, but it will sync with Yahoo! Contacts. When using Outlook to sync, the iPhone won’t recognize groups, however it does work with iCal and Apple Address Book. Like most modern PIM utilities, the iPhone is capable of storing multiple email addresses per contact. Email support also remains basic. The iPhone supports Yahoo! push-email, but not MS Exchange push email at this time.

The real magic of the iPhone is its full-fledged web browser. In the end, Safari will be the true killer app of the iPhone. For all the hype that the iPhone has received, the ability to carry the Internet in your pocket is the real deal. There have certainly been other phones with web browsers, PDAs with Pocket Internet Explorer, ultramobile PC’s running full desktop operating systems, and phones with high-speed HSPDA support. What makes the iPhone special is that you don’t need to go to special “designed for mobile devices” webpages or struggle with difficult to navigate websites. It’s not connectivity that makes the iPhone a game-changing product, it’s how it uses that connectivity.

It’s the actual implementation, ranging from the anti-aliasing of images and small text to the 6 hours of battery life. The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player to be released – it was the first MP3 player to be released with an exceptional balance of battery life, ease of use, and price. That’s the same thing that the iPhone brings to the table.

Yes, there are ultra-mobile PCs, but those don’t have the same battery life that the iPhone offers and they’re *too* big to truly be pocketable. There are SmartPhones with HSPDA allowing high-speed media downloads, even streaming TV shows, but even applications like Opera Mini rely on a modified Internet. With the iPhone, you’re not carrying WAPedia in your pocket – you have WikiPedia. You have Google. You have Digg. You have everything. With the iPhone, you can check Craigslist any time of the day, spike an eBay auction from anywhere in the world, and check up on your Facebook friends. That’s the power of the iPhone that remains untapped. Why should a physician carry a PDA with ePocrates (a list of pharmaceutical dosing information) when you can look up the same info on the Internet?

Along the same lines, the iPhone adopts Windows Mobile’s concept of there’s no such thing as closing an application. You just switch as you need to and when you come back to Safari, you’ll start where you last left off. With PocketPC, this usually ended up slowing down the PDA and users were forced to run third-party “force-quite” applications such as WisBAR. With the iPhone, this isn’t a problem at all. Whether it’s due to a better algorithm, or the simple fact that the iPhone gets the benefit of several generations of newer technology and more memory, I don’t know.

The integrated stocks and weather applications are straightforward and get the job done. The Google Maps application is exceptional and even on EDGE, the caching ends up providing a very pleasant experience. Like the desktop version of Google Maps, you can drag/slide the map around with real-time interaction as opposed to the “see next screen” approach of other smartphones. Where the iPhone stumbles is this paradigm of everything-web-2.0. While you the iPhone can read PDF, Word, and Excel attachments in email, you cannot copy a PDF to your iPhone or save it for later use.