Thursday, March 17, 2011

Why I dont like iPhone

okay, go out there and show off you iPhone (not around tech geeks please.... you'll get slammed to the ground) and who wouldn't say "WOWWWWW!!!! iPHONE!!!" heck, you might even get 2-syllables damn with that... at that time you might feel cloud 9, nothing makes you happier than people admiring your iPhone... and for that purpose, I'd say Steve Jobs really do his jobs... the iPhone have become a cult... it's like to coolest thing ever exist in the world and become one of the things to own at least once in life...

But what if I'd say, iPhone is actually overrated????

So, what makes me dont really like the thing that deemed to be the coolest thing in the world??? let's not talk about that first... why not we give some praise and compliment first...

The positive of iPhone:-
  1. The display is pretty sharp... though I think Samsung Galaxy S running android isn't that bad either... however I do think Apple's iPhone is a little bit better in this area... but really, when running games and apps I can't see any different between iPhone and Galaxy S.... Perhaps I haven't encounter games and apps optimized for Retinal Display yet???
  2. The sensitivity of the touchscreen... I had to say it's supersensitive... a little touch is good enough for it to register with minimal mis-register...
  3. The effect... I had to say iOS has the best beautiful transition effects... changing menu, opening apps, all have its own effect...
  4. The look and reputation... like I said earlier, ppl will "WOW" and it looks so expensive...
  5. Touch Focus!!! OMG, this is something new... I dont know if any Android have this, but it's very cool... to let your camera focus on the object, touch it... fuuuuuuuuuuu.....

The so-so:-
  1. Battery life... I dont think the battery life is something amazing... but good enough... full charge can last me till night... around 12hrs.... for a new battery, I will be mad if it's less than that with my usage (facebook, twitter, sms... mainly internet)
  2. The function... for a mere phone, it's as good as other phones... can sms, mms, make calls, receive calls... download apps for some additional features to improve your experience like games, multimedia... while Apps Store has large chunk of apps to download, Android Market does this too...
  3. The charging time... I had a feeling it's not any faster compare to other phones... well, i'm charging on USB anyway, of course it is... 500mA isn't gonna do much... though the 1A power adapter is pretty fast... but if charging for 3 - 4 hours gonna last you next 12 hours, i have no grudge about it...

The negative about iPhone:-
  1. One serious thing, why the heck we can't choose the network we want to be on??? I mean, it's ok you only want to put us on Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Maxis, DiGi, Celcom.... heck, I dont care anymore... back and forth they're almost the same (at least Maxis, DiGi and Celcom) but when you dont give us a chance to choose to be on UMTS or GSM, that hurts me you know... the bad thing about phones/mobile broadband modem is, they dont have enough intelligence when not to prefer higher bandwidth signal...
    • Like when you had one bar of 3G signal and comparing to 4 bar of EDGE, you should always prefer EDGE compare to 3G but most device will still prefer 3G and end up sucky connection, this is the thing that happening to iPhone 4
    • Some device might even always prefer to slower EDGE connection even 3G signal is good in the area just because EDGE has stronger signal while 3G signal will provide better bandwidth... however this wasn't the case with iPhone...
    • With other phone like Nokia that I used before (heck even mobile broadband modems too) will let us choose to use between UMTS or GSM or just let the phone choose... because of device auto preference is always stupid, I choose UMTS for the whole time unless I'm traveling far away...
    • Somehow in iPhone this thing is missing and it's killing me when it keeps on switching between UMTS and GSM. Ok, Jailbraking will solve the problem but that's not my option... my old Nokia dont even have to be hacked for me to have this options...
  2. The OS... while it's one of the most beautiful aesthetically, it's one of the inefficient way of implementation... especially the multi-tasking (but I really prefer to call it fast app switching instead...)
    • Apple somehow have high confidence that their phone won't crash even when the memory overloaded like what happened to Nokia's Symbian... the thing is, you can't quit your apps... you have to terminate it... it's like when you running Microsoft Office on your computer, you dont have the "X" button on your top right, but instead you only have minimize button... to close the apps, please open the task manager and select the apps you want to close, click End Process.... very tedious... I still dont know what magical approach they did, but hey, I opened all my apps and never quit them, the phone is still not lagging... I got to give them compliment on that anyway... but the way they manage the task is not really good I think... I never had tested the Android's multitasking... so I can't really comment on it... But I do think iOS implementation is slightly worse than Symbians, solely because Symbian allows us to quit the apps properly rather than leaving it suspended...
  3. The standardization
    • You can't use MP3 as ringtones, you can't change your text tones (unless jailbroken), you can't do this, you can't do that... seriously, this "no-choice-on-user" policy is getting more and more annoying...
So, as conclusion... iPhone might be good if you dont even use all of the options you have in your previous phones... but for me who will go and change every single possible options and settings (of course, without hacking) will cry over the lacking of options... yes, less options might be better for those who don't like to choose over choices they dont understand but it will annoy certain users who loves customization, personalization and certain critical options like network signal selection...

Who should own an iPhone:-
  1. The person who don't even care about the hardware of the device (CPU, RAM, ROM etc)
  2. The person who don't care about all those options he have and don't like to make decision on his own... always depends on others decision...
  3. The person who think he is sophisticated, cool, and great by owning an overrated, expensive device that will not let you make decision...
I'm sorry iPhone cultist and fanboys... it's just not for me... though the fact that I already own it with 2 years contract, I had to live with it and make something good out of it... I'm pretty sure there's a lot more thing that can be done with this device, but for me it's more like "iPhone is iPod Touch + phone" rather than "iPod touch is iPhone without phone"...

yes, i see iPhone as the extension of iPod Touch... not the other way around like before anymore....

This review is done with iPhone 4 updated to iOS4.3 in hand....