First impressions of the iPhone 3G

Sunday, August 30, 2009 10:18 pm By BigLig

These were never going to be earth shattering, of course, since I already have a first-gen iPod Touch, so my new 3gs is basically that, with a phone, a microphone, a camera, a GPS, a compass, mobile internet, a fatter bum, a grease-resistant screen, and a faster processor.


Actually when I write it like that it sounds like a lot. Anyhoo, let's begin.

Very easy to set up. I charged it for 3 hours, plugged it into iTunes, answered a few questions, and it started syncing. I immediately stopped it so I could tweak what it was syncing (a while back my music library grew to the point where I have to use a series of interlocked playlists to decide what to sync to the iPod), then started again. 20Gb of data later, and half a dozen text messages from O2 later, it was ready.

Physical impressions: bigger, but this actually makes it more comfortable to hold. It still (just!) fits into an official apple iPod sock, which will be acting as a case until I can find one I like in the shops. I'm not yet decided if I want a slipcase or one with a belt clip. I miss the old Blackberry belt clip cases, but my last two only had a slipcase, and I wonder if I've gotten too used to that way of working.

The screen looks richer, and it does pick up grease less than the Touch did.

The weirdest thing about it, coming from a touch, is that it has a speaker. It keeps giving me unexpected audio feedback. For example, it makes a Wolverine-style "snickt" sound whenever I lock or unlock it.

The second weirdest thing, is the extra buttons for the volume control and ringer switch; followed closely by the headphone jack being at the top.

The headphone controls, and voice command, are cool and work well so far.

Also: the UK charger is impossibly small. I thought the international charger I had for the touch was small, but the iPhone is just a regular plug head with a USB socket in it.

All my apps run well, and the speed increase is noticeable, although I didn't really have any that were too slow on the Touch .

The camera seems to work well, based on a few test shots - I'll take some more and send them to my computer tomorrow and take a good look. I think the fact that I can use applications to process them after taking is going to be significant.

I like how it handles data. It was showing an E when I first turned it on, which is worrying as I should be in good range of a HSPDA/3G signal, but as soon as I configured my WiFi, it stopped that and routes all data thru the WiFi. It turns out that this actually saves battery, as WiFi data needs less juice than 3G data; if the device is going to be out of range of WiFi for a while it;s worth turning off, but otherwise I should have it connected to a LAN as much as possible.

Last thought: I think I'm going to need *another* dock. That will bring me to:

Charging Dock in the bedroom.
Charging Dock in the work office.
Charger + cable in my bag.
Sync cable attached to my Mac.

We'll see: the charger in my bag might do for work, but a dock is so much simpler.

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My history with pocket computers

5:58 pm By BigLig , In ,

I thought it might be an opportune moment, as my latest toy gets it’s first charge, to recount my history with that strange, now forgotten, genre of electronic device, the PDA.


The first PDA I spent any time with was a borrowed Palm III. A work colleague had one - having just came to us from 3COM, who owned Palm at the time - so I borrowed it for a week to see if I liked it. Alas for my wallet, I loved it, and pretty soon I had bought my own.


That must have been about 20 years ago... Strangely enough, it wasn't my first mobile device. While I was still at school, my incredibly cool parents had bough me a Casio fx-702p. It had 2K of RAM, a single line display, and ran BASIC programs. I've still got it in a drawer somewhere.


Over time I rapidly progressed thru a series of devices. The Psion 5mx was an astounding machine, still the best keyboard in a mobile device, but just too darn big - I needed something that would fit in a shirt pocket.


The best was probably the Palm m500, my last monochrome device until, not long ago, I bought a Sony eBook reader. When I read my first book on the Sony, I suddenly realized why I had stopped reading eBooks at the same time as I stopped using the m500 - color screens were never as pleasant on the eyes as they were with a non-backlit mono screen. Tempted as Amazon no doubt are to make a color Kindle, they should bear this fact in mind.


It was the Sony Ericsson P900 that made me realize the PDA was doomed to be replaced by the smartphone. The P900 had enormous flaws, but I could take (awful!) photos, and post them to flickr (slowly and expensively!) all with a single device. And it made phone calls too.


My last true PDA was a Dell Axim X50. Like every Windows Mobile, it made me nostalgic for the days when Windows Mobiles had crappy hardware, because now they have great hardware, you realize how truly crappy the software is.


And then it was an endless series of Blackberries for mobile data, and an endless series of iPods for media playback. As soon as the iPhone came out, I knew I would end up with one. My brief time with the P900 had made me realize that carrying two devices about was only worth doing if you couldn’t get one device that did everything you needed.


Following Stephen Fry’s advice (as all geeks should), I exerted all my will power and waited until the third iteration, and in a couple of hours it will be charged enough for me to turn it on for the first time.


Someone tried to make a Palm III emulator for iPhone a while back, but it never came to anything. It ran at 450% of normal speed, you see, so it wasn’t the same.

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