I wrote last week about my overall impressions of the iPhone, in this second article I'm going to concentrate on usabiltiy, performance and connectivity. All things that need a little longer to assess.
Usability
This may seem like an odd thing to discuss. After all isn't the touch interface supposed to be one of the best ever? Well in my opinion it is and it isn't. There are certain aspects of the interface which are very very good. Navigation and zoom on Safari are superb and the simple icon based launcher, which Palm have always used, is also just right. It allows some customisation - you are able to move icons around and add icons to bookmark websites. I've found my typing with the touch keyboard is reasonable as long I keep the click sound on. This does give the impression of feedback, although occasionally the click is delayed for a couple of seconds before a rush of catch up clicks. I struggle a little with the word correction as it works the opposite way around to the word suggestion method I'm used to with a WM device. Whilst typing the iphone will suggest a word via a little pop up window with an "X" in the corner. Touching the window will cancel the auto-correct, ignoring it will mean your word will be replaced with the one in the window as soon as you hit space. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad method, just one I'm not used to.
So what don't I like about the interface? Well there's no search facility for a start. I can add my favourite contacts to a separate list but it's still a bit of a pain when I'm searching for a contact that isn't in the list. However, an alphabet scroll bar is used which helps and I know from screen shots of the 2.0 firmware that search is in the works. I also find that if I'm in a bit of a rush I do make mistakes, for example tapping on the left of a listed favourite contact rings them directly whereas on the right brings up their details. With finger touch only it's easy to be slightly sloppy and hit the wrong thing. I realise I'm being a little picky here but I'm so used to the accuracy of either a stylus or button interface that it's another thing I have to get used to.
Performance
Generally I've been very happy with the performance of my iPhone. It does occasionally suffer from some slowdown (like the delayed click of the keyboard) but that's rare and quickly resolved. The battery life is absolutely fine with a charge each day. Using wifi will use up the battery pretty quickly, but when I'm away from home I mostly switch it off. I can take a reasonable number of calls and listen to a couple of hours of music with no worries at all though. The wifi and GSM reception also seem to be good.
Connectivity
Obviously one of the biggest problems with the current iPhone is it's only 2.5G. As I'm not willing to unlock my iPhone that means I am tied to the O2 network and have to hope for an EDGE connection to get anything like decent speeds (GPRS is painful). Thankfully I have been pleasantly surprised by EDGE coverage as I've been out and about. Even on a train journey down to London I found that in most urban areas a little "E" would appear in the top left. The O2 plan also comes with a subscription to the Cloud wifi hotspot service. So far I've only used this a couple of times, and they don't seem to be as prevalent as BT Openzone spots, but I was very pleased to discover there is one close to my favourite coffee shop.
Joining O2 via iTunes was a little iffy. Filling in the forms was fine but then I had to wait for my phone to be activated. I repeatedly got the message that the phone could find no signal, but eventually (10 hours later) after switching it on and off again I got the activation. I certainly think they should add this advice to the instructions.
Overall I am pleased to have an iPhone. I love the connectivity and music features, but I am really hoping for a few improvements to PIM when the third partly applications launch.
PALM 24/7
