So, it has been twenty four hours since I started using an iPhone as my primary phone. I have used them before to help friends, and have seen many many articles about them in the press, but haven’t actually strayed from the way of the droid.
I set myself the challenge to use an iPhone for a month so that I could genuinely understand the obsession (or justify my dislike) for the IOS platform in general. I have become increasingly unhappy with the android ecosystem, from the poor performance of the original Samsung galaxy s, to the issues on launch from the HTC one X. That doesn’t take into account the constant camera issues with the latter and … Other stuff.
So, the iPhone. I have a 4s on loan, and have been told to watch out for battery issues. So far that hasn’t been an issue, and with fairly regular use throughout the day, I would say that this phone has a better battery already.
As everyone says, the camera is great. Image quality and light handling is up there with a “real” camera, and blows the nerfed HTC out of the water.
Application performance is a no brainer, it’s an iPhone after all. Closed ecosystems make that much easier.
The Gmail app makes me a little cranky, because HTML emails are tiny and squinty. Normal emails are ok, as are basically every other interaction on the phone, even for someone with eyes as bad as mine. The iOS email app just doesn’t understand how gmail does things, but that’s more about google abusing IMAP than apple playing games.
I had expected to be cranky about the lack of a back button. Every interaction I had with an iPhone previously had left me frustrated with this, but so far it hasn’t been too much of an issue. I won’t say it isn’t an issue, because sometimes it require extended interaction to back-pedal from a mis-touch, but some of that is me misunderstanding the iOS thought process or having giant fingers.
As for those giant fingers, I had expected them to be more of a problem on the keyboard, but I am rarely making a mistake while writing this article in the notes app, and what mistakes I am making are generally being soaked up by autocorrect.
Most of my usage has been Facebook, google chrome and the base apps, meaning that things aren’t that much different anyway. I’m going to explore the wider app listings and see if there are any amazing ones, but so far it’s been ok.