confessions of a serial hobbyist

This is something that I noticed but wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother writing anything about, but I figure why not…

If you get a chance to see the movie, take a note of something:
Almost every single cell phone you’ll see is a Nokia. In fact, they make a point to SHOW the Nokia emblem in a number of shots. The bad guys? Nokia N90s (or were they N93s?). The “good guy” (Justin Long)? A Nokia E62. Then running down the street they “borrowed” a phone from a guy on the street to make a call…a Nokia 9300 (maybe 9300i, I don’t know the communicators well enough). Even McClane’s daughter was shown using an S60 phone (saw the screen – looked like the S60 standby screen atleast…maybe just an S40?).

Then there’s the other lacking tech devices – I didn’t notice a lot of obviously placed Apple products. Apple is notorious for having their computers/laptops in just about every movie in Hollywood. And yet in this movie I saw little to no Apple, and a whole lot of Nokias.

Is this the beginning of Nokia actually trying to get marketting in the US, or is this just a case of the movie makers wanting phones that look “geeky” or “techy” or something…not too sure.

Regardless, see the movie, it was fantastic.

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Also of note – a Nokia N93 (I believe) made an appearance in Transformers as well…

So as I use the iPhone more and more I’m running in to things it can’t do, that frankly I never thought about – things that should just be there that you shouldn’t need a bullet-point in a feature list to have…

1. The ability to save and download files. I mean come on, really Apple? This “breakthrough internet device” can’t save an attachment from an email or download a file from the web? I almost want to hope that I’m just being stupid and missing this…but I’m not seeing it anywhere. Even if they didn’t want to give access to any kind of filesystem on the iPhone (which they apparently don’t) a “Save to iDisk” feature would be cool (you hear that Apple? it’s the sound of cross-promoting your own services).
2. The ability to upload files via the web. Similar to above, Apple seems bent on having your email be the only file storage available to the iPhone. The only ways to get files on and off your iPhone are via attachments.
3. The ability to send files to my laptop from my phone via bluetooth. Often I’ll be out and about with no net access on my laptop. Since I get my email delivered to my phone, I could just grab the attachment and send it on to my laptop via bluetooth and go about whatever I need to do.
4. Music player controls without having to take the phone out of my pocket. Sure there are SOME controls you can access – a single click on the mic will pause/resume play, and a double click on the mic will skip to the next track, but what if I want to replay the song I was just listening to? And volume controls are manageable keeping the phone in my pocket, but still requires me to reach down into my pocket and find the volume rocker to press. A few more controls on the headphones/mic would have been great here especially since there’s no controls on the iPhone itself – a purely touchscreen device doesn’t lend itself well to touch-only use…

Lastly, I wish I could say that web browser stability is something I took for granted, but that’s something that seems to be buggy and crash-ridden on every mobile platform I’ve tried. Seriously why is it so hard to make a web browser that just doesn’t crash? And I mean on some of Apple’s own pages. I log in to .mac and after logging in there’s a decent chance the browser crashes / restarts (and takes down the iPod app with it if I’m listening to music). And don’t give me the excuse of web browsers being horridly complex pieces of software – I write software for mobile platforms for a living. I know what’s involved and regardless of complexity, stability should be the top priority.

I’m sure there will be more little things that pop up, but I just wanted to note these as I thought them up. Let’s face it – the iPhone is a fantastic little device, but it’s SO very far from perfect. Hopefully software updates will help.

So I’ve had my grubby little mitts on this thing for a little over a day now and figured it’s about time to do the obvious comparison post…

In the name of being a good little Apple whore I’ll start off with what I love:

First, the hardware is nothing short of fantastic to hold and look at. Lets face it, Apple shines here. Second, the web browser is the best I’ve ever used in a mobile device and I’m going to include both Nokia’s S60 browser and the n800 in that statement. Both are slightly more advanced in that they atleast offer some semblence of flash support but the iPhone’s browser is just so slick and easy to navigate around/scale to fit to a usable size for what you’re trying to read. Rendering speed is key and that’s the biggest problem the S60 browser faces – too many instances of me left staring at a blank screen waiting for one last file to download. Third would have to be the email client. Finally we have a mobile email client that is able to easily handle multiple accounts and properly render html email. Fourth is the music player. It’s clean and elegant, can play all the tracks I’ve purchsed from the iTunes store over the years, and it’s smart enough to save my place when I’m in the middle of a podcast or something. Which brings me to the next thing I absolutely love: it has sufficient ram. Anyone with an n95 has run into apps being closed because the phone ran out of free ram. This just isn’t an issue with the iPhone. And on the topic of hardware there’s the battery life which is good enough that I don’t have to think about it or turn wifi off in normal use. And the last thing for the love it list will be the keyboard. I jumped right in with two thumb typing and am able to manage a good pace. And yes if you’re wondering this entire posting has been written on an iPhone.

Unfortunately the iPhone isn’t a perfect device. Possibly the biggest complaint is with that same keyboard I love. The text prediction code seems to randomly turn off which then requires me to pay a lot more attention to individual letters instead of just focusing on the words. While on the topic of typing, the loupe that shows up to let you precisely move through text has a nasty habit of being mostly off screen at times and therefore useless at times. Next complaint is the web browser apparently not supporting file uploads which means uploading a file to Flickr for example requires you to email. In fact the only way to really move data around on the iPhone is to email. Copy and paste, along with a text-selection mode would have gone a long way. Web browser stability is another issue I’ve run into, having it crash a few times. The only saving grace is that upon reopening the browser the pages you were last reading are reloaded for you. The camera is another letdown. I’ve just gotten used to using my phone in place of my digital camera, a task the iPhone isn’t so well suited to. And the ease of taking a photo and sending it to Flickr was easy enough that I’d actually do it. The lack of an IM client is annoying as a lot of people I talk to are the types to not carry theor phones close by, making sending an sms pointless. That pretty much wraps up the negatives for me. Then there are other lacking features but they’re things I’m not yet sure I’ll miss, such as gps and mms. They’re features I used so rarely I’m just not sure if I care.

Overall the iPhone is a sexy little device with a few issues. The good news is that atleast for the issues I care about, fixes could be a software update away.