gtuhl: startup IT and software development

I’ve been using a Cingular 8125 since 2005 as my cell phone. It runs Windows Mobile version 5.0 and this specific version is what I mean when I say ‘Windows Mobile’ or ‘WM’ for short. This post is more of a stream of thoughts specific to the iPhone with comparisons to the 8125 throughout.

The Old Phone

The 8125 was a pretty decent phone and my favorite features were the following:

• The smartphone features in general (calendar, contacts, tasks, email). This was my first smartphone and I bought it for those features and used them heavily.
• The Exchange synchronization through ActiveSync worked very well.
• The ability to tether the phone to a laptop, I used this on several trips. It was EDGE and slow but it did work pretty reliably. I was able to make this work wirelessly over bluetooth with my MBP.
• The slide out keyboard was really nice and I could thumb-type pretty dang fast with it.
• PocketPuTTY is awesome and I used it a lot. Before PocketPuTTY there was some other SSH client that i’ve forgotten the name of that I used.
• There is a lot of stuff you can install on WM to smooth over its rough edges (e.g. OperaMini is a big step up from IE)
• It was a beast - an advantage and disadvantage. Very large to hold and store but also tough. It survived 3 truly hardcore drops with no damage aside from chips and scratches on its exterior.

It had a few annoying habits, the worst of which was it would often stop receiving calls. I wouldn’t realize it for a couple hours and then after a reboot (I had to reboot the thing a few times a week) I’d have a bunch of built up voice mail and missed calls. It was really aggravating but it seemed everyone with WM phones had the same general issues so I just worked with it and still found the phone quite useful overall.

The New Phone

A couple weeks ago the iPhone 3G came out and despite my inclination to avoid it for awhile I ended up giving in to peer pressure and ordering one a few days after release. I was out of contract, the 8125 was showing its age, and the combination of the more appropriate price (in line with WM and BB phones) and the new SDK and App store made me decide to give it a shot.

I’ve had the iPhone 3G in hand for 1.5 weeks now and thought I would offer my perception of the device compared to a WM phone I used daily for 2.5 years.

First some shots of the devices next to each other. From top/bottom they are actually pretty similar in size but the iPhone is about half as thick as the 8125. Not a huge surprise given the age of the 8125 but the newer iterations of that phone aren’t especially smaller (looked at all the smart phones at AT&T while waiting for my turn to activate).

The Good

There are a lot of things I like about the iPhone 3G but my favorites by far are the following:

• The Exchange synchronization is flawless and actually better than WM. I haven’t received a single sync error which was a common occurrence for me with WM. Email setup in general is trivially easy.
• The email/calendar/contact/browser applications are better, easier to use, and more stable.
• The touch screen works really well and the whole phone feels utterly usable. Stuff makes sense.
• The App store and installation/update process is wonderfully effortless.
• I love the visual voice mail. You can see who has left messages, call them back, listen to them individually, or delete the messages without having to dial your voicemail and listen in serial.

There are a lot of additional small touches that I appreciate like the conversational display of SMS messages, the way the phone senses when you pull it away from your ear so you can hit ‘end call’ without having to wake it up (had to do this for every call with WM), the way meeting alerts look and work, the physical mute toggle that works even when the phone is locked, the consistent usage of the home button (instead of having to hit ‘ok’ a dozen times in WM) and much more. The general usability of the device makes me use the data plan. With the old phone I felt like it was more of a thing to use in an emergency or pinch but now I find myself using Safari, writing emails (as opposed to just reading them with WM), and everything else constantly. It’s just easier.

There isn’t a good way to manage tasks in the iPhone 3G by default but that’s okay because nothing can beat Remember the Milk and the RtM iPhone web interface is really fantastic. Speaking of applications, there are a lot of really great ones available in the new App Store and a lot of the best ones are free. Some of the best I have tried include:

• The Mocha VNC and Telnet clients work great.
• WeatherBug is great. Provides watches/warnings for your location, radar, and more detail than the built in weather app.
• Yelp and Urbanspoon are pretty useful and like many of the apps make effective use of the GPS.
• In terms of games Aurora Feint and Tap Tap Revenge are very polished and fun.

There are a ton of solid apps available - the above is just a small sample of the good, free ones. I am currently using several bookmarked web applications as well and for the most part you can’t even tell you’re using a non-native application. These include RtM (already mentioned for tasks), Google Reader, Google Talk, and an iPhone optimized Wikipedia.

One more neutral (though generally positive) impression I have is towards the keyboard. I am not as fast as I was with that 8125 slide out keyboard yet but it is getting better. I’ve found that though individual key accuracy isn’t very high the auto-correction that comes in behind as you type works surprising well. If you trust it to make corrections you can work back up to near buttonized speed though I suspect it will never be as fast. One very nice touch is that the bottom keys of the keyboard change depending on your input. If typing an email the @ symbol is a key and if typing a URL ‘.com’ is one key. That’s a really nice touch and combined with the shortcut of hitting ’space’ twice inputting a period followed by space I don’t have to switch modes on the keyboard as often as I did with the WM phone.

The Bad

The iPhone isn’t without negatives.

• I’ve had it crash/restart 3 times.
• A lot of the Apps are trash (thankful for the reviews in the App Store) or have costs when they should be free.
• There isn’t yet an SSH terminal supporting an interactive command line and terminal emulation (though one appears to be coming in the near future)
• There isn’t an official way to tether the iPhone to your laptop. I did snag Netshare before Apple pulled it the second time and it works great (~650 kbps down, ~350 kbps up) but I won’t count it in general due to it no longer being available for download.

As a final point I am not a huge fan of the closed environment Apple has created but at the same time am willing to take it because the phone is so nice and the App Store is so large and easy to use. I just want my phone/PDA to work without having to fiddle and coax and the iPhone does a wondeful job of that. WM was really open but the process of putting stuff on your phone was completely irregular, disjointed, and time consuming. We will see how Apple’s approach works out in the long run as more mature applications are released. I already know of 3 applications they let reach the App store and then pulled (Netshare, BoxOffice(WTF?), and 3-Tuple). The first was against AT&T TOS, the last was a complete copy of another company’s board game Set but I have no idea why BoxOffice was pulled. It seems Apple should at the very least not screw up by letting applications through and then pulling them. If they are going to consistently miss the apps they want to block anyway why even have a review process?

The biggest negative to the iPhone 3G in my opinion is the battery life. It is not good. I unplug at 7am each morning and by the time I get home around 6:30pm I am at 10% power and seeing the warning and that’s using sensible screen brightness and allowing it to sleep quickly when not in use. My 8125 could last multiple days on occasion depending on usage while the iPhone needs far more frequent charges. You will need a car charger so factor that into the iPhone cost. If you happen to have an iPod accessory that charges iPods try that before buying something for the iPhone because it probably will at least charge. I have a Belkin FM transmitter for the iPod and though the tuner part doesn’t work it does deliver a charge to the iPhone.

Bottom Line

Overall the iPhone 3G has proved to be a huge step up from my old 8125 running Windows Mobile. It feels slightly more stable than WM and is very usable. I trust the email, contact, and calendar sync’ing completely while I distrusted it often with WM. Safari blows away both IE and OperaMini and I find myself following links in emails without hesitation and viewing web pages often because I have full confidence in being able to view sites effectively. The audio quality is very good. The App Store is awesome and I love having literally hundreds of useful applications available to install with 1 click and sync (and the apps are only going to get better as time goes on). The upgrade process for applications already installed is easy and effortless. Once a better SSH client shows up that last remaining advantage of WM in terms of applications (IMHO) will be gone. Finally, hopping on a wifi network is easy and transparent and when not on wifi the 3G speed is solid. The Atlanta area 3G coverage stretches out well past the perimeter, all the way to Hiram/Powder Springs, so I am never without it.

I’d recommend the iPhone 3G without hesitation to anyone looking for a cell phone in the smartphone category. I didn’t think I would like it as much as I do.