The new iPhone is looming, right? Current iPhone models are not being restocked or are 'sold out', buzz is being generated. It's a different kind of buzz than last time around though. There aren't 'leaked' pictures, there aren't many purported leaks, or any increased amount of feverish patent-trolling to see what's coming. It seems that there won't be a ground-breaking paradigm shifting this time around, right?
On the larger vein of waiting, though, I'm a pretty impatient type. A bit ADHD too. But you know the type of person I'm talking about: people who are ready, willing and able to wait for something for a finite amount of time. Not talking about waiting for iPhone 2.0 but more about waiting in a line, for a table, for a movie to start, at the DMV, etc. Moving to California from the Midwest a few years ago taught me how Californians are supposedly so laid-back. In realty, we all have just gotten used to dealing with the large amounts of people who live here and that things take longer here than they do in other parts of the country. Here, you have to learn to wait in line for everything, parking, coffee, food, etc., it's part of the deal.
Of course, there are plenty of ways to alleviate waiting, cell phone calls, reading a magazine/newspaper, staring off into space. So instead of wasting time in the waiting line (ala Zero7), having the internet on the iPhone (or similar devices), especially in Starbucks with their free Wi-Fi now makes the wait, for me at least, seem much shorter. For me, a wait evaporates with a quick check of the NYTimes, Facebook or of email. If the internet connection or if EDGE is slow, however, the wait seems even more interminable. While I distract myself from the wait with web-safaris ala Safari, there are others who isolate themselves off from the rest of the world with their iPods or and others who subject the rest of the world to a potentially inane and ceaseless cellphone call. Whatever the poison, passing the time away in a waiting line may no longer be a time where you can meet new people or see new things if we're distracted by our own PDAs. Is that even more of a waste of time?
It wasn't a whiteout, a brownout but a rather, a geek out that plagued those of us with AT&T service on iPhones or AT&T service in general. While our bars indicated full service, getting server access error messages in Safari was much more common than you would think, especially a convention full of guys on their cellphones. But with more than 100,000 folks concentrated in a relatively small area.... Service outside of the area, however, was more than fine and faster than I've experienced. SMS texting, as usual, was the reliable means of communication. What's more, voicemails I got were delayed by 12 hours or more and I wasn't the only AT&T person with these issues. Way to go AT&T.
View complete CES 2008 coverage from CNET.
So this month I will have traveled more than 20,000 miles via plane, train and boats to various destinations and various time zones. The iPhone has proven adept and adaptable - so long as you activate the international roaming and data plans - which you have to do in person or via AT&T's operators before you leave the country - as my friend Max found out the hard way.
Anyway, upon landing at each airport the iPhone will find the applicable AT&T network or AT&T compatible network - oftentimes in seconds. But more importantly, as you taxi after landing (make sure you have your iPhone in an accessible location), it's nice to see text messages from friends and loved ones pop up, emails and voicemails too when you turn on the iPhone or switch off the "airplane mode."
What's also interesting is people asking, "oooh, is that an iPhone?"
Once inside the terminal it's great to have the WiFi search function, or, if you're cheap like me, I'm pleasantly surprised by the speed of the EDGE network as I read the news, check emails and do all those precious things to pass the layover time.
In between jobs, I'm lucky to have a few weeks off for vacation. My first destination was Iowa City, Iowa, m hometown. Iowa has been great for fiber optic connections and is not as rural as one would expect. That said, my parents don't have a broadband connection instead opting for a quaint dial-up connection. Lucky for me, EDGE network as actually faster than my parent's desktop computer.
But, the iPhone proved a lifesaver when it came to a very Iowa pastime - a presidential election event, i.e., an appearance by Sen. Barrack Obama. Somehow I ended up on-stage with him, one of those people standing behind a candidate as they talk about this or that. Of course, I wanted to take pictures and I brought my trusty camera with me. But, there was one catch - I forgot my battery in its charger - d-oh!
Ah, but the iPhone with its camera managed to save me and capture a few snapshots of this event, including the backside of a potential president. It turned out that local media caught some far better pictures of the event, but still, it was nice that I could at least snap a couple as I am far less likely to forget my iPhone than my camera.
Here are the pics from the iPhone.
As per usual, the weekend rolled around and we headed up to Stinson Beach armed with our iPhones. In between catching rays and laying out my friends I wanted to check out the new features from Meebo and Facebook for the iPhone. Strangely, the EDGE network was very either/or--it was on...or completely off. Spotty coverage with the EDGE network? Surely not.
In another comparison, my friend Max and I were waiting for a table at a popular crepe place in San Francisco's Mission District and were surfing the net via our iPhones. Yet, we noticed that while my iPhone had 5 bars of service from AT&T, Max's had one, then none, then one.
Not sure why, but I'm sure it has to do with towers, transmission rates, data compression...But you would think that two identical iPhones bought from the same store, at the same time, would be alike. Think again, I guess.
Facebook and Meebo introduced new applications for iPhone users this week. I had been awaiting these two apps as, sadly, these are two of my addictions - social networking and chatting.
Facebook's typical page would load in my iPhone's Safari browser decently well. Loading the page and surfing around was pretty fast regardless of being on the EDGE or on a Wi-Fi network. However, on Safari, I soon came to realize that I couldn't change or update my "status" and was forever stuck doing whatever it was I was doing in the morning I updated my status. I mean I know my friends want to what I'm doing at all hours of the day, right? I discovered that you could text your status to "FBOOK" and that would take of the problem. However, with Facebook's new iPhone application located at iphone.facebook.com (only accessible if you're on an iPhone), this issue was resolved. The iPhone-specific application's design is slick and less graphically intensive, which is great if you have to access the site via the spotty EDGE network from AT&T. The user-interface is pretty simple and elegant. Friends and updates are given a wide toolbar look and you can navigate without having to enlarge or shrink the page. The top menus feature the most commonly used content. Only drawback is having to enter your login credentials each time you've exited the application/site, but I suppose that's a good security feature as well as not having to maintain an open network connection to an otherwise idle account.
Meebo
I had also been awaiting an iPhone-only application for Meebo (the universal chat Web site that merges and allows you to use the most common chat programs - i.e., AIM, Yahoo, MSN and GTalk. While Meebo's regular page would load up in the iPhone's Safari browser, you couldn't actually send a message or do anything useful once you logged in. So, when I found out that Meebo had created a version for iPhones at wwwm.meebo.com I was stoked. I logged in as usual and was happy to see my friend list appeared and it looked as if I was good to go. The user interface is quite similar to Facebook's iPhone version, horizontal displays for contacts, clean, simple and easy to navigate almost inviting you to ping someone.
But, my test fell short and ended prematurely as after I tried to ping a co-worker an error screen stating "network connection interrupted" and "java application detected" brought me back to the login screen. Two more attempts have been unsuccessful thus far. I'll keep you posted as to how it works out.
Overall, with these two applications coming online, I'm eager to see what else is in the works. It would seem that these two applications have common design elements that are likely to be incorporated for future iPhone applications. While it may be too early to predict, I would have to guess that upcoming iPhone non-Apple applications will be hallmarked by clean, non-scalable pages that display content in that, well, iPhone-way, simply and cleanly, but somewhat lacking... Luckily, however, one sacrifice I don't mind as content is culled down to fit the iPhone is that these pages and applications do not feature as many ads as their PC-based ancestors.
Yesterday, my friends Max and Zach and I were like the Three Amigos, but instead of sombreros we were armed with our iPhones. And instead of adventures with El Guapo, we were doing battle with AT&T's El EDGE network, the network the iPhone defaults to when it can't connect to an active Wi-Fi connection.
Our brave amigo adventure began when we decided to celebrate the Fourth by heading north of San Francisco to hang out at Stinson Beach. We got our fill of sun, surf and sand. During hours in the sun we got out our iPhones to goof around in a sandy environment. The screens were hot to the touch and managed to take sunscreen-soaked fingers pretty well, and there was no effect on performance from what we could tell. The sand didn't scratch up the screen, nor did any get into the ports or small crevasses on the iPhone's body.
So Max and I took pictures of each other and wanted to e-mail them to our mothers and friends. Because you cannot send mass SMS text messages or send a picture embedded in a text message, the only viable option is to send an actual, swear-to-God e-mail. (Many of my friends, recipients of mass SMS text messages, cheered at that limitation. Apple, will you please issue an update to allow me to send mass text messages again?)
Sending e-mails from the beach ultimately tested AT&T's EDGE network. It's at the continent's edge, quite literally. There is no Wi-Fi network for our iPhones to tap. Each of us have synced our contacts to include e-mail addresses, and each of us uses Gmail and our e-mails are sent through Gmail.
So our experience? The sun was pretty intense, so the shadows and the contrast levels really tested the camera's limitations. The pictures turned out fine, but were a bit shadow-heavy (we look "swarthy," according to some). But the EDGE network proved to be hot and cold. One message flew away and the EDGE network proved to be surprisingly fast. But at another point, we got the message "unable to send, cannot connect" and a copy of the e-mail was placed in an outbox queue. (On a separate bike ride it took three hours for my e-mail message to go through, and that only happened after the iPhone found my native W-iFi network!)
Ultimately, it's pretty cool that the phone could take a pretty good picture and e-mail it to loved ones, especially from the beach. The EDGE network is spotty. But if you live somewhere like San Francisco where Google plans to blanket free Wi-Fi to the whole city, or where the iPhone will find every Wi-Fi network around it, and where unsecured Wi-Fi networks are pretty common, then the EDGE issues should be neutralized.
- prev
- 1
- next
