The inevitable iPhone post
Everyone else is talking about it, so we will too. Here are our 12 initial small observations…
- It appears that it has a beautiful, flexible and refined UI.
- It makes all other phones look clunky, awkward and unrefined.
- It makes the iPod’s interface look clunky, awkward and unrefined.
- That said, in reality, making a call, starting a text message and entering my calendar on my Sony Ericsson k800 is efficient and fast. It will be interesting to see how fast the iPhone will be to do the same.
- The iPhone doesn’t offer any actual features that other phones don’t already offer. Will the interface and ease-of-use sway people to switch to the iPhone. It worked with the iPod, but lots of people bought Motorola’s RAZR despite its’ interface.
- Your fingers are going to be moving and tapping a lot, rather than sticking mainly to a small area like most phone’s joystick. Will this become annoying?
- The virtual QWERTY keyboard used for typing looks possibly awkward without real buttons.
- In the future I’d like a tiny Apple phone that does the basics well, and an iPhone without the phone element (i.e. a very slick iPod).
- Developers should be given a clear path for making applications for it. Apple is currently saying that this won’t happen, but a range of games, VOIP and Office-type applications immediately spring to mind as great features they may not deign to make, but would be a natural fit for the iPhone.
- While much of the functionality and interaction has been patented - it will be interesting to see how Nokia, RIM, Sony Ericsson, etc. will react to this. Can they in time before the iPhone launch? This is much bigger, richer and arguably better competition than the iPod’s original competitors.
- The iPhone’s web browser illustrates how well mobile interfaces are beginning to deal with pages that are larger than their screen. Designing a website for all shapes and sizes is not necessarily something we will always need to do.
- We want one.