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SINGAPORE : The Apple iPhone 3G will irk many people. You can’t forward SMSes and you can’t create an SMS group. You can’t send MMSes and you can’t delete individual messages — you have to delete whole conversation threads.
And be careful not to get too verbose in your correspondence lest you need to forward it, because without a copy-and-paste feature, you’ll have to type it out letter-by-letter.
It’s a 3.5G phone, but you can’t make video calls. The camera is a 2-megapixel number that can’t capture video. There’s no FM radio tuner. You can pair the iPhone with a headset for voice calls, but you can’t transfer files from the iPhone to another device via Bluetooth.
As you can gather, the iPhone 3G is no quantum leap in technology.
Yet, it’s an agent of change that has driven phone makers back to the drawing board, and it has probably captured more headlines than any other device.
As we found out, the iPhone isn’t all fluff. Let us tell you why.
Integration & Software
Using iTunes, the iPhone 3G syncs to your computer, channelling your contacts, music, home movies, podcasts, photos and Internet bookmarks. If you lose the phone, you can get a new one and restore it with the latest backup, with all your settings intact. This tight integration of hardware and software makes the smartphone less daunting to use.
Making the iPhone a central device for mobile media consumption is also compelling because of the emotional attachment people have with their media. Couple this with the features of a phone, desktop-grade Web browsing and email, and the iPhone 3G becomes a digital representation of your tastes, your personality and how you communicate.
Apple seems committed to delivering bug fixes and feature additions with every new release of the phone’s operating system. With these updates, some of the shortcomings listed earlier, such as the lack of SMS forwarding, could be written off one by one.
Applications
The addition of the App Store makes the iPhone 3G seem like a Swiss Army knife with a limitless number of interchangeable tools.
The applications, both free and paid ones, broaden the phone’s functions: you can compose music, listen to Internet radio, play Sudoku or even review X-ray scans.
In one instance, I found myself tapping my feet to a song while I was having my hair cut. I whipped out the iPhone to see if there was an application in the App Store that could record audio so I could identify the song later. I ended up with Shazam, an application that identified the song in a matter of seconds.
Even portions of this review were crafted with a word processor that I downloaded on a whim.
Using the iPhone
There have been reports of issues with the iPhone’s 3G performance and complaints of dropped calls. But there were no such woes with our review model, even before we downloaded the recent software update released to rectify its 3G problems.
To test the network coverage and the phone’s 3G performance, we cruised down the East Coast Parkway, making our way from Tampines to Holland Village.
Calls were made while we tracked our location using GPS and surfed the Web. Google Maps constantly updated and downloaded the maps for our location with nary a lag. Voice calls remained clear and consistent. We streamed Internet radio and YouTube videos without a jitter. We booked movie tickets and performed online banking. All this within a single cab ride.
The iPhone’s battery has attracted much flak because it cannot be replaced conveniently when you run out of juice. But we found that using the device on a normal basis — accessing the Web intermittently, listening to music and playing games — yielded a decent eight to 10 hours.
However, using 3G, WiFi, utilising push email and viewing media intensively drained battery life to three hours.
Putting the App in the Apple iPhone
Applications on Apple’s App Store can range from the outright awesome to the terribly inane. And as we found out, browsing and trying the applications can be addictive. Recent figures don’t lie — since the launch of the App Store on July 11, more than 60 million applications have been downloaded.
According to Apple, there are more than 900 applications available, with 20 per cent of them free, and more than 90 per cent of paid ones priced at less than US$10 (S$14).
We check out five free applications you can get started on.
Shazam
Find yourself trying to figure out that song you’re tapping your feet to? We know we have.
Shazam can help you to identify a song you hear by recording ambient audio and sending it back to its servers for an audio recognition engine to work its magic. Apart from identifying the song, it provides relevant links to YouTube videos.
We’ve tried it out on quiet music playing in an uber-romantic candlelit restaurant, and clubby beats at a trendy hair salon. It hasn’t failed us yet. This crowd-pleaser is that good.
Flashlight
Download the Flashlight application and watch the 3.5-inch touchscreen on your iPhone literally outshine almost any phone on the market.
With Flashlight, you can definitely find those darn coins you dropped at the movie theatre.
The application has a fun component, too, with its ability to emit colourful strobe effects. Nifty when you’re at your next rave party or when you want to confuse that stalker of yours with some pretty, seizure-inducing lights.
Stunningly simple, yet effective and useful, this one belongs on Batman’s utility belt.
Tap Tap Revenge
If you love Guitar Hero, you’re going to like Tap Tap Revenge just as much.
In this game, you tap on colourful balls flowing down lines of light, in time to music.
There are multiple levels of difficulty and even a two-player mode where a friend can tap on the other end of your iPhone.
If you run out of songs to tap to, there’s an option to download more free songs within the game. All these for free? Yes, oh yes.
Last.fm
No FM radio on the iPhone? No problem. Tap into Internet radio with Last.fm. You’ll have to sign up for an account but registration is brief and painless.
You can then start streaming any of the five million songs from its library and share them with the contacts on your phone or your friends on the music-based social network.
The user interface is akin to Apple’s iPod application and is easy to navigate. Despite being streamed, the music doesn’t suffer in quality. Just keep your eye on how much bandwidth you’re consuming.
Stanza
Book lovers will find Stanza a treasure trove of deliciously classic reads that you can download. We found must-reads from the likes of Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, D H Lawrence, Franz Kafka and H G Wells.
Although the phone’s screen might not be as big as some of the digital book readers out there, there are settings to resize text to improve readability. You can also search through books and jump to specific chapters. - TODAY/rose
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