"One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you."
- Dennis A. Peer in National Enquirer -
"One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you."
A year ago Apple released the iPhone for public consumption. I went to an Apple store to check it out and wound up buying one. A friend of mine published some blog articles about how bad it was and I took him to task for it. Now one year later, it’s time to look at it and see what I really think.
Does it collect fingerprints?
Yes it does. A quick wipe on the jeans and it’s clear.
Does it scratch?
Not for me. This is the first mobile phone I’ve had where I didn’t buy a screen protector. This is also the first mobile phone I’ve had without some kind of belt holster or case. The phone lives in my pocket all day, every day.
Granted I don’t keep my pocket filled with rocks/coins or other detritus but there are reports of other people who do and have not had problems.
From the pictures you’ll see that the chrome bezel does have scratches and the back of my phone has a few marks, but I’m overall impressed with the way it’s survived in my pocket for a year.
Apple said the phone was durable. They were right.
How’s the battery life?
For me it’s been perfect. I’ve spent all day on conference calls, including one monster 6 hour call. Non-stop. I surf the web using GPRS while traveling through airports. I surf the web connected to Wi-Fi hotspots. On a flight to South Africa earlier this year I made calls and surfed the web while waiting in airports and watched two, full-length movies and the phone still had juice when I arrived 19 hours later.
One year later the phone still has all the battery life I need and desire. It goes all day, every day. Occasionally it will even go a couple of days but my standard mode of operation is to plug it in every night when I go to bed. I’ve treated all my phones this way. Charge over night and run all day.
So claims that I would be sending my phone to Apple to replace the battery? FUD. Claims that I can’t swap batteries when I need to? Well, I simply haven’t needed to. All day, every day. This is what I need my phone to do and it’s delivered.
Call quality has been consistent. My only remaining gripe is that AT&T’s network has lousy coverage in my home. Everywhere else reception is as good as any other phone I’ve ever had.
Visual voicemail is more than a gimmick. It’s fantastic. I love it and would have a hard time going back to the old “punch a number and listen” system. You don’t quite realize how good it is till you have to deal with an old fashioned voice mail system.
Something I personally was interested in seeing was if the user experience was really better than other phones. Subjectively I can tell you it is. Web browsing is head and shoulders better than any other mobile device I’ve owned. Touching and tapping the screen comes easily and intuitively. However I was looking for a harder metric. Some kind of actual measurement that it works better.
What I came up with was the data usage as reported by the carrier. I charted out the data usage in megabytes per month with the iPhone and AT&T against the previous year with my Nokia e61 and T-Mobile. The first thing that surprised me was how much I really did use the internet with the Nokia e61. However the graph above shows the iPhone as the clear winner.
You’ll note some months are missing, my records were incomplete for the previous year with T-Mobile. Still, I was amazed. Even though I could tether my computer with T-Mobile, and not with AT&T, my data usage with the iPhone exceeded the Nokia almost every single month.
I was also surprised to see that the initial few months were not the highest. I would have expected the “honeymoon” period to see the most use and then declining use after that. However what I do see is the months where I traveled for work heavily, I used the data connection a lot more. On average I’m using twice the data bandwidth with the iPhone.
While this is by no means a scientific study, I believe it does indicate that Apple has a device that really is easier to use. Easier to use means it gets used more.
Have I been pleased with my purchase? Absolutely. It has met and exceeded my expectations.
Now you might expect that I already have one. You would be wrong.
While I’ve thought about it, I haven’t taken the plunge yet. 3G data speed would be really nice. 3G voice quality would be really nice. However both of those things come at the expense of battery life. By all accounts at 5 hours of talk time Apple is at the top of the game for 3G phones. But I still don’t want to have to plug my phone in during the middle of the day.
Truth be told, the days when I have to do 6+ hours of conference calls are the exception. But two hours of conference calls, 4 hours of sitting in airports web surfing and 2 hours of movie in flight are pretty common for me. I have my doubts the iPhone 3G can deliver all day without turning the 3G portion off. If you turn off 3G what do you have? You have an iPhone and I’ve already got that.
So I surf the web here and there and listen to what people have to say about their battery life with the iPhone 3G. Clearly there is an issue. To some it’s not important, but to me it is. I may have to wait for the next generation iPhone before I jump into the 3G pool.