I recently got an iPhone. I now understand why it is rated so highly by its owners. It lives up to its hype, and blows away all other phones. I am not going to even talk about the iPod feature of the iPhone since it’s irrelevant to me.
Interface
I was very happy with my Blackberry until I got an iPhone. The iPhone has an amazing interface. Everything is so dead simple to understand. I thought the trackball on the Blackberry was slick, but the touch interface on the iPhone is about as intuitive as it gets. I can delete emails amazingly fast (swipe right, tap on delete button), and scrolling through long lists has never been faster or more accurate.
The single most confusing aspect of a phone is its interface during a phone call — something the iPhone has fixed in a way no other phone can. The Blackberry is just as guilty as all other phones: when someone else calls in and you want to hang up and switch to the other person, how that is done is not obvious (honest, I still don’t know how). This exact scenario happened on my very first phone call on the iPhone, and I figured out what to press within the two seconds when I looked at the screen to see what to do next. The interface is really thought out.
Construction
With the Blackberry in one hand and the iPhone in the other, I can see just how “cheaply” the Blackberry was built. While it has a nice metal-looking pair of side panels, the entire thing is actually made of plastic, and in a matter of months, it wore down quite a bit. While time will tell how the iPhone holds up, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the iPhone’s glass screen and aluminum casing will hold up to scratching much better than a plastic shell.
Keyboard
And the keyboard – the point of contention for most potential buyers – is amazing. The first time I tried the keyboard in the Apple store, it was only “okay” at best. It is hard to let go of the Crack-Berry once you are used to its mini-keyboard. But after using the iPhone for one day, I can type very fast on it, and with only one finger. Its auto-correct feature is very smart, and once you learn to trust it, typing is as fast as you can spell out letters.
The Camera
I hate how the iPhone’s camera is activated by a button the screen. Why can’t it use the sound adjustment buttons on the left side? QA must have missed this obvious annoyance.
Photo manipulation is as fun and easy as Steve Jobs made it look during his famous keynote.
Browsing the Web
This is hands down a victory for the iPhone. The browser is as good as they say, and it’s refreshing to be able to see full web sites on a mobile device again. On the Blackberry, the web feels like it got filtered through a coffee can and you are stuck in 1995.
I’ll go in and also mention Google Maps here: The zoom and pan functionality work amazingly well in a touch screen environment. If I hadn’t seen Google Maps before, I would think Google Maps was designed for the iPhone.
Battery Life
The battery life on the Blackberry is amazing, especially on the 8800 series. I know from experience. I haven’t had enough time with the iPhone to claim much in this department. From what I have seen, it can easily go an entire day of playing music, regular phone usage, and minor Internet browsing on one charge and still have more juice.
EDGE Network
EDGE sucks. My Blackberry was also using EDGE, so both phones blow in this regard. But at least the iPhone can leech wireless connections (the newest Blackberries do this too).
Conclusion
The key aspect that makes the iPhone great isn’t the iPod integration or the full-featured web browser: it’s the user-interface.
I can safely buy this for my dad and know he could use it. My Blackberry, in all its simple interface glory, still had many little quirks that made it hard to figure out (for example, on the 8700 hiding or moving icons took me weeks to discover, and in the 8800 putting the phone in silent mode isn’t a one button operation).
It’s a great phone for the casual user because of its media capabilities, but it can double as a productivity phone thanks to its email and browser capabilities. I’m the target demographic for an iPhone (currently have a smart phone, don’t carry an iPod due to bulk, can spare $400), and I can imagine there are a whole lot of others in my shoes who have yet to personally try an iPhone.
The iPhone is going to easily take 1% of the market. And that isn’t even considering what happens when they drop the price to $300 later next year (January capacity increase, September price drop).