Apple iPhone Reviewer's Comments
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This is a drop dead gorgeous phone with the best cell phone display screen on the planet and we have no problem awarding the Apple iPhone our “TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award” as a multimedia cell phone.
Many may wonder why the much anticipated iPhone did not receive the gold award, one of the main reasons is because it does not have a camcorder feature and considering this review is for multimedia phones we felt this was an essential feature. The iPhone also does not support multimedia messaging (MMS) or instant messaging (IM), Apple intends that you will use the email tools to fulfill these functions, but as we all know email is not IM.
But these three things aside, the phone is amazing and with a good Internet connection you can view web pages in their full glory and listen to your favorite music in stereo. Of course, the iPhone also makes cell phone calls and has a few features unavailable in any other phone like visual voicemail, which is a great, timesaving feature.
To read our review on the iPhone as a music phone, click here.
Apple iPhone Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Mulitmedia Features:
If you are a music lover and especially an iTunes fan, the iPhone is the best cell phone for you. It can easily sync with your PC and iTunes for your music and video. The screen quality is incomparable and the cover flow feature that displays your album art is really cool and totally breaks the mold for music file organization.
Even though the memory is only 4GB (also available in an 8 GB version), which is significantly less than many iPods, it incorporates the technology needed to display full movies. Of course it is also set up to display some YouTube videos and can play some streaming content. We found the video display to be incomparable; you really could watch a full movie on this cell phone.
It has a two mega pixel camera and has an excellent, over the top photo organizer that can also perform some minor adjustments like zooms. In addition, you can select which portion of the image that you want to display. Sadly, even though it can display video, it cannot capture video. With the YouTube connection it would be really nice if you could record video footage and load it right to your YouTube account through the phone, maybe next version.
Voice/ Text Features:
The iPhone includes all standard cell phone features like conference calling, speakerphone, voice dialing and text messaging (SMS). We checked the quality of the phone conversation in Ogden, Utah and found the call sound quality to be adequate. We are not sure if we had a bad connection or what, but the sound on the receiving end was reported to be less than average.
This phone does not appear to be enabled for AT&T push-to-talk services and cannot send multimedia messages (MMS). We tried to send a MMS from another cell phone to see how the iPhone would handle it. It refers you to a website and gives you an ID and password to see the image. We found this irksome, since typing in the weird ID and passwords proved difficult with the touch screen and it took much more time than just simply viewing a regular multimedia message. You can send images easily by email but if your friends do not have phones that support email, that can prove to be a problem.
This phone is not compatible with the 3G network; we would have liked to have seen this phone support the 3G network with backward compatibility, so you could always have access to the best quality available. In the future, when 3G becomes more common, it is likely that the iPhone will evolve.
The most unique feature the iPhone has in terms of text and voice is visual voicemail and threaded text. Visual voice mail has been a long time coming; this feature, unique to the iPhone, displays your voice mails like an email inbox and you can sort through them anyway you want. We thought this was one of the best, most useful features ever available in a cell phone. The phone will also let you rewind and fast forward your messages to any point in the audio with a slider that looks similar to what you might see in a media player. The threaded text feature displays your text conversations like iChat, so you can see your whole conversation and not just the text you are currently writing. It is also easy to switch between multiple text conversations.
Internet Features:
The iPhone is Wi-Fi capable, which is awesome. It also can use the EDGE network and has Bluetooth technology. For convenience, it can automatically detect and connect to an Internet connection.
It has stellar email ability and can display full HTML email with attachments. It has real time push email ability through Yahoo and it supports POP3 and IMAP email. The iPhone also syncs with Outlook.
Unfortunately, this phone does not support popular IM services like Yahoo, MSN, Google or AOL. It is rumored that you can go through a third party web based IM, but it does not work well and it is a band aid at best. We really do not understand why Apple made this cell phone such a great Internet phone without the ability to support popular IM services.
Productivity/ Lifestyle Tools:
The iPhone has a great mapping service through Google Maps and has basic organizing features. It can also display Microsoft Office created documents.
However, it does not support third party software. Many of the productivity programs that you have become accustomed to with Blackberry and Palm are not available for the iPhone. Although the iPhone does sync with Outlook, which is a nice practical feature for Apple to include.
Technical Specifications:
BAM, this phone hits right on the mark in this category. It is slim, good looking and has more memory and a longer battery life than any of the other multimedia phones. It is less than half an inch thick but has plenty of room to show off its 3.5 inch screen.
The iPhone includes 8GB of memory (though you cannot add a memory card for more) and runs a version of OSX. Of course it has a Safari browser for the Internet.
The touch screen takes some getting used to and it works with heat, so a stylus or long fingernails do not work. Typing was difficult, but scrolling, pinching and tapping touch commands worked quite well.
Wow Score:
The iPhone undoubtedly has the best video display available in a cell phone. The phone is also incredibly easy to use and is amazingly and surprisingly noncomplex.
Summary:
The iPhone is a one-of-a-kind device that is simple enough for anyone to use, there are no buried or hard to find features. It has mind blowing video quality and is the best music cell phone currently available.
©2008 TopTenREVIEWS, Inc.
