It is very rare that I touch a piece of technology and my initial experience is negative. In part, devices usually get good initial reviews just due to the excitement of working with something new. You would think flaws would highlight themselves, but excited users are prone to dismiss minor bugs or bad workflow. After the newness wears off, you can finally start to see a product for what it is. Now this theory does not always follow true, especially when the issues take you out of the ‘good’ experience. For example, after waiting 4 weeks for my iPhone 4, I have spent 2 full days with AT&T trying to determine why my phone could not accept SMS messages from carriers other than AT&T.
The Excitement of Facetime
However, perhaps it’s best to not start with this problem, but lets rather start with the first problem I noticed, FaceTime. Out of the box, I really wanted to try FaceTime, so I quickly called up one of my Geek friends and was shocked at the screen I saw. Well, truthfully, Initially I didn’t notice the issue. If you have a friend with more than one phone number, you get a pretty screen that labels all the numbers, but if you have a contact with a really insane amount of phone numbers you get a more complex look without labels for the numbers. I call it Android Style, because this is what we initially had to put up with all the time on Android. It is funny because I was annoyed with the ‘favorites list’ on the Motorola Droid dialer for just this reason: a list of numbers without labels. Regardless of the annoyance, FaceTime was cool and a novelty.
No SMS Messages
Now lets get to the SMS issue. I initially noticed the issue when I tried to SMS something to the iPhone during initial setup. The message from my Verizon phone never arrived. I then tried AT&T, Sprint, TMobile, and Vodaphone and only the AT&T SMS made it to the handset. I decided to take my phone to the AT&T store the day after receiving it. After demonstrating the issue the representative was obviously stumped, and told me to restore the software on the phone. Let me explain this more fully. The iPhone could send SMS message messages to all carriers including Google Voice, but it could not receive from any carrier other than AT&T. My initial visit resulted in the suggestion I restore the iPhone software, without restoring from backup, but this did not sound logical. But, as the phone was only 1 day old, I truly had nothing to lose. I restored and of course, the problem persisted.
Two days later I was on the telephone with AT&T support and they tried a whole battery of things. It only took 5 or so minutes to get some recommendations like trying the SIM in another iPhone, etc. I was escalated to a technical support specialist who determined there may be a routing issue with my text messages and I was on hold while he worked on this issue. I have always joked about AT&T support, but everyone was extremely helpful, and not once did they try to say the issue was with the other carrier. Needless to say, after the tech changed the routing, he took my call-back number and I had to wait 6 hrs for a call back from him. More frustration, but the problem as promised was resolved.
Oh the Limitations
I don’t know if the initial issues served as a total buzz kill on my excitement, but over the first couple days I honestly felt the iPhone was just a boring device. Don’t get me wrong: it has amazing apps, but not the same benefit of Android or Windows Phone 7 with information at a glance via widgets or hubs. I was also annoyed with each limitation of the phone, like syncing contacts with GMail OTA or wireless podcast downloads like with PodTrapper on BlackBerry or BeyondPod for Android. I knew about the podcasting limitation going into this, but it still annoys me. I never really found myself in the “death grip”, because I naturally hold my phones in such a manner that I never touched Apple’s ‘special place’ (wow! that sounds wrong, but I said it, so I will let it stand). Regardless of not touching the special spot, I always showed marginal AT&T coverage, and since all phones show signal strength differently, I cannot say if the issue is with the iPhone itself or the AT&T network. However, there IS a reception problem and it’s driving me crazy.
The Classic Developer Date Bug 12/31/69
I had to make a trip to NYC, so I figured this would be a great first time to used the iPhone for both business and pleasure. I actually had no issue carrying two devices, but determining which was vibrating on the table as a challenge most of the day. Luckily the BlackBerry has a notification light so it was less of an issue once I remembered this. I honestly believe I remember the iPhone as being a better device. The design and screen display is amazing, but that does not over come many of the little issues.
In the past when I used my iPhone I would sync my contacts from Exchange, but now I want to sync from GMail. I thought the iPhone allowed for wireless contact sync from GMail, but that is not the case with the default GMail Setup. Beyond that, the phone wants to keep the last x number of messages from GMail. On the surface this is not an issue unless you delete (archive) messages as it pulls older messages to the phone. The confusing part is if older messages that are unread are not initially on your device but get pulled over after you delete new messages you cannot understand why you have unread messages but nothing new has arrived. Well nothing new arrived but some old unread emails did get added to the bottom of the phone queue. That initially threw me for a loop. What really confused me is seeing messages with a date of 12/31/1969 or 12/31/00 and this happened more often than desired. I know this only happens when I delete messages via GMail or a desktop client and the phone performs a sync. I never found a way to resolve this under the default GMail configuration but I did configure GMail using Exchange Active Sync and resolved the issue.
The implementation of faux multi tasking for me was just an overall marginal experience. The most annoying part is that by default all apps remain running when you leave them. Personally I would rather set what apps I want to remain running in the background and all others close upon exit. While is sounds more complex, it is much better than having to go back and start closing apps on a periodic basis. I would almost rather have no multi-tasking than what Apple is providing. As a user, I have a handful of apps I want to run in the background (Slacker Radio, Pandora, TripIt, Maps, and E*TRADE are some examples), but in this model I have to circle back and close apps like Photo, Messages, Contacts, Games, Calculator, and many others.
Even the Camera Roll Has Failed me
The camera roll is a place I never recall having issues, but sometimes depending when I left the app I would have to exit and re-enter a camera roll in order for the ability to send images to reappear. I could not find a pattern as to why this behavior was appearing, but the solution was always to exit and re-enter the camera roll.
Anticipation for the new device makes you believe that despite flaws, the device is better than it really is. I waited 4 weeks for my iPhone 4 to arrive and today, only a couple of days later, I am ready to return the device. I have solved my major problems with SMS and messages dated 12/31/69. I am also having a host of other small issues that are not listed above. Steve Jobs said if you don’t like it, return it. While I want the device to write about is is rather boring which makes me want to send it back. I have a couple days to decide. I have a BlackBerry Bold 9650 and I am counting on that device more than the iPhone. For me the BlackBerry is for work emails, podcasts and phone calls, the iPhone is for all the other app stuff. I just don’t remember this much crap and poor user experience from my previous iPhone devices. Is the rest of the world totally blind to this? I guess that if you haven’t experienced other major platform devices, perhaps you are not able to see what you might be missing. I fear that my eyes have now been opened.