At the iPhone announcement last January, Steve Jobs called his new product the “best iPod ever.” Now the iPhone is finally here, after six months of speculation. So does it live up to the hype as the ultimate iPod music phone? Rolling Stone technology writer Tom Samiljan took it for a test drive, focusing specifically on the music, media, photo-viewing and other features you find on a typical iPod.
WHAT’S GOOD:
The interface and software are stupendous. Apple’s take on the touch screen is one of the first to really make you want to give up hardware-based keys altogether. As far as scrolling through menus, songs, albums, and settings is concerned, the iPhone’s touchscreen is fast and responsive to your fingertip strokes. In particular, scrolling through your music and video collection is much faster and more accurate than on a traditional iPod with a click wheel. And when scrolling through albums, you’ll notice that each of the iPhone’s library entries features a thumbnail of cover art, a touch that helps you scroll and keep track of each file more easily. You can also quickly jump to any song, album, track, or video by clicking on the appropriate letter in the right of the screen.
Then there’s the Cover Flow feature, which you may recognize from the iTunes desktop. (Cover Flow is a collection of 3-D virtual album covers you can flick through, domino juke-box style.) If you like Cover Flow on iTunes, you’ll love it on the iPhone–brushing your finger across the screen (and “albums“) is the closest that browsing through virtual cover art gets to flipping through actual album covers in a brick-and-mortar record (or CD) store. Click on the album cover and it flips around to reveal that album’s track list, which you of course lets you choose whichever song you want to play by just clicking on it.
The iPhone’s newfangled form of album browsing is nifty, but check this out: If you’re in your library, you activate Cover Flow by rotating the iPhone 90 degrees. When in this horizontal position, the screen automatically reorients itself into landscape mode, and Cover Flow; rotate it back 90 degrees to vertical, and the iPhone reactivates the traditional menu view. Similarly, when you’re playing a song in vertical mode, you get a traditional cover art view with onscreen forward, back, play, and pause buttons, but turn the phone to horizontal, and once again you can scroll through your music and video collection with Cover Flow (only this time you can listen to music or pause it while browsing).Yes, it’s all relatively unnecessary, but boy does it bring some sorely-missed joy and fun to the mostly-coverless digital music listening experience.
Where the iPhone really shines is in video, which is always displayed in crystal-clear, color-rich, high-resolution landscape mode. At 3.5-inches, the iPhone’s screen makes the portable video experience better than any tradition iPod, and certainly better than any of the other portable media players (Creative Zen, Toshiba Gigabeat) and media-playing smart phones (Samsung BlackJack, the various Treos) in this size category. Thanks to a spacious and sharp picture, and full stereo audio, the Ryan Adams “Two” and Dizzee Rascal’s “Sirens” look and sound stunning, a portable experience that approximates what you might see on a larger computer screen or television.
Music and music video pod casts vary in quality, depending on the production values of a particular pod cast (the Edge Video Podcast offers up four crisp music videos a week, whereas KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic suffers from grainy visuals).
But that’s not all. When you tire of your iTunes video collection (because, of course, you couldn’t fit that many clips on the 8GB device to begin with), you can just click on the YouTube icon and start streaming a selection of music videos (and other assorted offerings) in equally spacious widescreen landscape mode. To work on the iPhone, the YouTube videos have been converted to iTunes’s H.264 format, which makes them look a lot better than what you’d see on your desktop (which uses Flash -based video). It’s not quite what you see with the downloaded iTunes videos, but it’s impressively close, particularly with professionally-made videos (such as OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again”). (We did experience inferior sound quality on YouTube videos, however.)
How does phone, e-mail, SMS messaging, and Web browsing fit into this elegant next-gen iPod? As with many other handsets, the iPhone lets you accept calls while you’re listening to music. If you’re listening to a track, the music fades and you hear a ringtone as soon as a call comes in. If you’ve got the iPhone earbuds, all you do is squeeze the mic piece hanging around your neck and the call is answered. When the call is over, the music (or video) resumes. Similarly, you’ll get an onscreen pop-up while watching videos (or listening to music) if a text message or e-mail comes in.
Lastly, there’s the matter of the size: At .46 inches, it’s thinner than a standard bipod and the Motorola Q or Samsung Blackjack. Impressive.
THE PROBLEMS:
So much is right about the iPhone, and it’s just such a blast to play around with, that it’s hard to complain. But complain we must, as the Jesus handset has a few drawbacks.
As dazzling and smooth as the interface and touch screen is, it’s got a few near deal breakers. First off, the lack of dedicated hardware control buttons on the side of the iPhone (other than volume) is a hassle if you’re listening to music—you have to tap a couple of times on the screen every time you want to pause, stop, or skip around songs. At least there’s a volume button on the side, which works even if the touchscreen is locked (great for adjusting volume through your pants pocket if you need to suddenly turn down the volume on the fly). But it would have been handy to have a dedicated hardware skip forward and skip backward button, for instance: We couldn’t stop listening to Girls Aloud’s “The Show,” for some reason, but had to pull the iPhone out of our pocket every time we wanted to repeat the song (which was about 30 times!).
Speaking of hardware, there’s the issue of the headphone jack: The recessed 3.5 jack on the iPhone means your favorite pair of earbuds probably won’t fit without an adapter (currently, only Belkin offers a $10 model, and it’s about two unsightly and awkward inches long). Besides, you’ll want a pair of headphones with a built-in mic so you can take calls.
Unfortunately, the few models on offer right now leave much to be desired. The included iPhone earbuds sound tinny and have the typical white plastic cords that tangle easily. Meanwhile, premium models such as the Shure 12 c-m (from AT&T Wireless) and the V-moda Vibe Duo don’t quite offer the mid-range and taut bass that you can get in a typical higher-end bipod earbud range. That said, we recommend the Vibe Duo’s for now because their white and silver mesh styling (and tangle-free cord) look infinitely cooler than the generic black plastic Shure models. We got the best sound using our Ultimate Ears triple.fi’s and the adapter, but had to contend with an aesthetically-compromised iPhone.
The external speaker is as good as any old-school AM radio, but certainly works in a pinch for any impromptu beach or hotel-room parties.
Given the iPhone’s compatibility with YouTube, we were hoping the device would also let us stream a wide variety Internet radio stations and MP3s. The good news is that yes, you can listen to some radio streams and MP3s using QuickTime, but most everything else (RealPlayer and Windows Media files) is off limits (for now, at least). So, we were able to listen to Kevin Drew’s “Tbtf,” a free MP3 offered here on RollingStone.com, as well as some archived news shows on KQED.com, but most of our attempts at streaming radio didn’t work (we’ll get back to you if we discover others later).
And don’t forget that you’ll need to sign-up for an AT&T two-year contract and activate the phone, as well as an iTunes account, before you can even start sync-ing and listening to music. Music, video, and photo transfer are done the old-fashioned way, by cable. This allows you to pick and choose what you want to transfer (since it’s likely you have more media than will fit on the device), but disabling over-the-air downloads via Wi-Fi seems like a missed opportunity on the part of Apple.
Battery-wise, we were able to get about nine hours of heavy-duty screen use and music and video playing, as well as text messaging, emailing, phone calling, and Web surfing on one charge. We even had power-sucking Wi-Fi on the whole time.
Then there’s the matter of the onboard memory. If we could add memory, we wouldn’t really care that the iPhone only comes in 4GB and 8GB flavors, but given that we can’t expand memory, we can only recommend that you go for the 8GB version. The premium version is only $100 more for twice the memory and 4GB is really insufficient for anyone who likes to watch video — and the magnificent screen here really deserves to have video displayed on it. Though 8GB sounds measly, it’s not nothing: We were able to get a satisfying 406 songs, about 30 video pod casts, five episodes of The Office, three episodes of The Sarah Silverman Show, and all of Herbie Fully Loaded onto our 8GB model. (We sacrificed in the photo department, transferring only 16 of them).
And yes, the screen gets greasy, but it’s easily cleaned off with a micro fiber.
CONCLUSION:
This is the best iPod ever. Apple really focused on delivering a top-notch portable media player, and really upped the traditional smart phone capabilities to something that rivals or bests many a MotoQ or Helio Ocean. Think of it as an excellent iPod with a bunch of seriously useful extras. Compare that to 2006’s Motorola/Apple iTunes phone, which was a clumsy music device and a so-so phone.
That said, it’s a serious (and heavy) piece of machinery that wouldn’t be our first choice for the gym or a morning jog, so stick to your Nano for sports activities. And while the iPhone’s design is spot-on, the device’s small on-board memory keeps it from fulfilling its potential.
We expect this to change soon. It’s likely that the next improvements in terms of new launches will be more memory. If you’re on the fence, or still have a contract with another carrier to finish up, it might be worth waiting for the bigger-memory iPhone, but you are guaranteed the gadget-geek ride of your life if you join the hordes and get this thing now.