iPhone Likes
Aug 22nd, 2008 by Andy
Okay, so the battery life stinks. I’ll deal with it.
I do think the iPhone interface is pretty cool. It took me a day or two to get the hang of it. I still catch myself searching for some kind of default/standard “menu” option within each application - but even that I’m getting used to.
What I really like is how some developers are doing creative things with the interface. I’ve seen some cool screens that adjust on the fly as you rotate the phone (not in the clunky way that Safari flops from portrait to landscape and back - smoooooth). While probably not really practical, I’ve enjoyed some of the apps that use shaking as an input mechanism. I’ve even found some apps where pinching to shrink/grow what’s on the screen is really useful (why are all the demos of that technique limited to viewing images?).
I find the battery life is great as long as you don’t use the iphone as a personal computer. It’s great for quickly mapping something, playing music, and occasionally doing email, but if you try and read all your RSS feeds on it or watch movies, the thing sucks the battery life.
Having said that, I find myself using the battery hungry things all the time when I’m away from my laptop for more than a few hours (sad, I know…)
Yeah, I do tend to spend a lot of time goofing around with it - certainly more than any previous phone - so I suppose it makes sense that the battery drains quickly. I still find it frustrating and almost every day end up in an annoying situation where I have to go plug the dang thing in when I would rather just be using it.
One idea would be to make it quicker/easier to jump into some kind of “low power mode” where the phone received calls and SMS but didn’t monkey around with 3G, wifi, or GPS (or maybe make this mode configurable).