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iPhone Questions for Early Adopters

rob@robburns.co said:
I imagine that other input methods were not a high priority for an initial US release. I would expect the phone to get most (if not all) of the Mac OS X input methods as it gets released around the rest of the World.
Click to expand...

Gosh, I really hope they don't fragment the iPhone OS into regional varieties, like those that have plagued Windows forever. When the Japanese-compatible iPhone arrives, there should be a software update that enables it on all iPhones.

Speaking of Japan, proper language support could be a killer feature. There are tons of immigrants needing a phone that handles Korean, Chinese, or Portuguese as well as Japanese, but all the offerings I've seen, including my own phone, are Japanese-only (sometimes with some half-assed English support too). I imagine that in the rest of Southeast Asia, the usefulness of a multilingual smart-phone is even greater.
 
Answers...

Okay, I'm going to try and answer everything I've seen asked so far, and probably some stuff that has already been covered:

  • There is NO push email. All email accounts are sync'd automatically from your Mail.app setups and they work flawlessly (you can also manually create additional accounts). However, these are checked manually, or on a schedule.
  • GMail works both as a web app, and setup as a POP account
  • Read/Unread in EMail syncs automatically if you're using IMAP, doesn't sync if you're using POP (as the protocols work)
  • SMS works great, it is a bit of a pain to switch for punctuation, but who punctuates?
  • No Ringtones yet. You only have 5 tabs in iTunes (Summary, Info, Music, Photos, Video)
  • No Finder, or any type of access to the filesystem. What you see on the 12 apps is all you have
  • The people getting "This number cannot be used with an iPhone" probably have some type of corporate number, or corporate "FAN" code on their account. If they move it to their own personal responsibility and/or have the FAN code removed, it will activate (I had to do both)
  • SIM Card is most definitely removable.
  • No Flash. No Flash. Absolutely no Flash. Stop asking.
  • No Flash.
  • Pics with camera are by far the sharpest I've ever seen, seem much better than the 2MP camera would imply. They're also integrated so you can immediately use them in your address book, or as wallpaper (only shows up when waking the iPhone).
  • No way to get home but hitting the "home" button, I don't have an issue with that.
  • Disk usage is found under Settings -> General -> About. It actually has very nice information about all data types and how much is in use on each.
  • Haven't found the purpose of the Notes app, since it doesn't appear to sync to the desktop. It seems like a data dead-end
  • Keyboard is English only, there are some currency symbols only
  • You cannot delete portions of a conversation, you can start a new conversation though
  • If you rotate the iPhone 180 degrees, it knows it and flips over in one motion to re-orient. However, some apps won't re-orient (YouTube won't), so those can be viewed upside down. Safari won't let you.
  • Screen is going to be very resistant to scratches.
  • Speaker quality is good, but can be "overdriven", but it's very cool to play iTunes outloud on the phone!
  • Syncing is flawless, but the initial sync is painfully slow. Go have dinner. It syncs all your email accounts out of Mail.app, so everything is automatically setup and working. It also syncs all your Safari bookmarks into Safari on the phone (so clean them up!)
  • EDGE is acceptable. YouTube vidoes will upscale and downscale based on your connection! So bad quality on EDGE (but usable), and beautiful on WiFi.
  • Nike+iPod: "This accessory is not supported by iPhone." <-- Bummer
  • No Stereo Bluetooth
  • Mail displays: PDF, Word, Images (all I've tried so far)
  • Cannot record phone conversations
  • No Terminal, no SSH, no Printing
  • No options I've found to disable Accelerometer

More to come I'm sure.

-Rob
 
Tried to answer as many as I could...

Other language options? No. I would imagine they will on the international versions.
Stable? any crashes? Not yet
Startup time? about 14 seconds
Instalock work? does it easily get triggered? I'm assuming you meant when you lock the phone so you have to slide your finger across to unlock....doesn't get triggered easily. You have to press very deliberately on the wake/sleep button
Can keychains be synced with your Mac? Not that I've seen, but when it synced my mail settings, Keychain had to allow Apple's device setting permission to get into my keychain
Screen seem scratchable? Not unless you grind it into gravel. It does smudge a lot
Speaker quality?Kind of soft. Have to turn up volume
Background noise with headphones/mic?Similar to iPod
How is using the virtual keyboard?Found it much easier than a Blackberry. Much, much easier...right off bat
How was the installation experience with importing all the stuff It pretty much does it all for you. Very easy
How easy is it to set up mail, contacts etc. Not to be smart, but how easy was it to set up your music on your iPod? It imports everything for you. No more spending an hour retyping your contacts into your tiny phone
Do you have any scratches or smudges yet? The back is nothing like an iPod. Much more scratch resistant. The screen smudges a lot. Quick wipe on your shirt or with the cleaning cloth cleans it off
How's the screen in the sun? Very comparable to a glossy Macbook screen. Very bright and no issues with the sun
How good is the multitouch? Works beautifully. Very accurate.
Does it support foreign language SMS, email and webpage? Only if the characters fit English style...like German. Chinese, Arabic, Russian, etc not supported. No special/accented characters.
Can the keyboard switch between qwerty and alpha numeric when typing? like on the wii?Not that I have seen

Network

EDGE bearable? Benchmarks?EDGE is like dial up, which is fine by me. Unscientific benchmarks: 5 seconds to load ESPN.com on my Mac (Wi-Fi DSL, 2 minutes to fully load on my iPhone with EDGE (1.5 min to load to the point where I could read it and browse. CNN.com on my Mac: 4 seconds. About 15 seconds on iPhone.
How well does it find signals?Cell...as well as any other phone. WiFi...as well as any computer I have used
For the super fast cell phone texters, can the keypad keep up with quick presses of keys, or is there a laggy delay before the input is displayed? If you've ever used a Motorola Razr, you're familiar with this lagginess. Never noticed any lagginess. Keeps up with your inputs.
Can you save websites for later view? Yes. Bookmark support
Left or right hand issues? None at all

Form Factor

How does it feel in your hands, slippery, easily droppable? Hard to describe. Feels natural in my hand. Does not feel droppable
Interface? Beautiful interface. Like any Apple product, it works like you expect it to work. Makes any other cell phone interface look like crap.
Can you input text in landscape mode? only in safari

Comparisons

If you had service higher in oomph than EDGE (like 3g), can you say how slow it is in comparison? Jump off a building level, or tolerable? I think its tolerable. It is very comparable to dial-up..maybe a tad better. I don't plan on using this as my primary browser, definitely tolerable. I really don't see that much of a difference between this and my friend's Blackberry which is on the Verizon network...and that doesn't even render complete webpages like the iPhone.

Accessories

Other accessories? car chargers were available

Data / Sync

Can the iPhone data connection settings be modified so that it can be connected to other mobile service provider? not that I see
Does the iPhone work as a regular wireless modem (just like my current Nokia 6350 does)? i.e. can I connect to the iPhone via bluetooth and browse the web on my MBP? no

Music

Can you listen to music on speaker? Yes. If you don't plug in the headphones, it automatically plays through speaker.

Financial / Contract

Are you contractually obligated to features or a particular plan, or can they be changed whenever? what you see on Apple.com as far as rate plans are what you get
Will Apple Care be available as insurance against damage. If so, how much will it cost? i saw another post on here that said that Apple.com states that AppleCare will be available for $69 to extend warranty for 1 year. Available in July
Any insurance? Nope
Did you get any discounts like military, student, or employer discounts? (And if so, how much and what employer, as well as what proof did they require?) no discounts
Which additional features (text messaging, if not included, data plan if separate and optional, insurance if offered, etc) did you choose? [nothing above and beyond. insurance not offered [/b]

Tweaking

How much free space is there on 4GB or 8GB? about half a gig is used when you unbox
Can you turn the accelerometer off? no
Video out through the headphone jack? no
Can you use iPhone as bluetooth remote? not that I am aware
Can it Print? no
Can you record phone conversations? no
 
Stella said:
What functionality does iTunes 7.3 give the iPhone?

Are you able to freely upload ring tones to your iPhone?

How long until the screen gets annoying due to finger prints - or does the screen 'hide' finger prints well?
Click to expand...

finger prints "hide" pretty well , it comes with a really nice screen cloth so smudges are just a quick wipe away.

As for ringtone..........nothing! I know i was slightly excited when we saw the ringtone tab in itunes from the wwdc screenshot and then when someone noticed 8 tabs on apple.com., but they switched it back to 6. But there are 25 ringtones on it some are ok but nothing i would want, i want a music ring but for now i have to wait
 
I can stream Quicktime movies over the web.

I havn't seen this mentioned, but iPhone is able to stream quicktime movies from websites in safari. It work both portrait and landscape as well. Try out the quicktime movies posted at crooksandliars.com
 
mac-er said:
Does it support foreign language SMS, email and webpage? Only if the characters fit English style...like German. Chinese, Arabic, Russian, etc not supported. No special/accented characters.
Click to expand...

If you are talking about display, try again. There are photos on this board, msg 32, showing browser support for displaying Greek, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean in addition to Roman scripts including accented characters. (Input is not possible). To test point the browser to this page:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/ltp.html
 
CaptainHaddock said:
Gosh, I really hope they don't fragment the iPhone OS into regional varieties, like those that have plagued Windows forever. When the Japanese-compatible iPhone arrives, there should be a software update that enables it on all iPhones.
Click to expand...

No I didn't mean to imply that. I just meant that I would imagine that the other input methods would be placed on the back-burner until the US release was ready. After that they can work on adding input methods to the iPhone (but not segmented for each market). If Japan will be rolled out next then they would add support for some of the Asian input methods (but available for all models).

I'm curious about input on such a small keyboard. Do existing phones in Japan have hardware or software keyboards for input that are that small (like thumb keyboards)?
 
Nall said:
For reference, when I went back later, an AT&T employee told me the iPhone's SIM can be used in another phone, but not vice versa.
Click to expand...

This was the answer I was looking for. Thank you.

Which means if I want to use the iPhone, I need to activate another number, regardless of if I choose to do a 2 yr contract w/ plan or go the pre-paid route.
 
Ok here's a question I don't think was answered yet (unless I missed it somewhere):

Can you disable (or altogether remove) unwanted apps, like Stocks for example?
 
cannot remove apps.....


I had a small crash with a photo processing to add contact and then the home button wouldnt work and sleep/wake didnt fix it so i sorta found a "force quit" kind of thing...it might be obvious but for those people that might not know holding the home key for 5 seconds cancels everything and force quits to the home screen.
 
New Question: How does Mail handle Rules and Mailboxes? Does it port your existing rules and mailboxes over from Mail.app? If not, is there a way to establish rules and mailboxes on the iPhone itself?

Thanks.
 
text messages

love the phone so far. couple of things i find missing. there doesn't seem to be any way to send one text message to multiple people at the same time. my friends and i do this all the time. i think thats a big thing to be missing. is that something that can be addressed in a software update?

also, you cant save any drafts of text messages if you want to start a text and then go back to it later to send.
 
TheAnswer said:
New Question: How does Mail handle Rules and Mailboxes? Does it port your existing rules and mailboxes over from Mail.app? If not, is there a way to establish rules and mailboxes on the iPhone itself?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

There are no rules - you can't do any filtration. You also dont have the ability to create your own folders.

The Mail app needs some enhancements. Its really really simple. It doesn't even let you set custom ports for accounts - so if your POP interface is running on a non standard port - oh oh.

matttnyc said:
love the phone so far. couple of things i find missing. there doesn't seem to be any way to send one text message to multiple people at the same time. my friends and i do this all the time. i think thats a big thing to be missing. is that something that can be addressed in a software update?

also, you cant save any drafts of text messages if you want to start a text and then go back to it later to send.
Click to expand...

You need to create a "group" and then send the text to the group by puting the group name in the to: field.

Edit: hmm - I can't get that to work. I'm going off something I read - let me try and find out where I read it.
 
princigalli said:
What would happen if I put a prepaid ATT SIm card in the phone? I suppose it would still work because it recognizes still being on ATT?
Click to expand...

So far, no one has tried this. I posted something similar to this in either this thread or another one. It's matter of finding someone with an iPhone to let you try this. The odds are that it won't work, even though it's technically possible.... limited by the contract and/or new number restrictions on the phone.
 
Question about the camera!

How easy (or difficult) is it to take self-pics? Not the "stand in the mirror" variety where you see the camera in the picture (always thought that was kind of tacky) -- but the "extend the camera far away and point it back" kind (which at worst gets an arm in the pic, unless you're an expert like me) :D

If the button to press is on the screen, I'd assume this is rather difficult?
 
Rojo said:
How easy (or difficult) is it to take self-pics? Not the "stand in the mirror" variety where you see the camera in the picture (always thought that was kind of tacky) -- but the "extend the camera far away and point it back" kind (which at worst gets an arm in the pic, unless you're an expert like me) :D

If the button to press is on the screen, I'd assume this is rather difficult?
Click to expand...

It is definitely harder than regular phones. It's not impossible, but since it is a soft button it does make it harder. Hopefully one of these days they will make one of the hard buttons on the side a shutter release for when you're in camera mode.
 
chillywilly said:
This was the answer I was looking for. Thank you.

Which means if I want to use the iPhone, I need to activate another number, regardless of if I choose to do a 2 yr contract w/ plan or go the pre-paid route.
Click to expand...
Interestingly, I saw some claims over at Ars that people were able to activate by putting another AT&T SIM card in before they went to activate the iPhone. (This is actually something I was thinking about trying when I get one.)
 
675494285_f961970d46_b.jpg
 
JPyre said:
The vibe/switch is actually kinda hard to switch, a woman might break a nail, not really but its pretty much almost recessed, I doubt it will switch by accident very often if at all.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the answer. It'll probably be 2-4 weeks before I get my hands on one!
 
Dumb Question

Congrats to those that have taken the plunge. I'm wondering if after you have activated your att account whether you can access the internet etc from your laptop with an express card using the phone number?
 
Can someone please tell me, how it looks like, when you are typing a lon sms text message?
Does the text field become larger, or is the text going to be "pushed" to the left as you type? Post a picture:)

Furthermore, i would like to know if Groups is synced to iPhone? I use these smart groups in adress book on my mac, and would love, it i could get them on my iPhone.

And if Groups are working, can i send a sms to each member of a group, by adding the group to the recipient fielt in the sms?

Thanks:)
 
is there a such thing as a free program that will let me convert video files into i phone usable files for free that works with windows vista?? if you know of any please let me know!
 
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