What?
In June, Apple's Smartphone was the editors' choice at CNET UK. How times have changed.
"The iPhone may be the greatest handheld surfing device ever to rock the mobile Web, and a fabulous media player to boot," writes CNET UK's Flora Graham in a mock award citation posted Tuesday. "It may be the highest-rated mobile phone on CNET UK, rocking the pockets of half of our crack editorial team. It's certainly the touchscreen face that launched a thousand apps. But as an actual call-making phone, it's rubbish, and we aim to prove it."
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What follows is a litany of complaints no iPhone owner hasn't heard — or expressed — before. But to read them in a publication that four months earlier named Apple's device the "world's best touchscreen phone" is unexpected. And in Ms. Graham's voice, sort of fun.
To quote a few of her sharper lines:
- <LI style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px">Say What?
Call quality on the iPhone is pathetic, and it's mostly because of the tiny speaker. It has to be aligned with your ear canal with the accuracy of a laser-guided ninja doing cataract surgery, or else the volume cuts down to nothing as the sound waves bounce uselessly around your ear s s.
<LI style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px">Dropped Calls and Data Gaps
If, like Will Smith in Enemy of the State, you're trying to avoid the eagle eye of Big Brother, the iPhone. could be for you. It drops calls, fails to connect and doesn't even ring sometimes — not for everyone, but more often than any other phone we're currently using.
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<LI style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px">You Can't Answer If it Doesn't Ring
Perhaps the worst of the iPhone's problems is its ability to sit there stealthily and ignore incoming calls. With no ring or vibrate to clue you in, your friends and family are redirected to voicemail… or just treated to silence. If you're in a two-iPhone family, it can be a case of the deaf leading the mute.
<LI style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px">The iPhone Might Burn Your Face Off
According to our ultra-sciencey test, it is extremely unlikely that the iPhone will burn your face off… Nevertheless, pressing a large, flat surface to your cheek is always going to be sweaty… Thus the current trend for people to walk down the street with their phones on hands-free, yelling into the mike at the bottom while they hold the rest of the phone away from their faces.
<LI style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px">iPhone Battery Life
A couple of hours of Google Maps over 3G and you'll be lost in the woods without even the possibility of phoning for help. Compare that to the good old days when your phone would last a week without charging, and you'll wonder why you ever bothered to switch.- The iPhone Sucks — So What?
If the iPhone is inaudible, unconnected, on fire and out of battery, why is the thing so popular? The fact is, although the iPhone is the worst phone in the world, it's the best handheld computer there is.
At least until CNET UK's editors name a new one.
That's funny. Dropped calls are a problem but that's AT&T's deal. They're network sucks. Anyone here with an unlocked iPhone to back that up. I think it's unfairly judged there. And who presses their phone to there face to make a call? What an idiot. Not ringing; AT&T issue again. When I was in NYC I had lots of dropped and missed calls. Coverage there sucks. iPhone is still the champ. Check the specs.
My only real gripe is battery life. It can die in half a day if you have 3G on while mul asking.
Well there's really not a reason to have 3G on all the time. I just turn it on if I'm downloading an app or doing any sort of data transfer. You can do lots of things to cut back on battery life.
I toggle 3G on/off all the time, adjust brightness, all the tricks to conserve battery life. But doesn't change the fact then when you need it, your battery dies way too fast. Example, I went to a concert last weekend with 90% battery, throughout the course of the night (bars, concert, club), my phone died around 12:30AM.
You can do things to conserve battery life when you're not using 3G, sure. But when you do need data a lot (which shouldn't be too much to ask considering how much you pay a month for it), you had better have a battery pack.
I have the INCASE power slider. It pretty much doubles my battery life, turning down brightness, location, and your wifi antenna will dramatically increase your battery life.
I was able to last a 2.5 hour flight surfing on wifi with battery to spare when I landed.
Yeah. I was about to suggest what Heath just did. It's an awesome case and I don't really worry about battery life until I go to bed. It's $80 but definitely worth it. Adds a bit of weight but it's an excellent case. Even dropped my phone twice unharmed.
I considered the Incase before, but I switch up my cases quite a bit. I do have a battery pack though which has enough juice for a full recharge (and a car charge) so I'm not usually in trouble. But yeah, for those days forget my pack for whatever reason, damn.
the mophie juice pack air is also pretty thin. i think reviews for both are about the same. It's $80, but I got a 40% discount.
I love the device and what it does. At&T sucks though.
Like ing crippling tethering. The phone could do a lot more if it would be on a decent network.
The hate in this article is strong. The iPhone is still the best phone around due to the insane amount of support for it. Not too many other phones offer you a full, decent gaming library, or the plethora of other options and programs the iPhone currently has.
I'd still say it's top of the heap. There isn't a better touchscreen/display combo around in a phone right now, to say nothing of the butter-smooth navigation.
Soooo,
Whats this tech board's take on the upcoming Droid phone (or whatever its called)?
In my experience, and I've own my 3G for almost 2 years now--is that I don't really have that major of an issue due to drop calls and I'm always on the phone. I am unabashedly pro-iPhone, but don't think it is for everyone out there. I'm going to stay loyal because of the fact that it has been all that and then some for myself. I also have had Blackberries and other well-known phones before and have never had this smooth of an ownership with anything else. The accesibility to apps, the ability to do alot of my work on the go, and other key factors makes this article moot for me. Don't know why the constant vendetta against the phone. It seems as if these authors lost a gf to the damn iPhone.
I will say my cousin's IPhone had one weird issue. It started making this really loud noise one day, out of nowhere...he could hear it from across his house. He walked up to it, and some of the buttons had literally MELTED off...He called Apple, and once he told him, they asked no questions, just asked him to come in and they'd give him a new phone. Weird.
Buttons melting off?
Doubtful.
i haven't looked it up, but i'll just look at the specs. specs don't lie. these supposed "iphone killers" are pretty weak when you look at the sheet. so what you can change the color of the damn case. yippee. i don't think the iphone is perfect but it's the best. i'm interested in checking the droid out and the next gen palm pre. all these attack ads on the iphone are getting more and more airplay out there. we'll shall see.
If I may...
You guys are all talking about the non phone features of the iPhone and you're correct no other device has such a nice interface, such a complete library of apps and genuinely cool innovative features.
Well except the for the iTouch...
Because there is a problem with the iPhone and it's the phone part. When it comes to pure telecommunication properties the iphone is not as good as say the top Nokias. And I'm not talking about WiFi, which is a battery killer on any portable device. I used an iphone in parallel with a Blackberry bold and a nokia 97, for a few months and I liked using the iphone a lot, but the blackberry was much more reliable for any data transmission and the E97 is the better phone with an excellent battery life, but a lousy interface and touchscreen. I felt that both the Nokia and the BB outperformed the iPhone when using data coms (very noticeable on 3G networks, somewhat more stable on edge and gprs networks) and the use of 3G coms doesn't influence bat life as much on the nokia as it does on the other two (don't really get this one).
At the end I use an itouch for music/games/videos, my Blackberry for e-mail and office coms and my Nokia just as a phone.
The iPhone is a very cool device that I like a lot, but it is not the best mobile phone. My personal opinion is that if they fixed all the issues with the iphone (#1 being bat life), it wouldn't be as popular since it would be quite a bit bigger and heavier - at the moment the iPhone is offering too much for its own good
The Droid looks like a solid phone. Probably one of the better smart/touch phones. However, one thing that irked me is that it's not a true mul ouch display. This means if you're pressing two keys closely enough together while texting/typing on it, it will only register one key press. It's enough to be a dealbreaker for me, when considering how many apps can and do use mul ouch gestures.
Beyond that though, it's a fantastic looking phone and it purportedly does a lot of awesome things. It's got a great screen, good camera, and a full QWERTY keyboard (for those who prefer real keyboards to touchscreens) and yet is roughly the same size as an iPhone. It also has included (free) a fully realized turn-by-turn GPS navigation, which is a phenomenal offering. It's not just an app per say, it's a native feature built into the Droid. Hot. It's also a Google Experience phone, which means it's probably going to have updates/improvements every week or so. I would say at this point that it's not exactly even a "2nd place" to the iPhone, but rather a slightly different type of phone that is clearly better in a number of ways. I might even say (again, this is all from what I've read, not personal experience) that the Droid is the most realized, best Android-based phone out so far, if reports are true about performance and features. Looks like a winner.
These are legit gripes. My two main complaints about my iPhone is battery life and call quality. However, the former is only an issue if I'm on my phone constantly throughout the day, and the latter is "acceptable", just not anything above that. At times, the voice on the other end is hard to hear, but usually it's okay. So I'll take the 5-6/10 for call quality if it means I get the other features included with the iPhone, especially considering the wicked power of the jailbreak.If I may...
You guys are all talking about the non phone features of the iPhone and you're correct no other device has such a nice interface, such a complete library of apps and genuinely cool innovative features.
Well except the for the iTouch...
Because there is a problem with the iPhone and it's the phone part. When it comes to pure telecommunication properties the iphone is not as good as say the top Nokias. And I'm not talking about WiFi, which is a battery killer on any portable device. I used an iphone in parallel with a Blackberry bold and a nokia 97, for a few months and I liked using the iphone a lot, but the blackberry was much more reliable for any data transmission and the E97 is the better phone with an excellent battery life, but a lousy interface and touchscreen. I felt that both the Nokia and the BB outperformed the iPhone when using data coms (very noticeable on 3G networks, somewhat more stable on edge and gprs networks) and the use of 3G coms doesn't influence bat life as much on the nokia as it does on the other two (don't really get this one).
At the end I use an itouch for music/games/videos, my Blackberry for e-mail and office coms and my Nokia just as a phone.
The iPhone is a very cool device that I like a lot, but it is not the best mobile phone. My personal opinion is that if they fixed all the issues with the iphone (#1 being bat life), it wouldn't be as popular since it would be quite a bit bigger and heavier - at the moment the iPhone is offering too much for its own good
That being said, the gap between the iPhone and all other phones has shrunk dramatically. In fact, if Apple doesn't bring a seriously huge step up for the iPhone (4G?), I see them being passed by the midpoint of next year by phones offering superior power/features/possible apps.
This phone (the HD2 from HTC) looks potentially superior to the iPhone 3GS in almost every conceivable way, and it's coming to US stores in 2010. Unless Apple offers up something incredibly tasty, that will likely be my next phone.
Last edited by Cry Havoc; 11-08-2009 at 01:33 PM.
yuck. windows mobile.
It's a heavily modded and optimized version of WM by HTC, and it supposedly runs like an absolutely beast.
I got a Palm pre last night. So far it's cool. Major upgrade from my HTC Mogul 6800.
VLC remote and air mouse make the iPhone the perfect home theater remote.
The iPhone and the iTouch are just very good consumer grade PDAs. They have consumer and some business applications and do multimedia. They just are not the greatest pure connectivity devices. And thats ok.
I just got a lesson in iPod/iPhone/iTouch mania today when a group full of suburban 8th graders came to my college. Just about 4/5ths of the 50 8th graders came with iPhones/iTouches, and of the remaining fifth, 1/2 had iPod classics... Just unbelievable. We met and were facebook freinded instantly... From a tech guy, the shear pervasiveness of the platform in the US baffled and astounded me.
I do wish they were better devices for specific tasks (more expandable memory, better battery life, AM/FM/Shortwave/TV/HDradioTV, physical keyboard scrollball, etc) but for what they are, they are impressive little gadgets.
I hear that. But I also hear that htc does a lot to hide users from the WM experience. Striking a strange balance between the WM business platform and basic usability.
got a droid. verizon plus droid=best of both worlds
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