iPhone 3GS: Fantastic but flawed
From a software and cloud perspective, the iPhone represents an ideal world of development functionality mixed with an ability to use mobile services. However, the App Store approval process and AT&T's wonky network will still prevent us from reaching nirvana.
I tried to chronicle the issues I've had, but the truth is, the service (and therefore the device itself) ranges from excellent to sporadic to unusable, so I'll just list out the broad issues for those considering a move to the 3GS.
Battery life--the battery life is abysmal. I've gone on every forum, tweaked every setting, and done several tests to see what works best. The hacks that people suggest (turn off push, 3G, and Bluetooth) defeat the purpose of the device. Users shouldn't have to handicap themselves because of a lack of attention from the manufacturer.
If Apple really wants enterprise and business users, this is the most important issue that must be resolved.
Phone --I haven't been a fan of AT&T mobile service in the past (Verizon Wireless is my carrier of choice) and it continues to range from terrible to mediocre for me. Bizarrely, the worst call quality occurs when talking to another AT&T user. I did a conference call the other day with two other iPhone users and none of use could decipher the others' words.
I gave up on the 3G network both for the battery drain and the calls that dropped after 10 minutes (I took notes for 2 days) and every call dropped. A recent survey says that 34 percent of those polled won't buy the iPhone because of AT&T's network.
E-mail--I'm fine with the e-mail setup and interface except for the fact that the iPhone is somehow missing a unified in-box. I was convinced I had set everything up incorrectly until several people confirmed it to be true. After the battery issue, this must be resolved for Apple to make headway with users who have more than one account. There is no logical reason why the software can't do this. Apple does it on the desktop and RIM has done it forever.
Calendar--I use Google Apps and except for an initial user error, the integration has been seamless. I am sure there are other issues, but I haven't heard too much about Exchange or Zimbra users with problems. iCal on the Mac has some annoyances, but generally I think it's fine.
Web browsing--Web browsing is where the iPhone really distances itself from every other mobile device. The screen is great and the interaction is great, but I've been forced to turn off 3G in order to get the battery to last. Obviously that dulls the experience.
Multiple apps at one time--Having more than one application running at the same time is the way everyone works these days. The fact that an application quits when you switch to another is just ridiculous in this day and age. Apple apparently has some reasons why they do this (security), but it's just annoying.
The iPhone is a fantastic mini-computer, but the flaws of AT&T's network and the battery life are not issues that can be glossed over. Apple can fix both over time, but users need more true information from both vendors.
Here's my rating for each aspect mentioned above on a scale of 1-5:
- Battery: 1
- Phone: 3
- E-mail: 3
- Calendar: 5
- Web: 5
- Multi-tasking: 2
- Game play: 5
- TOTAL: 24/35 (roughly 68 out of 100)
All that said, I'm going to stick with it for now. The interface, utility, and functional possibilities are just that good. Having a converged device with music, phone, and Web changed a lot of my habits and really can make you more effective--provided that the device can do what it's supposed to do.
Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
As for a unified inbox,there is a simple inelegant solution: I have set up my main gmail account so that it downloads the email from all my other accounts, and this is my main account on the iPhone. The drawback is that some messages will appear twice, but it saves me from checking several inboxes.
As for the AT&T phone network --- it may well depend on your location. In Southern California I have had no problems with it for the past 5 years.
I think tech journalists are forced to criticize the iPhone because otherwise, to be objective about it, there's no story. The iPhone is the best smartphone in the world, with very little competition. It's the most popular smartphone around also - with the exception of the Blackberry and its plethora of models.
Eventually Apple will deliver on improvements in all these things, then you guys will be complaining that there isn't a built-in toothbrush.
Do those who are always complaining about battery life ever put their phones down and allow it to go to sleep? Geesh people, get a freaking laptop. This constant whining about battery life is getting old. The issue is not the battery, it is the user and the way you use the device.
It's a phone, not a desktop, so the core of the product should allow you to use it away from a power outlet for a reasonable amount of time.
I'm impressed how Apple has built such a dedicated fan base that they can overlook such a major flaw and instead attack those that dare point it out.
MAIL: Not only does the iPhone not support a unified In-Box, but POP/SMTP mail users are unable to create additional boxes for local archiving of messages sent or received. It seems to be an intentional limitation designed to encourage use of Apple's personal internet services. Not buying here.
CALENDAR (related) - no synchronization of Task Lists with Outlook. (Forced to use third party app for this, but it lacks alarm capabilities.) Why can everyone else offer this function, but Apple can't?
WEB BROWSING: Everything you said is true, but the lack of support for multimedia plug-ins renders many sites useless. To compound the problem, Apple's refusal to even entertain the idea of approving third party browser apps that might offer this feature blocks any possibility of remedy.
Turn off wi-fi when you are not using it. Turn off bluetooth when not using it. Set your push for 15 minutes and your battery will reward you with 2 or 3 days of standby.
But, really now, isn't it more fun to whine about the battery instead of doing something about it?
2-3 days STANDBY is nothing. When you have an iphone you dont let it wait in standby. You browse the internet, than listen to music while using an app, than get maps, and much more. This will bring it down to less than a day which isnt acceptable when compared to other phones.
And what do you propose we do. Dont you think that voicing concerns is a way of doing something. And how do you know we dont write to apple or something. Vocing concerns about a subpar component of a phone is perfectly normal but God forbid its the always perfect iphone
I use the iPhone in Australia and, while I find the battery rarely lasts more than 24 hours (I check email regularly and surf moderately), the greatest cause of dwindling battery life is low signal strength from your cell provider. With good signal strength you shouldn't have this beef. Another strike against AT&T!
My old first gen iPhone generally went three days between charges with moderate use. The 3GS I use significantly more, and I have no problem getting through the day, and sometimes two days.
I bring this up because my new 3GS gets even better battery life than my old one. I've only had a few days, mind you, but with what I consider to be normal use--listening to music periodically during the day, checking e-mail and playing games on the train, leaving on 3G/wi-fi/etc.--I still have over half of my battery left at the end of the day. I understand that some reviewers were cursed with models that had bum batteries; is it possible this happened to you as well? Might a replacement be in order?
(Incidentally, SoftBank--the iPhone carrier in Japan--has solid reception in Tokyo. I suspect the energy spent hunting for the elusive AT&T signal in the States probably contributes somewhat to the shortened battery life.)
they have got to be the strangest carrier: the wacky ID requirements that get even wackier depending on if you want to pay by credit card or bank draft; no convenience store payment; completely opaque rules for qualifying for spreading the cost of the phone over the 2-year contract, unless you actually want to drop over $700.00 in cash to buy it up front!
Softbank is not happy with the sales of iPhones, but trying to sign up with softbank was more painful that a trip to immigration. I can't help but think that the policies of softbank contribute to the luke warm sales.
I thought it was pretty cool at first that apple didn't go with Docomo, but that was before I realized how much softbank sucks.
It's caused by conflicting settings for Wifi, bluetooth etc. when you set u your phone using a backup from another phone
The workaround is to restore you phone from scratch in iTunes and instead of restoring from backup, set the phone up as a new phone. You'll be able to sync all of you music, apps etc. and your email accounts. But you'll have to reset your bluetooth and wifi settings.
I did this and my battery life quadrupled.
I did this and my battery
- "the battery life is abysmal": not so much, depends all on your usage and your location/network coverage. Bring a comparison of another 3G smartphone that has the same size screen and brightness, runs on the same network, at the same locations and with the same usage. Then we'll see how well the iPhone or its competitor does. Fact is, every 3G device consumes immense amounts of battery. If at all, it's not Apple that has to fix anything, it's the 3G-chip designers that have to optimize their inefficient power usage.
- Phone: call quality/coverage. Maybe you have noticed that the US is a pretty big country. There is no carrier that will ever be able to provide a complete network coverage in all possible areas of this country. If you think that the quality is bad where you use it, you probably should switch to the carrier that provides the better coverage in your area. Sorry, you're not gonna have the iPhone then. I for myself been with AT&T for 5 years (with iPhone since its release) and can count the number of dropped calls on one hand.
- E-mail: care to share any IMAP email desktop client other than Mail that has true unified folders (not just inbox)? The BB may have a unified inbox but what about the rest of the folders? So you still have to switch back and forth between accounts. Probably the reason why on the iPhone everything is kept per account because you would have to switch anyway. - Maybe not ideal for everyone but did you file a feedback on Apple's site and explain how they could offer a solution that works for you as well?
- Web browsing: 3G usage again. In the first Gen iPhone, everyone was complaining that there was no 3G. Do you think that had a reason? Apple's own statement was that they would not build in a chip until the phone could last at least 5hrs (that was at a time when a top of the line 3G Nokia lasted 3hrs.).
Well, when it did, they built one in into the iPhone 3G and with the 3GS, the battery life has even more improved. Mine lasts anywhere from 8-16hrs, depending on usage and location. If you do expect more, you really do need to compare other devices and you will find out that they all have something in common.
- Multiple apps at one time: especially someone that's complaining about battery life wants to have multiple apps open? I thought everyone this day and age understood why this is not a good idea on a mobile device this small. Have a good look at the fellow Nokias or try WinMo phones and see what happens when you have multiple apps open over a period of time. Even the Pre runs into performance issues, although it's not even running "real" apps.
Again, do you really understand technology? You are asking for things that are contradictory, technically not possible or do not make economical sense. You just want a guinea-pig that does everything with no technical limitations. Sorry, it does not work that way. And that's why you can't have it. - When technology comes around that will improve said limitations, Apple will build it in, given it fits their design standards. Until then you will have to curb your enthusiasm for that "perfect" phone you're looking for...
Yes, I have proved that notification is the killer. Check if your app. has this feature and turn it off. One of my app. that has this feature is Toodledo.
After I turned it off, my battery is back to normal, lasting over 2 days.
My second biggest complaint is that you cannot set dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.) in the calendar with a one week previous reminder. I still enjoy sending paper cards with handwritten messages. Two days prior notice is insufficient time.
k.salaber
The iPhone multitasks now, except, it doesn't multitask with the apps you or I want. The Dialer/Phone, Bluetooth, Wifi, Push email, SMS. These are always running under any open app. Music can play under most apps. The notification service adds another always-on app. Would it be nicer to have multitasking open to user-defined apps? Yes. Even if we could only pick two or three apps to run all the time, such as IM or Twitter or RSS readers. Till then, enjoy the fact that your iPhone is reasonably crashworthy.
BlackBerry devices have a similar sandbox design, but BlackBerry is looser with it, allowing apps to look at a user directory on the device. Each app, as I understand it, runs in its own Java memory space. BlackBerry has true multitasking, but you can easily see the impact on battery life, especially when data services are poorly utilized.
And all those apps aren't as isolated from each other as they are on the iPhone. A poorly written script on a web page can choke the browser on the BlackBerry, locking it up. The browser will spin its wheels, sucking up processor cycles, and will continue to do so until the phone is rebooted. There is no easy way to kill an app on a BlackBerry, at least, that I know of.
If this happens in Safari, the iPhone OS will eventually kill the Safari app. But the phone does not crash or need a reboot.
All this brings me to multimedia plug-ins for mobile browsers. I haven't seen many examples of this, period, unless it's been made by a carrier (such as Verizon's VCast service).
The number one request is for Adobe Flash. Flash seems incapable of running in an iPhone sandbox-style system. Why, I don't know. And I guess there's no version of Flash that can run in a mobile Java environment. These facts eliminate the iPhone and BlackBerry from the Flash discussion. They've been working on Flash for BlackBerry for at least two years, with little success.
In my opinion, if Flash requires tons of hooks or direct hardware access to run on a phone, then you don't want it on your phone. Because it will crash on you, and take your whole phone with it.
Instead, more web site operators need to move away from flash-based interface design and use AJAX or similar, which can be easily made mobile-friendly. The worst example of this is a support site I use that has a front end made in Flash. It was unusable on my phone, of course, so needed help was delayed for my client.
Either this was written to merely provoke, or Rosenburg's simply out of touch.
For the record, at least T-Mobile's network is good quality where you have it. I would lose service at places, but I would know where this is. With AT&T, it's unpredictable, and the biggest problem I have is that i have the damned bars, but can't make a single call. In my apartment, I have at least 2 bars at all times, and cannot make a call. At my office, I have 5 bars at few places, and know for sure that it's a dead spot. I've never seen something like this. That's why "more bars in more places" is just making me cringe, because bars DON'T equal service only on AT&T. Besides the iPhone, that's another one of their exclusives.
- by Leo_730 July 23, 2009 6:25 AM PDT
- Your review is very accurate and I completely agree with you on the AT&T standpoint. However, I can only force myself to take your review with a grain of salt. Although your lifestyle now less hectic, you still require a BlackBerry or similar device. The iPhone is simply horrible for business users. I would choose a Verizon BlackBerry for business use and the iPhone for personal.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (46 Comments)The iPhone's battery is indeed very poor, even with all of the extra features turned off. The fact is, the vast majority of these smart phones have very poor battery. This is not a fault of Apple, it is a fault of battery technology. Sure, Apple could redesign the iPhone to have swappable batteries, but that would destroy the form-factor. I'm sure millions would complain about the new design in that case. The iPhone is by no means perfect, but it still sets the standard for multi-functional cell phones. There are countless touch-screen phones out there with clunky performance. Competitors have yet to mimic the iPhone's touch-screen performance. I don't want a phone that scrolls the screen ten seconds after I flick it just because it has a better battery and multi-tasking. Give me a BlackBerry for those needs.