I decided to go an have a play with an iPhone today, mainly because though all the hype and discussions, I’ve yet to find any information on exactly how fast the device is to browse over EDGE or even if the device supports GRPS, and again, how fast that is for heavy applications like GoogleMaps..
The local Carphone warehouse is never busy (and I doubt it was busy last night either with the launch), so I decided to head in and check them out. The store had a separate desk with six iPhones very securely locked to the table. They were physically working units, which was good to find (none of these dummy cases!) so I started to play..
The units were initially logged onto the carphone warehouse access point, so I had a play on the device with that to judge speeds (given I have no idea what speed their wifi was running at, or the signal strength). The performance was pretty good, as you’d expect. Googlemaps worked well, with the satellite and normal views coming up very quickly. I then tested some websites I’d expect to use should i get a device, my own blog, which came up and showed the full web view quickly. It was very odd to see, given that on most mobile devices I’m used to that cripple view that comes from browsing with your phone, not so here.. Safari showed up a lovely full preview of the site that I could then use the finger pinch to zoom in on. After a little playing I found out how to make safari’s URL bar vanish to give me a clearer view of the site. I was however very disappointed with the orientation sensing. The device should swap from portrait to landscape when your turn the device, but it seems the device must be upright for it to notice this 100%, having the device on a slight slant seemed to confuse this particular unit.
I then moved onto some other sites, mainly forum based sites that I normally browse on a daily basis, The Magic Woods for instance, the site came up very quickly and again, the view of the site was wonderful in full web view, and pinching to zoom in and out was now second nature. I also have Flickr a whirl, and was surprised to see how well it performed, any flash based stuff didn’t however, so that counts out a lot of the nice part of the site, such as the slide show, and although I didnt log in to check, the organiser, and so on. I then remembered that I was still working on the Wifi connection. So I went back into preferences and turned off wifi (noticing also the airplane mode for ipod only access).
It’s been a pondering point for a few weeks on if the device supported GRPS, a lots been said about EDGE and O2 rolling out more, you can even now get EDGE at Backerloo underground on the platform! But nothings been mentioned about the device falling back to GPRS is EDGE and Wifi isn’t available.
An iPhone running under GPRS seemed to be fairly usable. the previous websites and forums worked fine, although viewing photos in Flickr over GPRS seemed to be a lot slower understandably. I also found it difficult to access the BA online check-in service over GPRS, on wifi it seemed fine, however I’d not checked the section where you can re-choose your seats (I have a sneaking suspicion that this uses flash, and hence wont work on the iPhone). Even googlemaps on GRPS seemed usable, it certainly didn’t fire up as quickly as on Wifi, but it was still very usable. Why Apple has decided not to support flash is beyond me, with so many web 2.0 sites out there now, and with so many sites relying on some sort of flash support, it seems a bit odd..
I was also assuming this was using GPRS rather than EDGE, as my over phone, my D900i was only showing GRPS and not EDGE support in the same location, So on the whole.. the experience was pleasant, I wouldn’t say it was earth shattering, but the device is nice, but it’s still a question as to if its that nice?
The major drawbacks are O2’s tariffs and restrictions, the fair use seems to be a bit cloudy, O2’s official statement says;
Your O2 tariff for iPhone allows you unlimited use of O2 UK’s Edge / GPRS networks and The Cloud’s UK Wireless LAN network, for personal internet use, email and Visual Voicemail (VVM) on your iPhone only. All usage must be for your private, personal and non-commercial purposes.
You may not use your SIM Card in any other device, or use your SIM Card or iPhone to allow the continuous streaming of any audio / video content, enable P2P or file sharing or use them in such a way that adversely impacts the service to other O2 customers.
If O2 reasonably suspect you are not acting in accordance with this policy O2 reserves the right to impose further charges or disconnect your tariff at any time, having attempted to contact you first.
There is no incentive to upgrade for existing O2 customers (except that if you brought your phone and contract before 18th September 2007 you can swap your contract over without having to pay the remaining months of your contract (or your get out clause), although the wording was a bit confusing and used to say ‘you can swap your contract to an iPhone‘, after my long conversation with their marketing department, it seems to have now changed to ‘You can switch to an O2 tariff for iPhone without paying any remaining monthly charges on your existing contract.‘ all other existing O2 customers need to pay a £219 transfer fee!! O2 pay and Go and Simplicity customers also don’t need to pay the transfer fee.
If you exit the contract or don’t renew, your iPhone stops working full stop, you don’t just lose phone capabilities, you loose the lot. Lastly possibly the most concerning point for me is the fact that the data (wifi and GRPS/EDGE) included in your package (your unlimited usage) only extends to the UK, and given that a lot of the features on the iPhone use data (such as visual voicemail) this could cause you to rack up a tidy sum if you are abroad!! In fact even on O2’s site it states ‘You may wish to turn some of these services off before you travel, or be fully aware of the charges that you are likely to incur.’ With Apples world wide presence and the phones being so tightly linked to particular operators, it seems an oversight that Apple didn’t negotiate data to include roaming
There is also no option for free weekends, or free long weekends or anything other than the three standard packages.
Samsung announcing their new Solid State Drives in 1.8 (ipod-ish) and 2.5 (laptop) inch sizes with capacity up to 64Gb means the possibility of a 60gig iPhone might not be a far off as people think.. Turning the tables on the fact that the iPhone isn’t big enough to really hold your entire music collection..
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