iPhone - what's it like as a "phone"?

JoeA3

Hi guys,
I'm probably asking questions that have been asked before, but I'd like to hear first hand experience.
I'm very tempted to get myself a new iPhone. I've had Nokias' and Sony-Ericcssons' for donkeys years, currently have a Nokia N95, so this is something very different.

I already have an iTouch so I'm well familiar with how brilliant it is as a "mobile internet" device, and I know the user interface kicks the pants off any nokia! My only gripe with the iTouch is that I don't use it often enough - carrying one bulky gadget in my pocket is more than enough...

My question is, what is the iPhone like as a normal phone? Does it take a lot of getting used to, as I'm sure many of you were Nokia owners in the past... For example, simple stuff, like:

- does it vibrate when it rings? Are the ring tones loud / easily configurable?
- can you switch between silent / general mode easily like on a nokia?
- does the lack of a physical keypad take a lot of getting used to?
- battery life - is it really poor? I find that the battery lasts no length on the iTouch if you watch any videos / use the Wi-Fi, etc

I know the camera is supposedly not great, but that doesn't bother me.

Also, I see people say you HAVE to have a data-bundle on your Tarrif with an iPhone... but surely if you have easy access to wi-fi, you'd rarely actually need the "data-bundle"?

cheers!

senordingdong

JoeA3 wrote: »

My question is, what is the iPhone like as a normal phone?

It's big.

niceirishfella

My question is "do they Break easily?"
I've dropped my nokia a few times onto hard tarmac for instance and its survived. I wonder does the iphone take to a hard life?

JoeA3

senordingdong wrote: »

It's big.

That's true, but the Nokia N95 is also pretty bulky and heavy!

That's another good Q - does it break easily? Obviously its down to how careful you are with it I suppose, but you would hope that any phone would survive an occasional "drop" !!

johnson1

JoeA3 wrote: »

Hi guys,

- does it vibrate when it rings? Yes Are the ring tones loud / easily configurable? Yes
- can you switch between silent / general mode easily like on a nokia? Yes
- does the lack of a physical keypad take a lot of getting used to? Not really and when you do it's greatt
- battery life - is it really poor? I find that the battery lasts no length on the iTouch if you watch any videos / use the Wi-Fi, etc Ye the battery life isn't great I get a day and a half of heavy use at the most!

I know the camera is supposedly not great, but that doesn't bother me.

Also, I see people say you HAVE to have a data-bundle on your Tarrif with an iPhone... but surely if you have easy access to wi-fi, you'd rarely actually need the "data-bundle"? Depends on whether you have easy access to wi-fi I suppose if you buy it from o2 on bill it will include a data bundle by default

cheers!

Overall it's a far better machine in my opinion than the likes of the n95 or samsung touch screen models.

Regards
Johnson

philiporeilly

niceirishfella wrote: »

My question is "do they Break easily?"
I've dropped my nokia a few times onto hard tarmac for instance and its survived. I wonder does the iphone take to a hard life?

I've dropped mine many a time on the road and even from the top of a stairs by accident and didnt even scratch it. Then again I dropped it once from about 3ft and it smashed the screen (€50 to get replaced by UK company on ebay).

Its a great phone if you have lots of contacts. Volume levels and sound quality are average for any phone BUT the battery is poor. You will need to charge every day but this can be forgiven as you will use it a lot more and it is more power hungry to run everything it can do.

Overall its an average phone but fantastic device. I wont be switching back to nokia.

Dades

As a phone it's grand. Vibrate is fine, and ringtones are infinite as you can create your own MP4 files to use.
The text tones are limited though.

I was away recently and had data roaming switched off, so was only using the phone/ipod part (not much). The battery lasted the guts of 4 days.

As to whether you would get by on wi-fi alone - that depends on you. I need my Data Bundle.

Owen

As a gadget it's great, as a phone it's average. I have a few handsets lying around the house, and when I'm using my VF Sim in the iPhone, I have to go to one part of the house to get signal. Take the same Sim and put it any of my older Nokia handsets, you can make a call anywhere in the house.

And as others have said, the battery life is very poor.

JoeA3

thanks for the replies guys, great help... I love my gadgets and I suppose that's what appeals most to me about it!

Another question - its got bluetooth right, but I read someplace that it isn't as functional as other phones in that regard. But surely it works with bluetooth car-kits and stuff like that?

philiporeilly

JoeA3 wrote: »

thanks for the replies guys, great help... I love my gadgets and I suppose that's what appeals most to me about it!

Another question - its got bluetooth right, but I read someplace that it isn't as functional as other phones in that regard. But surely it works with bluetooth car-kits and stuff like that?

They have opened up bluetooth a little with the 3.0 Os out on Wednesday. Hopefully you should be able to use it for tethering (depends on O2) and you can now use stereo bluetooth headsets. File access / transfers etc are still limited though compared to other phones.

Dades

JoeA3 wrote: »

But surely it works with bluetooth car-kits and stuff like that?

It always has for voice calls - and will work in stereo after 3.0.
I use it with a cheap Sony headunit in my car.

keith_d99

Yikes - in a bad reception area as it is - are they that bad for reception?

PaintDoctor wrote: »

As a gadget it's great, as a phone it's average. I have a few handsets lying around the house, and when I'm using my VF Sim in the iPhone, I have to go to one part of the house to get signal. Take the same Sim and put it any of my older Nokia handsets, you can make a call anywhere in the house.

And as others have said, the battery life is very poor.

Silverfish

keith_d99 wrote: »

Yikes - in a bad reception area as it is - are they that bad for reception?

Afraid so, it's the metal casing.

Victor_M

Silverfish wrote: »

Afraid so, it's the metal casing.

Only the 1G has metal casing, it plastic on the 3G one, but the reception is average to above average, certainly not the best, but some of My Nokia's in the past and Sony E's have been much worse.

I had a Nokia 6310 (I think) years and years ago it was as dull as dishwater as a phone that could get a signal no matter where I was, never had a Nokia that was as good since, any previous ones I had were still dull as dishwater only with moderate to terrible signal strength depending on the models.

rordeb

My wife has one and uses the phone lots for her business. She has no music or movies on it but uses it loads for email on the move, facebook, youtube, weather etc. Its an amazing device and she has bought loads of excellent applications from the App store. For the past 10 years she has complained about each of her phones - this is the first she has loved

eeloe

I think it's great as a phone, the speaker is fantastic on it.

Switching it from "general" to "silent" is as simple as flicking a switch, there's a switch on the side of the phone that puts it in to silent mode.

I find it easier to txt on the iphone than any of my previous nokias.

As a device/gadget, it's amazing, i'd be absolutely lost without it, i have all my music on the move, access to weather reports, youtube if im bored, all my email, and mobile web surfing!

I love it!

GET ONE!:D

elvis jones

eeloe wrote: »

I think it's great as a phone, the speaker is fantastic on it.

Switching it from "general" to "silent" is as simple as flicking a switch, there's a switch on the side of the phone that puts it in to silent mode.

I find it easier to txt on the iphone than any of my previous nokias.

As a device/gadget, it's amazing, i'd be absolutely lost without it, i have all my music on the move, access to weather reports, youtube if im bored, all my email, and mobile web surfing!

I love it!

GET ONE!:D

Do you use a free e mail or a specific one of your own ???

I have both and would like to use both on the go.

Silverfish

Victor_M wrote: »

Only the 1G has metal casing, it plastic on the 3G one, but the reception is average to above average, certainly not the best, but some of My Nokia's in the past and Sony E's have been much worse.

Oh yeah, forgot about those, was just thinking of my one.

mobius42

Silverfish wrote: »

Oh yeah, forgot about those, was just thinking of my one.

I had a 2G and a 3G. The difference in reception was unbelievable. With the 2G, I often had to hold the phone upside down to get adequate reception! Now, with the 3G, I have no problems. I can see why they got rid of the aluminium back.

Owen

Silverfish wrote: »

Afraid so, it's the metal casing.

mobius42 wrote: »

I can see why they got rid of the aluminium back.

Well that's strange, I don't think the makeup of the case affected the 1st gen iPhone, as the antennae was located under the black plastic housing at the base of the phone. I think it was more to do with poor hardware design.

Victor_M

Every time the software evolved the signal performance improved too, Apple are still relatively new to the mobile phone market so i presume they are learning as they go.

philiporeilly

PaintDoctor wrote: »

Well that's strange, I don't think the makeup of the case affected the 1st gen iPhone, as the antennae was located under the black plastic housing at the base of the phone. I think it was more to do with poor hardware design.

It was stated that having less metal in the design helped to improve signal, as that was a major complaint with version 1. Also it was stated that it was more scratch resistant (??) and guessing probably cheaper to make.

Tom Dunne

As a phone, it's average. Nothing spectacular, a lot of people seem to have issue with the inability to forward texts, why, I cannot fathom.

Little things like being able to dial a phone number directly from a web page make it pretty slick (try it - look up a number on the Golden Pages mobile website and click on it) and being able to switch to an application while the phone call is in progress increase the "wow" factor. But then again, most modern phones can do that.

As for battery life. I get approx. 2 days on my 1st gen iPhone.That is with 2-3 calls a day, 5-6 texts, and approx. 2 hours web and/or streaming.

TinCool

Myself and my wife plumed for 2 iPhones and I have to say I absolutely love mine. The interface on them really are class. I'm pretty much constantly playing about with mine.

I'm living in the UK and was over in Carlingford for the weekend. The B&B we were staying in had wireless so I logged on and rang my wife who was at home for free over the WiFi/Skype. Yeah, I know other phones have Skype but it was so straight forward on the iPhone to the point where my wife can use it without my telling her what needs to be done to get things working. It's very intuitive.



I love mine and am really looking forward to the 3.0 software tomorrow.

Stephen

Yeah, love mine as well. Roll on 3.0. I use it far more as a mobile internet device/ipod than I do as a phone (low volume of calls/texts). After 2 days my battery will usually be down to the 20% remaining warning, which is when I recharge it.

luckat

It's good as a phone, but has some faults.

You can't send a photo attached to a text. Sure, you can email it - but not everyone I know uses email on their phones. In fact, no one does.

No cut-and-paste - though this is appearing in the new OS. Apparently the new OS is much slower, which doesn't matter if you're using the new phone that's coming out now - but I won't be buying that new phone, too dear, so I'll just end up with a slow OS.

You can't record calls as you make them - something I would occasionally want to do if I was doing an interview with someone who was in a big hurry.

The screen is iffy. I broke my first one when it flew out of my hand onto the street. I have a kind of fat rubber condom thingy on the second one to protect it. But the screen on that is obviously failing - I've reset it to factory standard once, but it still goes dark in the middle of a call and refuses to wake up when I want to hang up, sometimes leaving me for ages paying for minutes I'm not using.

And it's a nightmare to get it replaced - the last time, I had to use a nasty Motorola basic phone for three weeks while Apple decided whether they'd honour my insurance. Really, the insurance should cover a loan iPhone, rather than having to pay €35 to Carphone Warehouse to borrow a barely usable non-iPhone phone.

cojomo2

luckat wrote: »

It's good as a phone, but has some faults.

You can't send a photo attached to a text. Sure, you can email it - but not everyone I know uses email on their phones. In fact, no one does.

No cut-and-paste - though this is appearing in the new OS. Apparently the new OS is much slower, which doesn't matter if you're using the new phone that's coming out now - but I won't be buying that new phone, too dear, so I'll just end up with a slow OS.

You can't record calls as you make them - something I would occasionally want to do if I was doing an interview with someone who was in a big hurry.

The screen is iffy. I broke my first one when it flew out of my hand onto the street. I have a kind of fat rubber condom thingy on the second one to protect it. But the screen on that is obviously failing - I've reset it to factory standard once, but it still goes dark in the middle of a call and refuses to wake up when I want to hang up, sometimes leaving me for ages paying for minutes I'm not using.

And it's a nightmare to get it replaced - the last time, I had to use a nasty Motorola basic phone for three weeks while Apple decided whether they'd honour my insurance. Really, the insurance should cover a loan iPhone, rather than having to pay €35 to Carphone Warehouse to borrow a barely usable non-iPhone phone.

could this be a legal thing? I think its against the law to record a conversation you are having with someone without their consent

Owen

cojomo2 wrote: »

could this be a legal thing? I think its against the law to record a conversation you are having with someone without their consent

Most phones that do have that facility make a beep over the line every 30 seconds or so to notify the other user the calls is being recorded, none the less, it's still the responsibility of one party to notify the other.

JoeA3

Thanks again guys for the opinions! Most of the negative things I think I could live with!
I suppose battery life is probably the one thing that would annoy me - e.g. on the infrequent occasion I'd take a plane / train journey for example, listening to music for the journey, would I find myself with a dead-battery phone by the time I get to my destination?!!!

It's a pity the technology that goes into battery life hasn't moved on as quickly as the gadgets which use them.

Dades

luckat wrote: »

And it's a nightmare to get it replaced - the last time, I had to use a nasty Motorola basic phone for three weeks while Apple decided whether they'd honour my insurance. Really, the insurance should cover a loan iPhone, rather than having to pay €35 to Carphone Warehouse to borrow a barely usable non-iPhone phone.

CWH insurance is a nightmare to deal with. I did renew it when I got my iPhone though, and the sound chap in the shop told me to come to him before making any claim to make sure I wasn't unwittingly flagging anything that would allow the insurance co to deny me.

I was refused insurance before on a Nokia 6300 and I ground them down with calls, mails and faxes before they caved.

Stephen

JoeA3 wrote: »

It's a pity the technology that goes into battery life hasn't moved on as quickly as the gadgets which use them.

It has! Only the gadgets have evolved to consume more and more power.