I have always been a fan of portable audio, since the days of the Walkman, though I never really got into buying pre-recorded cassettes. It was the advent of the CD and the early Sony Discman that really got me going. These were battery gobbling behemoths (by todays standards), but they gave good quality music on the go. Eventually I got tired of carrying these around. But when Apple introduced the iPod that seemed just the ticket. I got a 10GB 1st generation iPod and used third party software (EphPod) to get music onto it because at that stage it was Mac only. It was a battery gobbling behemoth but suddenly you could have unheard of amounts of music with you.
About the same time I got a HP iPaq to use as PDA and for email/internet on the move. This worked reasonably well as a PDA, slightly less so for email and was pretty dreadful for Internet. It was also dismal for games, lacking dedicated controls and generally suffering from lack of quality titles. But in one area it was brilliant, it turned out to be an excellent eBook reader and I bought numerous books from Fictionwise, so I no longer had to carry paper books to read while commuting (even though a real paper book remains preferable).
So there I was carrying a phone, PDA and iPod. A few too many devices you might think? But then I ended up also carrying either Nintendo DS or GBA for quality gaming on the go. Something had to give.
I converged the phone and PDA into the iMate JasJar, which could have been a brilliant device (as well as a battery gobbling behemoth), but was crippled by poor performance and limited memory. Still, it was OK as a PDA, and poor as a phone, but stopped me carrying 1 gadget.
In the meantime various iPod iterations came and went (iPod 40GB, 8GB Nano, and finally 160GB iPod Classic). I also got a PSP to play 1 particular game (Final Fantasy Tactics) and got hooked on another (Disgaea) so I was still carrying 3 hefty devices around.
Enter the iPhone 3G. The first iteration of this did not appeal, as it lacked speedy internet and had no 3rd party apps (so no ebooks). This was remedied in the 3G version (and 3rd party apps made it onto the original iPhone as well). I could now replace iPod Classic and iMate JasJar with a single slim device (much smaller than I imagined, but as you may have noticed I have been carrying around devices on the hefty side). But would it work? The major argument against convergence is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to be best of breed in all functions.So you end up with compromised functionality or performance in some (or all) areas.
Well, Apple have some pretty clever engineers and they have not (yet) achieved the impossible, but they have come pretty close. It is early days for the 3rd party applications, but already eReader (my ebook reader of choice) is available, albiet in a limited version, but a more fully featured version is imminent. What is there is more than enough to show that the iPhone can work perfectly well as an eBook reader. And it is faster and more stable (even in this rushed version) than eReader was on the previous platform. Plus you can listen to your music while reading, the two don't intefere with each other. The other applications that I used frequently on Windows Mobile (Pocket Informant, eWallet, ListPro) are all headed for the iPhone too. Full marks there in the future, if not just now.
As for games, there are a couple of very cute games that use the accelerometer to good purpose, and the hardware is certainly capable enough. It will certainly be a good platform for diverting games, ideal for a few minutes here and there. But whether someone develops the heavy duty games that you end up playing for months at a time is open to question at the moment. Also the lack of dedicated buttons may hamper games that require precise (or very rapid) timing, though this isn't an issue for my type of turn based strategy game. If Civilisation Revolution is ported to the iPhone that could be a winner!
The built in applications work well for the most part, brilliantly in the case of Safari, which does a tremendous job of rendering full web sites for a small screen and in a sprightly manner. In fact although people have complained the the iPhone 2.0 software is slow, it is still blazingly fast compared to my Windows Mobile phone. So much so that it is no barrier to using it. You can turn the device on, and be doing whatever it was that you wanted to do within a couple of seconds. I would still be waiting for the Jasjar to settle down, then waiting for it to load the required app, then waiting for it to acquire a signal etc. Just too fiddly and time consuming.
As an iPod it works very well, with the added advantage of not missing phone calls because you are listening to music and didn't hear the ringing! It also has 2 advantages over its iPod brethren in that it has a speaker and also volume control buttons (enabling quick adjustments without pulling iPhone from pocket). The speaker is tiny (obviously) but good enough to listen to a book and even music at a pinch. The larger screen makes video watching possible, but this is still a minor attraction to me. While talking about buttons though it is worth mentioning that it also has a toggle button that toggles all phone sounds on or off. You have to remember that Apple are famously niggardly at putting buttons on their devices, still sticking to single button mice even. So for them to assign a button to this facility makes you think that they believe it is very important. And it is! Doing the same thing on my Windows Mobile phone required (unreliable) 3rd party software or endless fiddling with dialog boxes to turn this or that off. A simple idea, perfectly executed. Oh, and you can also turn the blessed thing off. Completely off. Not just in some suspended animation. Off.
So what is there not to like? Many naysayers deplore the closed architecture and vice like grip of Apple over all aspects of the iPhone. This does have its disadvantages, to be sure, but is probably the main reason why it works so well out of the box. The battery life is dismal, though not much worse than my existing phone, which if I used it as much as I do the iPhone would run down just as fast. I am already used to charging frequently, so no big deal for me. The sync of contacts and calendar information from Outlook is a bit flaky, it kind of works, but not in a way that gives you great confidence. This does need improvement, but is addressable by software releases if they apply themselves to it (as are other notable omissions like Copy/Paste). But really, as a device that shoehorns iPod, phone, PDA and a bit of a games console into a (relatively) tiny enclosure it is totally remarkable.
9/10!
