Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone review

Release Date:  Available
Expert Rating:

• Stunning looks
• 3G
• 32 GB built in memory

• High price can affect its market

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The iPhone is the first of a new touchscreen generation phones, running Apple's OS X operating system. A huge touch-sensitive screen displaying icons replaced the standard buttons and joysticks you would expect. The screen is huge with a breathtaking interface. Steve Jobs, Apples CEO claims the iPhone is five years ahead of the competition, after having a play with the user interface you begin to see wot Steve meant. Tap on the name icon and the phone makes a call, to get the address book displaying just touch the phone icon. Touching the Photo's icon displays your photo album on the screen, as you can see its very easy to use. The graphics and responsiveness of the interface will have you playing with your iphone for hours!

SmartPhones have not got the best reputation. Buggy platforms making them slow and difficult to use. Your just need to look at the N95, great phone with great gadgets but try making a CALL! Every now and then you will need to reboot so the person you are calling can her you. On the upside many of these initial problems can be resolved by upgrading your phones software (link to nokia phone software). Getting back to the iPhone, you will be glad to here it has none of these problems and is an absolute joy to use. To see for yourself check out the video demos on the iPhone website.

The iPhone is also an iPod. It has 8 Gbyte of flash memory built in which is enough to store 2000 songs, sounds like your iPod is ready for the dustbin! Video is displayed on the huge screen, although this will swallow you memory. Songs can also be downloaded from iTunes on the move.

The Safari web browser is a great feature of the iPhone and provides one of the best mobile web implementation we have seen. Google Maps and built-in Wi-Fi support also complement the iPhone. Now, for some of the 'not so good points'. If you want to own one of these phones you will have to give £269 of your well earned pounds and agree to pay them £35 per month on a 18-month contract. The iPhone can only be used on O2, even after your contract has expired. This makes the iPhone a very expensive gadget compared to other phones on the market.

Camera

The camera is a measly 2 megapixels and lacks autofocus and flash. More like 5 years behind than 5 years ahead of the competition. Its basically a toy camera when you compare it to the Samsung G600, Nokia N95 or sony Ericsson K850i. These are three of the five top selling phones in the UK all with 5 megapixel cameras, autofocus and flash. Apple made a big mistake by misjudging how important a quality camera is to mobile phone users.

Connectivity

Apple did not put much thought into the connectivity by failing to include 3G. It is the only smart phone on the market that does not include this. For apple music downloading is a major part of there business, the fact that there first phone released onto the mobile market only lets you download at 2G speed is a huge limitation that they may live to regret.

If you are lucky enough to be in an EDGE-enabled area of the O2 network or in a wi-fi hotspot, then it is possible to access higher data speeds, this is still no comparison to 3G though. The web browsing capability on the iPhone is truly amazing, the best we have seen so far, why oh why could they just have provided the network technology to support it.

Summary

So, whats the conclusion for the iPhone? If you have deep pockets and love your fashion then maybe you should get yourself an iPhone. For everyone else, we should really compare it with the competition. What does the iPhone have over the likes of the Nokia N95, LG KU990 Viewty, Sony Ericsson W960i or the Nokia N81? Well, it has to be the huge touchscreen user interface that is truly a dream to use. The media player, as you would expect from apple really is top class, but so are the competitions.