All in all, the iPhone has changed my life. Seriously. It’s been 2 weeks, and 3 countries and I can confidently say this is a revolution in your hands. Everyone has sang the accolades of the iPhone. Far and away it is better than ANY phone available on the market. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and thankfully, Apple realizes this. But I thought I’d offer some constructive criticisms after my first 2 weeks of use with the iPhone.
Before I begin, I want to give a huge shout to the INCASE TEAM for hooking Staple up lovely with a bunch of their dope accessories. To be honest, I am typically not a fan of protective cases. I feel like for some strange reason, it is the duty of a device to deteriorate over time. Its like that family that used to put vinyl plastic over their sofa. I always thought “why?” BUT, these INCASE sleeves for the iPhone actually improves the performance of the phone! And I am all for increased efficiency. You feel less dainty with it. Like you can chuck it around more. Its not slippery in your hands and in the black version they sent me, it looks sleek as hell. Thank you Tony.
Ok now to the rants:
(in no particular order)
1. Let me see how many new SMS and e-mails i have from the “locked” screen.
The pop-up SMS feature is great…but something small up top, like next to the EDGE icon would be nice to see at a quick glance.
2. CONTACTS: Finger scrolling is fun, but give me the option to just type in a search field to find a name.
3. First you endanger my unborn babies by burning my balls with the MacBookPro…Now you’re killing my brain cells with the iPhone! This phone gets pretty damn hot!!
Interestingly, I’ve heard from some users that their phone never gets even warm. And others have reached boiling points even while the phone is not active nor charging.
4. If you have the iPhone retrieve your emails directly from your server, something will get become screwy with your iMail/desktop mail app settings. I instead decided to forward my main emails to a secondary email address and have the iPhone check that exclusively. Problem solved. EXCEPT!…………
5. The iPhone’s Mail feature does not allow you to customize or change the REPLY TO: email address in your sent emails. This is a VERY basic feature available in almost all other PDAs.
Which means if you send an email from your phone and the person replies to that email. You will only get it on your phone and you won’t get it on your main computer.
6. Deleting emails is fun in Mail App. (A simple swipe and tap.)
But you should also offer a DELETE PRIOR feature like they had on Blackberry’s. Emails should be separated by the day you received them so you can choose to delete an entire day’s emails in one shot. I get over 300 emails a day and swiping out each one, one-by-one is a biatch!
7. No copy and pasting of text?!?!!
8. AT&T customer service is very poor compared to T-mobile. Just FYI.
9. Can’t adjust and modify ringtones and alerts to your liking. I’m not big on T.I. as my ringtone, but I’m saying, give me some different options. I mean,the songs are already on there, why not just link them to the phone? I assume money and chargebacks are at the root of this problem. In addition; if you want to set up an alert for SMS’s, you have 2 options. ON or OFF. And if you want it ON, you’re stuck with what they give you. Overall, the sounds and alerts are a little subtle. And I assume that’s just Apple being design-y and all minimalist. But when it comes to alerts, I just really want to hear when someone is trying to get a hold of me!
9. Volume is a little low overall. Both in calls, ringers, alerts, speakerphone, etc. At maximum volume, its juuust perfect. But if I’m in a noisy area, a little extra playing room would be good.
10. AT&T International voicemail is WACK. For some reason, the message says “re-enter the phone # of the person you are trying to reach.” I mean, most people are on speed dial so to have to look in your address book and remember the number and retype it in is a pain most of my clients are not gonna bother with. Very user-UNfriendly. I called AT&T about this and that’s the way it is. Booooooo.
11. In the RECENT LIST on the phone; make little icons that represent ‘incoming’, ‘outgoing’, and ‘missed’ calls. (The red color to indicate missed calls is a little kindgergarten.) You can still see if the call was incoming or outgoing but currently you have to click once to see. Better if I see the whole list at one glance.
12. In the locked screen, you show the clock in a nice big font. But you don’t show me AM or PM! I know it SHOULD be pretty obvious. But when you wake up in a foreign land, in a dark hotel room, with crazy jetlag, and it just says 5:06…it can honestly be either AM or PM and you can’t tell the difference.
13. Allow me to customize the home screen. Why assume everyone needs a STOCK or YOUTUBE icon on the home screen?
14. Camera is great but some basic settings would be great. Like night shooting, ISO settings etc.
15. No iChat feature yet, but its pretty obvious why. AT&T, you greedy bastards; trying to squeeze every last nickel for the SMS’s.
16. Not sure if this is a result of being in a foreign network (in Barcelona, the service provider switches between Vodafone and Moviestar) but I find that at least once a day, the Mail app gets stuck trying to download mail. The mini pinwheel at the top of the screen continues to spin as if trying to get mail. I find that when this happens, its able to get the emails but the contents of the email are slower to come thru. The fix for this is to just restart the phone which always works. But that little annoyance takes me back to my T-Mobile Dash Windows Mobile days. Boooo.
17. Change the color of the CALL button or the TEXT Button. No reason they both are green. And I always mix the two up.
18. Please add a button on the home screen for ADDRESS BOOK. As of now the only to access it is via the PHONE which is a 2-3 button process.
Well, that’s it for now. Can you iPhone users out there think of anything else? Leave a comment! (on Darrin Hudson). You’d be surprised to think that Apple actually reads this stuff and the comments help in future software upgrades. That’s the beauty of the iPhone. They can make changes over-the-air.
Over and out.
