Tuesday, July 17, 2007

iPhone 19 days after purchase

I would not return it for a refund.  Though I keep asking myself why exactly. 

1) Email - I have now learned that while I am writing an email I can not link a picture from my picture folder.  If you want to send a photo you can send exactly one, and you have to start out in the photo albums to do so.  Nor can you save a photo some else emails you.  No saving ANY attachments, so don't delete those emails until you reread them on a desk top somewhere else later.

2) Camera - Ok I took my iPhone with me to Alaska and yes it worked far more places than I expected it to, roaming I believe, but never the less it worked.  They don't sell the iPhone in the Alaska market for this reason I am told.  I was a typical tourist snapping away like crazy and sending daily updates out.  But I quickly discovered another major flaw/limitation.  The camera has very poor light metering.  Most of the pictures taken are far to dark and iPhoto on my Mac had limited success brightening them.  I found that if I pointed the camera down to a darker area, swung up quickly and snapped one off, it somethings seemed to help catch the image before the metering application could adjust for the brighter light.  Come on Apple give us a little credit and let us have some tiny amount of control over our device.  Please let us adjust the f-stop or ISO film speed or something....

3) Battery Update - While flying the 7.5 hours from Atlanta to Anchorage I discovered just what a drain, BlueTooth, Wifi, and Cell radio have on the device.  I was able to watch two full length feature movies 3.5 hours, and listen to music the remaining 4 hours and still had a bit of battery left.  So be warned keep that WiFi and BlueTooth off when not needed, what a pain.

4) Calendar - I have switched over to Apples Calendar application for better integration with the iPhone.  I am now missing appointments do to lack of reasonable alerting tones and vibration (repeating etc).  There is also no way to do updates over the air, so a change on one device, say your desk top will not show up on the phone until you sync them with the special iPod cable.  

5) Accessories - Wow another HUGE disappointment.  Just about every trinket I have purchased of the past 4 years for my numerous iPods fail to work with the iPhone.  Even the brand new ones.  The external microphone, a pretty simple device fails with a nice message that its not compatible.  The Nike shoe insert that lets me track my runs while I listen to motivational music.... fails.  My Apple photo adapter that lets you dump digital camera pictures onto the device, busted.  Even the simple music dock for my Onkyo stereo causes a warning to be displayed on the iPhone every time its connected, to switch into airplane mode.  Thankfully is still plays.  Come on Mr Jobs, I know you want to make a bunch more money selling us all new accessories but really this SUCK!

No comments: