sjt Rants…

Yes, the title of this post is spelled correctly: I recently spent a week with the iPhone and found the device to be weak enough that I returned it. Let me tell you about the experience.

For quite a while I have been completely frustrated by having to carry two handheld devices. I carry a personal cell phone because, contrary to popular opinion, I do have a personal life. I carry a BlackBerry because I need it for all of my work. Having to carry two devices is necessary because of the policies in place at my 9-5 employer. They don’t want devices to be used for personal reasons (charging me $.13 per minute for personal calls). Nor are they interested in allowing devices to be used for anything they don’t think is necessary, including SMS messaging (for which they would charge me $.15 per message). A month of my personal activities on my work phone would cost about $540! That means I can’t shift my personal-use activities to the work device.

The same set of policies assure that I can’t move my work activities to my personal cell service without serious financial penalty. These polices are so old and inapplicable to the current state of technology that my employer would be completely unable to determine how much of my personal costs should be reimbursed as work-related.

But then along comes the iPhone.

The convergence of capabilities offered on this device suddenly made the thought of absorbing the work-related costs not so upsetting. I decided to give it a try.

The Purchasing Experience

I bought the device from the Apple store in the Carousel Mall. The experience in that Apple store is always a bit weird as they seem to always be too busy to work with customers. The employees I have spoken with don’t have the greatest social skills, making simple purchasing activities more complicated than they need to be. In order to initiate my purchase I had to tap one of them on the shoulder, interrupting his work practicing his Photoshop skills on one of the demo machines. I had a few questions about the iPhone that they guy answered but it was clear to me that his answers were wrong. He must have been the new guy. I asked him to confirm his answers with someone and he headed to the Genius Bar (a place that wins my personal award for most arrogantly inaccurate service name). When he returned, his answers were different and they now matched and confirmed my research. So, I made the purchase.

Setup

Connecting and configuring the device took about 5 minutes and was handled all through iTunes. No problems, no complications. There are plenty of web sites that provide details about this. Check them out if you are interested. About 15 minutes later (mostly consumed by file transfer times) I had my contact list, podcasts, music from Genesis and Delbert McClinton and the last 6 months of my photographs all synchronized to the device. 10 minutes after that I was connected with two different email accounts; gMail and the Microsoft Exchange server used by my employer.

Initial Use

Getting to know the device was a great experience. The thing feels fantastic and works beautifully. In typical Apple style, everything functioned flawlessly and there were no barriers to making any part of it work. There were no hurdles to configuring and working with the applications for stock quotes, weather information, YouTube, calculator, SMS messaging and maps. There is just something about the device that is very engaging. It makes you want to use it. And the interface completely facilitates usage.

Daily Use

My daily use of the device revealed some usability problems.

The most significant problem I encountered was insufficient battery life. If the device was used for a few phone calls all day and only occasional use of the applications I might not have had any problems. However, my days are typically 18 or 19 hours in duration, fast paced, mobile and heavily reliant on constant and immediate communication.

The first day with the device saw the battery survive to about 10 am before I had to tether it to my computer to charge. That was terribly disappointing. I started the second day with WiFi capabilities turned off to consume less power. This came with a considerable sacrifice to the performance of the device and it only made it to noon. That was when I discovered that the bluetooth radio had also been on. So, I started day three with WiFi off, bluetooth off and the screen brightness tuned lower. Turning down the brightness of the display was very disheartening because the display on the iPhone is incredible. And because the display adjusts automatically to ambient light conditions, it always looks fantastic. However, with those reductions in place, day three only got me to about 2pm. So, even with all possible reductions engaged, the device still couldn’t survive through even 50% of my day. This level of performance proved consistent over the next several days. And every time I contemplated this problem, I was even more discouraged that it came at the cost of WiFi connectivity (speed) and screen brightness (ease of use).

Physical/Environmental Issues

The device feels great in your hands. It is one completely smooth surface with the exception of the home button used to navigation from within an application to the list of applications. Because the device is so smooth, it is almost slippery. I found myself gripping it harder so I wouldn’t drop it. But, because so much of the device is the touch-screen, the more you try to hold on, the more often you accidentally make it start doing something unintended! And if you are using the device while trying to simultaneously pay attention to something else like a meeting, a conversation or snowy road conditions (of course I would never drive and compute simultaneously!), the more often these inadvertent contacts happen leaving you somewhere on the device you didn’t intend. I found it also very difficult to move the device from one hand to the other without inadvertent contact to some part of the touch screen. I’d be flying down the highway and have to change the CD…er…I mean I’d be working away at my office and I’d have to answer a phone that required switching the device to my other hand when suddenly I’m checking stocks or the weather when I intended to be writing an email (or something). Very frustrating.

Most complicating about this was the touch keyboard that appears on the device whenever you are entering information. It really is a great keyboard and it really does an amazing job of figuring out what you are trying to type and getting data entered quickly. However, because it is a touch screen, you have to be looking at it when you type. You can’t (or at least I couldn’t) get my fingers to always know they were in the right position without looking at the device. With the BlackBerry or other similar style keyboard, you can feel the keys and within a day or two can memorize which button you are pressing. Not so with the iPhone.

Application Issues

I have two very important words to say about the performance of the applications on the device: Copy and Paste! What the hell? Since when did we stop moving information around on digital devices? Isn’t that what it is all about? Don’t expect to copy a picture from a message and use it somewhere else on the device. Don’t plan to send a weather forecast via email to a friend. Don’t think for a moment that parts of an email message can be used in a note. Just plan on working entirely within the capabilities of each application and expect nothing you do in one to be part of another.

I was also frustrated by the applications that are available for the iPhone. They are really just web pages. So, you can find and install these applications, but if you are ever without connectivity, they are useless.

I also ran into another unexpected application problem: If you allow your inbox to contain unread messages, trying to determine if you have new messages involves always trying to remember how many were unread the last time you checked your email. Nothing ever indicates that you have (for example) 7 new messages. Instead, the number of unread messages goes from 51 to 58. And if you have more than one email account configured on the device, now you have to juggle two numbers in your head all the time. I found this impossible. So I ended up simply diving into each account’s Inbox to read message subjects and from information every time I wanted to know if I had new messages. [More on that below.]

Speed (Usability) Concerns

Finally, I take issue with the speed. The device itself performs quickly enough, but the implementation of SMS and email has moments where speed becomes an issue. With the SMS application, the issue surfaces whenever a message is sent. There is a delay, charted with a thermometer dialog, while the message is sent. Any time I have ever sent an SMS message on any other device, it is gone the moment I send – no delays at all. That may not seem like a big deal, but I average over 200 outbound SMS messages a month. All that wait time adds up.

Similarly, in the email application, new messages are only brought into the device as frequently as every 15 minutes. Perhaps I’ve become too addicted to my BlackBerry and the ability to manage information on a moment by moment basis. But every 15 minutes is just too infrequent for my working lifestyle. To check more frequently, you have only two choices: Manually checking for messages or Yahoo push email.

Manually checking for messages involves touching the Mail application, then selecting the account to check, then touching the Inbox from the list of account folders. Then waiting for the new messages to load (or perhaps not load if there are no new messages). Seem simple? Try checking two accounts: Touch the Mail application. Touch the first account. Touch the Inbox from the account folder list. Wait while the device checks for mail. Touch the Back button to see the account folder list. Touch the Back button to see the list of accounts. Touch the second account. Touch the Inbox. Wait while the device pulls in new messages. Repeat until you can’t stand it any more. I stopped being able to stand it after the first 90 minutes.

The other alternative is Yahoo push email. The idea is that any messages received in your Yahoo email account are automatically and immediately pushed down to the device. This presumes that you have or want a Yahoo email account and that you don’t hate Yahoo with extreme prejudice. I’ve had a Yahoo email account for years but never check it because Yahoo spam filters don’t work and I happen to hate Yahoo with extreme prejudice. But to test the iPhone, I wrote a little rule in gMail that forwarded a copy of my messages to my Yahoo account. During the course of several days testing, it become quite clear that I could more accurately predict sunspot activity than I could the performance of the Yahoo account. But that was no surprise because I happen to hate the lying, scheming, scum bastards at Yahoo with extreme prejudice.

The Return

Returning the device posed no issues. Apple gave me all of my money back even though their policy tells you to expect a 10% restocking fee. AT&T was pretty good about the return, but the bill showed up and they charged me for a full month of data usage even though I only used 7 days. I called them about it and they gave me a Good Customer credit of $20 against the $40 I owed so that was decent, albeit still very much in their favor. And, to return service back to my original cell phone I had to stop in the local AT&T store to get a new SIM card. That just took a few minutes even though the customer service rep was clearly annoyed that I arrived at their store 5 minutes before they were closing.

Summary

So there you have it: Cool tool, lots of WOW factor, really nice feature set, but best suited for someone with a slower pace about their work and more time on their hands.

sjt

Tags: Apple, iPhone, Technology, SMS, Email, AT&T