wavLength: July 1, 2007 Archive

You've heard him for years on Future Tense, now SEE him on wavLength!

I asked a couple of Minnesotans to share their early impressions of the iPhone. First up is John Nicholson, an IT help desk technician who's used many smartphones in the past. Here's what John has to say (these comments are lightly edited):

Best thing: For me the best thing is the internet browser, Safari. All those other devices use a miniature Internet, or WAP (wireless application protocol). They look horrible, as the sites all try to cram their data into teeny screens ... The internet simply stinks and is nearly unusable on all these devices.

The iPhone uses full page browsing, so what you see on your browser on your computer is exactly what it looks like on your iPhone. Double touching on a certain area makes it zoom in so it can be read. It seems to read the width of the column you touched and makes that the width of your screen. You can then scroll all around the page to see other pictures or text or whatever. It's incredibly liberating compared to the other devices. And because of this completeness, I am able to log into my company's Web mail and use it for work ...

It's so easy to switch back and forth from speaker phone, to add a person to a conference call, put them on hold when needed, and to mute - it's all right there, accessible with one button. And the 'visual voicemail' is incredible. Not having to go through 10 messages to get to number 11 is great.

And Google Maps is great ...

Disappointing: The lack of wireless syncing with Microsoft Exchange. If the iPhone would do this, it would be the perfect business device because the phone is so easy, the Internet is so complete, and it can open PDFs, Word and Excel documents without adding any other software. Because this is lacking, my company (and I've heard from some of my friends that their companies sent out similar memos) has decided not to support the iPhone.

Thanks, John! Our second reviewer is Daniel Wolter, who runs the University News Service at the University of Minnesota.

Overall, the device is as good as promised. Its intuitive, simple, and makes some basic functions more fun than on my Treo. The phone is as good as any I've owned and sounds great and the speaker phone is good. The data network seems to be the fastest I've ever had in a PDA (and the machine picks up every wireless network it finds and asks if I want to join) ...

It did take a call to a "tech guy" friend to get my work email account working as it ended up being more complex than the standard IMAP. Also, the keyboard is very easy to get to know - after a day, it has almost all my errors anticipated.

The one thing I have found disappointing is the complexity of using the contacts book for email and SMS messaging. I've got 600 contacts and it'd be nice if it would limit the contact list for each function to those contacts with an email address or mobile number. In a nutshell, that function could be "smarter".

This is a slick, trend-setting device. Also, despite all of the advance criticism that AT&T has gotten, it's performing well. I paid a $150 penalty to leave Sprint, which is a top notch provider, so I've been looking for a reason to be perturbed and haven't found it.

Thanks, Daniel!