This is a continuation of my review of the iPhone from earlier.
- I was able to get an adapter to let my iPhone work with my current FM Transmitter setup in my car. It cost me $10. On the way home from the store I plugged it in and started playing music and it’s just as nice as using my real iPod to listen to music in my car. Then I navigated to the phone and made a phone call. This is very cool, and something I’ve wanted for awhile. Throughout the navigation to making the call, my music kept playing, then when I initiated the call, the music paused and I heard ringing through my car speakers. It basically turned my cars sound system into a speakerphone. So basically, the iPhone replaces those expensive bluetooth car phone kits that you can get which tie into your cars sound system (at least somewhat).
- On a similar note as the above comment, the integration with the phone and the iPod continues when listening over the headphones. If a call comes in, the music pauses and there’s a microphone on the headphone wire, so you can start talking. You just give the microphone a little squeeze to answer the call, and another squeeze to end. If you’re just listening to music you also squeeze the mic to pause and restart the music. So simple, yet so smart.
- It desperately needs iChat or some sort of AIM/GTalk/Etc. chat client. I know some folks that are complaining about the keyboard might find this idea horrible, but I wouldn’t be wanting to use it for long conversations, just enough to let me pop online and have a quick IM conversation with someone. You might be wondering why I can’t just do this with SMS, but believe it or not, I am sometimes in places that have WiFi but no cell signal (with how my apartment is situated in the building, my bedroom is one of these places).
- It would be nice if there was at least some game on the device to kill time with. I liked BrickBreaker on my BlackBerry for this, and I usually put Tetris or something on most other phones I’ve owned. I think something like BrickBreaker would work on the iPhone too, you could just drag your finger back and forth to bounce the ball. The interface is already there for it.
- The keyboard is nice, but I’m sticking behind what I said in my earlier post. If you’re proficient on a thumb-style keyboard, you’re going to be slower on the iPhone keyboard. I’ve become pretty fast with it, but in an Apple keyboard demo video, they show a guy do it with two thumbs and he flies through writing an email. So I opened notepad and for quite awhile just rambled on, typing out my thoughts, using two thumbs. It was dropping keypresses like crazy. It wasn’t an issue of it being innaccurate or me fat-fingering words, it just wouldn’t register some of my keypresses. So the software never even got the opportunity to try to correct my spelling (which it is actually VERY good at when I just type with my index finger). When using just my one finger, I’ve already gotten to where I rarely have to correct it, and I actually have faith in it correcting me. I might see a type-o I’ve made, but I’ll continue on spelling the word because 99% of the time, it’s going to realize what I meant to type and fix it for me.