Five initial iPhone observations
It’s now Saturday morning, and while my iPhone still hasn’t left the house for a real-world trial yet, I have spent a couple hours using it, testing the various features. As such, here are five quick observations about the iPhone:
- I said it before, but I’ll say it again: The screen is simply stunning. It’s worth a store visit just to see it in person.
- The interface reflects Apple’s typical attention to the details. Most things just feel “right,” and nice touches abound. For instance, when you switch from portrait to landscape mode, the screen doesn’t just disappear and reappear, it actually rotates around and expands or shrinks as necessary. Nice.
- Typing on the small keyboard definitely takes some getting used to. It is getting better, though, so I think it’s just a learning curve.
- Wireless (WiFi) reception in my home is worse than it is on my Macs. On the iPhone, I lose the base station in a couple of spots in the house, none of which are more than 50’ from the base station. On the Macs, that never happens. I hope this can be addressed through a software update.
- For some reason, a number of my contacts imported as near-duplicate records. Deleting the copies is a bit tedious—you have to select the contact from the list, then go to edit mode, then scroll all the way to the bottom of the entry to find the Delete button. It would be nicer to have a Delete Contact button right on the contact viewing screen. Perhaps there’s some shortcut I haven’t found…
Later today, the iPhone is takes its first “working trip” into the outside world, and I’ll have more to report after we get back home this evening—both on the phone’s performance, and the reactions of some friends who’ll get their first look at it today.
Category: Musings
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Comments (13)
dude... you have not heard of the "swipe" command to delete contacts?
Go check out the video on apple's website. It tells you all about it.
Posted by Just_a_guy | June 30, 2007 12:15 PM
Can't you swipe left to right across the contact in the list to get the delete button? I remember seeing that delete gesture in some list in Apple's demos.
Posted by Ryan Gray | June 30, 2007 12:20 PM
Yeah, you're supposed to be able to delete contacts and things by swiping to the right on the contact, but it's not working too well right now(it didn't work for me yesterday in the Apple store).
Posted by Philippe Azimzadeh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://iphone.macworld.com/nav-commenters.gif)
|
June 30, 2007 12:22 PM
I'm not so sure the iPhone is even as good as a smartphone/pocket pc -- the AT&T 8525, for instance. As much as you HOPE to get used to the typing, your fingers aren't going to get any smaller.
Posted by dancovington | June 30, 2007 12:43 PM
Rob's right. At the store last night, I tried deleting a contact by swiping left to right and it does NOT work with Contacts. It does work with SMS and emails, but not Contacts which I thought was a poor design as I'd seen the videos as well and just assumed it would work. Like Rob said, it would be nice if they can build that feature in with a software update.
Posted by Christi Milligan | June 30, 2007 1:01 PM
slide your finger from left to right and a delete button will appear on the right
Posted by ben | June 30, 2007 1:20 PM
I, too, have been a bit frustrated with the WIFI inadequacy issue. My wireless Macs have full signal, whereas the iPhone have, at the most, only half the signal. I hope that this is just a software issue, and that we have to buy an "antenna" of some kind to "normalize" the signal strength. Otherwise, THIS IS ONE AWESOME GADGET!!!!! I LOVE IT!!!
Mr. Chase
Posted by Mr. Chase | June 30, 2007 1:44 PM
Regarding deleting contacts, swiping does *not* work -- left to right, right to left, whatever. Nothing happens, except sometimes the iPhone takes it as a "click to edit" the chosen contact.
-rob.
Posted by griffman![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://iphone.macworld.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 30, 2007 2:08 PM
i can confim that the swipe / delete DOES NOT work! :-(
Posted by Tug | October 22, 2007 7:50 PM
Man ,,this is making me mad now,,
Universal truth is that -always its take longer to make something than destroy... but this iphone proved it wrong!!!!
the 859 contacts from my directory are useless ..I need only 100 now..
somebody here said about swipe..what s that ..does it help and how to know more abt it ..
:(((
Posted by vikram | October 30, 2007 7:11 AM
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK - I had the same issue. To undo the thousands of contacts I synced by accident, I went to iTunes INFO tab, selected "Sync with Windows Contacts" instead of "Outlook", then I went down to the "Advanced" section, checked Replace "Contacts" on this iPhone, and ran a SYNC. Voila, the contacts were gone. Finally, I unchecked Contact Syncing. I am new to the iPhone, so you guys use this with care. HTH
Posted by Iko | January 10, 2008 1:01 AM
I think my iPhone is awesome. Small things like that don't cancel out all the cool stuff. I'm writing this on my iPhone now and have just received a text giving me more reason to love it.
O2 are upgrading my £35 per month contract - for free. No fuss no muss. From 200 mins per month to 600, and 200 texts to 500, all FREE. Thanks O2 for seeing how crap the tarriff really is and doing something about it...
Posted by mike | January 29, 2008 5:38 PM
vikram is right, the only way to wipe out previously synced contacts from iPhone is to switch to another Address Book and check the Replace checkbox. You better pray that you have an EMPTY address book available through one of a few standard options. If all of your address books (Yahoo, Windows, Outlook) are filled with stuff, you can only trade one contacts list for another. Bottom line is: DO NOT SYNC your contacts automatically EVER unless you know what you're doing.
Posted by Yar | January 30, 2008 2:53 AM