Digital Reviews

My Phone

Some of you own one, some of
you are on the waiting list to buy one, and some of you are holding out
for your next contract upgrade. The iPhone is coming, so we’ve put
together a quick guide to get you up to speed and help you get started.
By Monique Whitaker

Sleek, slim, shiny — the iPhone is proof consumers care
about form and not just function. But it’s not just a pretty little
thing. The other crucial element is ease of use.

It’s the must-have gadget of the year, and it’s simple to
use. As one technologically challenged iPhone user said : “I love that
Home button, the one below the screen. I call it the ‘get out of jail
free’ button! If I get stuck, I just press that and it takes me right
back to the main menu.”

But do not fret, this cellphone is user-friendly enough that you won’t have to find a child to show you how to work it.

We’ve put together easy steps to help you use the most anticipated cellphone ever released.

Out Of the Box

Getting your SIM card in
and out is easy. The iPhone comes with a handy SIM card-ejector tool —
no more fiddling around with hard-to-release back panels or banging out
the battery. The downside is, you can’t swap the battery once it dies;
you have to take the phone in to have that done.

The first thing you do is download iTunes to your
computer. (Download it for free : http://tinylink.co.za/e9a4b4.).
Installation is a snap.

Contacts and Calendars

It’s
easy to synchronise your iPhone up to your computer to download your
contacts and save yourself the hassle of entering them on the phone
individually. The iPhone comes with a cable to connect to your
computer’s USB slot.

Sadly, the new iPhone 3G — the one we’re getting in SA —
doesn’t come with a dock to pop it into for quick synchronising with
your computer.

The original iPhone, released in the US last year, came
with a dock included, but it’s absent from the new version. You can get
one, though, at additional cost.

Using iTunes, you can get contacts from either your Mac’s
Address Book or from Outlook if you use a PC. Microsoft Entourage is
also supported. As for online contacts, there’s the option of importing
your Yahoo! or Google address books. There are free third-party
programmes like Plaxo (http://www.plaxo.com/downloads) that will help
you transfer contacts from clients like Hotmail and Thunderbird to your
computer, and from there you can download those to your iPhone, too.

After the initial set-up, every time you plug your iPhone
back into your computer it will automatically sync all your information
between the two (or you can choose to do it manually, if you prefer).

Making Calls

The original iPhone was
not renowned for its call quality. Luckily, we’re skipping straight to
the new 3G version, which is a definite improvement, with a louder
speaker and less background hiss.

Dialling is simple, with a straightforward keypad, just
as you’re used to from your old phone. The only difference is that the
keys are virtual ones on the iPhone’s touch-screen. Almost the whole
front of the phone is one big touch-screen, apart from the Home button.

Calling any of your existing contacts takes just a click
or two and you can add those you call most often to the Favourites
folder for quick access.

The iPhone also has an especially useful feature for
when you’ve been out of touch for a while and accumulated loads of
voicemails. Visual voicemail lets you see your messages in a list, just
as with SMSes, and pick which you want to listen to, without having to
wade through all those before it.

SENDING SMS

The letters of the virtual keyboard on the iPhone’s
touch-screen at first look too small for comfortable typing. But this
is another area in which Apple’s carefully thought-out design really
tells. Touch the letter you want and it instantly enlarges. Even though
my fingers are much bigger than the keys on screen, I found typing an
SMS easy.

The new iPhone 3G lets you send the same SMS to multiple
people. Bizarrely, the original iPhone didn’t have this feature, and
neither version allows you to resend SMSes that don’t go through or
forward a message you’ve received. These options are standard on even
basic cellphones, which makes their absence on the iPhone all the more
glaring.

On the plus side, the chat-style arrangement of your
messages when SMSing back and forth makes conversations very easy to
keep track of.

Accessing Your E-Mail

The iPhone’s own
e-mail client will take you to your account straight from the main menu
— and the phone also supports Microsoft Exchange, so you can access
your work e-mail network wherever you are. If you use Gmail, Yahoo!
Mail or any other webmail service, you can check your e-mail online
using the iPhone’s Safari web-browser.

The one glaring omission, which many assumed would be
dealt with in the switch from the old iPhone to the 3G model, is the
ability to cut and paste. The lack of this feature can be a pain when
composing e-mails.

What will really strike you when checking your mail,
though, is what’s probably the iPhone’s single most impressive feature
— the ability to zoom in and out with the flick of your fingers. Pinch
two fingers together on the touch-screen to make the text smaller or
pull them apart to enlarge.

Using just a finger to scroll around is also one of those
things that, once you get used to it, you can’t seem to live without.
Simply drag a finger across the screen to quickly and easily scroll
through your e-mails or within a message.

The best bit is that you can scroll anywhere on the
screen; you’re not restricted to just a small scrollbar on the side. Of
course, you can also use this and the pinch-zoom feature on your
photographs and it’s especially useful while browsing the Internet.

Loading and Listening to Music There’s
still no word on whether the iTunes store will be coming to South
Africa so, while you might not be able to buy and download songs over
Wi-Fi just yet, you can download music and playlists from the iTunes
library on your computer straight onto your iPhone. Like the iPod
Touch, the iPhone also incorporates Cover Flow, letting you browse
through your albums with the flick of a finger. Softly run a finger
across the screen to view covers of all the albums stored and click to
choose.

Taking Photos

The iPhone’s 2.0
megapixel camera is no great shakes, but it’s good enough as cellphone
cameras go and great for taking pics and showing them off. Compared to
the original iPhone, the 3G version produces slightly crisper pictures,
with brighter colours. They’ll make decent photos if you print them
out, and they’ll look great at website-resolution if you’re planning on
uploading them to Facebook, Picasa or any online gallery.

The built-in accelerometer makes the iPhone ideal for
viewing photos (or video, or websites), because the display will
automatically flip from vertical to horizontal, depending on which way
you hold the handset.

The lack of video-capture capability makes the iPhone a
step down from all but the lowest-end cellphones on the market in this
respect. Being able to frame your still shots using the large iPhone
screen is a definite plus.

One neat little feature on the iPhone is the ability to
take a snapshot of whatever’s on your phone’s screen at a given moment.
Just hold down the Home button (that’s the big one below the screen)
and tap the power button. The screen will flash and you will have a
screenshot saved.

Watching Video

Wherever you are, you
can just whip out your iPhone and watch anything from an episode of
Gossip Girl to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Flip the iPhone sideways
and the accelerometer will automatically detect it and adjust the
picture accordingly, so you can watch in wide-screen.

You can play movies you’ve made yourself with the Mac’s
iMovie application, but you’re certainly not limited to your own
creations. If you have a video that’s not in the right format to play
on your iPhone, you’ll get an error message from iTunes. It’s an easy
fix, though. Just choose the conversion option in iTunes Advanced menu.

The gorgeous, bright iPhone screen is perfect for viewing
photos, but video playback is where it really comes into its own. The
colours pop, images are crisp and clear and, most importantly for
video, the iPhone handles movement well, with no irritating lags during
high-speed action sequences.

Browsing the Internet

Apple’s Safari
Web browser is perfectly intuitive, even for those who have only used
Internet Explorer before. And if you have joined the Firefox revolution
already, you’ll find it easier still.

Being able to get around the Internet with nothing more
than a swipe of the finger makes browsing really straightforward — and
being able to zoom in and out with a quick pinch motion finally makes
looking through full-sized websites on a small, handheld device an
attractive proposition.

With Safari on your iPhone, it’s a single click from the
main menu to the Internet. You’ll find features from your ordinary
computer browser on there so you can bookmark pages — and one-finger
side-to-side scrolling means you can have a bunch of different Web
pages open at once, and move easily back and forth amongst them.

All that high-speed browsing does take its toll on the
battery. The iPhone 3G doesn’t stay powered up as long as the original
version, but its battery life is still pretty decent.

iPhone Online

There’s a world of iPhone help and information on the Web:

http://iphonefan.co.za/tag/iphone- applications/ — this
is just an example of what’s possible with the apps (applications) you
can download to your iPhone. There’s a handy link right in the phone’s
main menu to take you to the iPhone App Store
(http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/), where you’ll find anything and
everything from games and dictionaries to apps that will help you quit
smoking or lose weight. Better still, a quarter of the applications are
free.

http://www.fring.com/download/iphone/ — this fantastic
programme lets you use your iPhone to make free calls over the Internet
wherever there’s a Wi-Fi connection. It’s just like using Skype on your
computer.

http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/ — Apple’s online
support site for the iPhone has detailed instructions on getting to
know and using your cellphone.

http://thegpstimes.com/ — this site will keep you
updated on the iPhone’s capabilities as a GPS device in South Africa.
The new iPhone 3G’s GPS function has been much touted overseas, but
it’s doubtful how useful it will be in SA, especially given Apple’s use
of Google Maps, which offer a woeful lack of detail in this country.

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/ — only for the fearless and
technically experienced. You can find a download to unlock your iPhone.
But beware: it’s easy to “brick” your phone — basically, render it
completely useless.

Not Breaking it

The biggest thing
dissuading me from shelling out for an iPhone was that I regularly drop
my cell. Reviewers have raved about the iPhone’s clear glass screen,
but all I could envisage was scratching and/or cracking it on the first
day.

In fact, the iPhone is no more scuff-prone than other
cellphones, and what’s perhaps most surprising is how scratch-resistant
the glass screen is. Even running things like keys and pens directly
over the surface doesn’t leave a mark. Accidentally splashing it with a
bit of water shouldn’t harm the iPhone, though if it falls into the
toilet, it may not live to tell the tale.

It will hold up against being dropped on a carpet or from
a low height onto the pavement, perhaps, but dropped from high up on
concrete it’s likely to end up with a shattered or non-functional
touch-screen.

All in all, it’s hardier than its good looks lead you to
believe. But before you try testing its resistance to being mauled by
your dog, go to willitblend.com, where some attention-seeking pseudo
scientist puts every retail item known to man into a blender and, er,
blends. Have a look at their iPhone 3G test. Will it blend?
Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding “yes!”

So if you would  like to own one of these right now click here
If you want to put your name on the waiting list click here

Tags: iphone3g, iphone, iphone review, iphone guide, buy a iphone in south africa, iphone waiting list,