iPhone GPS

I’m particularly impressed by the GPS functionality on the iPhone, not so much by the novelty compass, but the underlying technology. People seem to have found a good use for this gimmick, and implemented it into some really useful apps to help us out when we get lost, plus those more in the realms of augmented reality.

When push comes to shove..

Since I started using the iPhone i’ve had all my messages being forwarded to one account. I’ve had to keep refreshing my inbox to see when the e-mails come through, which although is alright, i’m intrigued to see whether having them pushed to my phone will have any impact on the battery life of the phone. I plan to enable the function and will make posts on whether I notice any difference.

Silence is golden!

One thing that’s just happened that I do like is the fact that the phone pauses the music playing (I know the iPod does this.. but still) when you take the headphones out.. especially good if i’m listening to a bit of JLS or Cheryl Cole… :p

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some more observations.

Having a bit more use of the iPhone, a few more things have began to surface.

Firstly, i’m starting to find the keyboard difficult to use, and at times downright inaccurate. I don’t have the biggest hands in the world yet I somehow still manage to hit a “wrpng lwtter” everytime I type something meaning I have to delete it and start again. (Incidentally, the cross in the typing panel is useful as it clears all the text.. I do like that) Also, this is the reason for the rush of posts, as I intended to post these on the iPhone itself using the WordPress app, but I wasn’t finding the keyboard a quick enough way of getting my message across..

I’ve also had a chance to explore the apps store. From what I can see, there certainly are a great deal of apps out there, however, all of the good ones seem to be charged, with the demos being heavily watered down… seeing as I now have no money left now i’ve bought the phone, i’m going to have to wait until I can access this!!

The first 36 hours..

It’s been about 36 hours since I first switched on my iPhone, and in that time there are some good and bad points becoming apparent. In the interests of fairness, i’ll start with the good:

• The battery life actually seems pretty good, i’ve been using it with wi-fi on non-stop, and light iTunes use, as well as an hour or so of calls and it’s only just reached 15%.

• The e-mail integration appears to be decent enough at the moment after having forwarded all my mail to one address.
• The print screen function is useful (but I wouldn’t have known it for myself without help..)
• It works well as a music player (although i’d like to be able to change song without taking it out of my pocket everytime..)
• The screen is crisp and responsive.
• Most things are intuitive and well thought out (e.g. I like the keyboard arrangement, and the button for .com which saves a bit of time)

Now they’re out the way, some of the more annoying things i’ve noticed. First of all if your like me and refuse to read manuals of anything new then it is of note that it isn’t too clear how to switch the thing on. Intuition would suggest to press and hold the home button when in reality theres a button for it on the top…confusing. Then comes the problem of putting the phone on silent. Again not the clearest of methods chosen, this being the switch on the top left of the phone, which if I hadn’t of been told i’m sure I still wouldn’t know.

Then we come to the issue of calling people, which may be due to my phone not being on O2 but even still is confusing bordering on annoying. Whenever I make or receive a call, I get the box shown above, which because I didn’t read the box properly, I didn’t want to dismiss my call, so I missed the chance to speak the person calling me because I wasn’t able to do anything until that box had been dealt with (glad to see pop-ups are still alive and well). As a result i’m thinking of disabling my call waiting as I can’t be bothered to deal with it everytime!!

Also, at the risk of sounding stupid.. I found it hard to send a text, again needing help as I couldn’t work that I needed to click the search type bar for myself.. perhaps the people at Apple are assuming their users are owners of previous models or perhaps it’s me?

As well as this, I also found the way you need to listen to music slightly odd, as having used iTunes for the past 5 years or so, I would have thought that the iTunes app would be where you listen to your songs. After a little hunting, I found the iPod logo, which sure enough worked.

That’s all I can think of for now, but i’ll keep this updated over the next few days.

Introduction

The number 7 best joke of the year (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8216991.stm) “To the people who’ve got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn’t invent it!” was always a bit of a mantra for me. So, it came as a bit of a surprise when I suddenly felt the need to own one as i’d always managed to block out peoples attempts to show me how ‘great’ their iPhones or iPod touches were.

I’ve created this blog after a suggestion from my lecturer, coupled with some serious enthusiasm from some class mates. The angle here is going to be to note the experiences of a relatively savvy computer users experiences with something completely new, and hopefully will prove insightful to someone who should stumble upon it.