Anand Reviews the Apple iPhone 3G
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 16, 2008 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
The AIM Application
This is the one application that honestly just bothers me. It could have been so incredibly good, and completely negated the need for text messages - but, it doesn’t - largely thanks to the current iPhone OS not supporting a key feature which will be enabled later this year.
The first iPhone completely redefined texting for me. I had used SMS in the past but I just never really got into it, I was far more of an IM-addict than a text addict. And it was the first sign that perhaps I was actually getting old, since all of my friends who are in highschool or college now do nothing but text each other, and many of them actually hate instant messaging.
The iPhone changed all of that however - I quickly burned through the 200 text messages that came with the first iPhone’s service plan and needed to upgrade to the 1500 package almost immediately. As I wrote last year, the iPhone’s SMS application was quite possibly the most intuitive SMS interface I’d ever seen, and it was beyond easy to actually have a conversation with someone over SMS.
There’s nothing tremendously unique about the iPhone’s SMS app, it looks and works a lot like iChat on OS X. What I really wanted, was iChat on the iPhone, I wanted an IM client that worked the way the SMS app did, but didn’t force me to pay per message. With the iPhone 3G and the 2.0 firmware Apple still hasn’t delivered its own iChat app for the platform, but AOL has.
The problem is that Apple doesn’t allow applications to remain active in memory once you’ve navigated away from them, it’s a key distinction that is designed to keep the iPhone’s interface running as quickly as possible. With an IM client however, you need it to be running in the background so you can be notified of new IMs even when your phone is locked and in your pocket, just like a SMS.
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I love sushi
Apple developed a framework to allow for applications to push notifications to the iPhone without requiring the app remains active and in the foreground. The process works like this: when an application establishes a connection to its server over the cellular or WiFi network (e.g. AIM client on the iPhone connects to an AIM server), there’s a persistent notification connection established between an Apple server and the phone as well. Regardless of whether on the cellular or a WiFi network, your phone will have an IP address that Apple/AT&T are aware of - Apple will simply keep an active connection to your IP, even after you’ve closed the application. Then when the application server (e.g. AIM server) wants to send data back to your phone, it simply goes through Apple’s push server and the data is then pushed to your phone much like a SMS. In the case of an IM client, you can get notifications that messages are available, you can get previews of the actual messages and you can get sound notifications like you would when receiving a SMS.
Unfortunately, this persistent push connection to your iPhone isn’t enabled in the public 2.0 firmware and won’t be available until September. Yet AOL’s AIM client is available, in beta form, today. Herein lies the problem - without support for push notifications, the AIM client is mostly useless as a constant communication device - you can only receive IMs if your phone is unlocked and you’re actually in the AIM app. Obviously, come September, that limitation should get solved but then there are other concerns.
Despite the popularity of AOL’s Instant Messenger, AOL has never done a great job of making a good IM client. Pidgin, Trillian, Adium and even iChat are infinitely better, and the same holds true for AOL’s iPhone client. It’s fairly simple but honestly, AOL just needed to copy Apple’s SMS interface but instead it made the iPhone AIM client feel more like a crappy 3rd party application, than something that belongs on the phone.
Switching between conversations is pretty easy, you just swipe left-right/right-left to flip through all active conversations. The problem is that whenever you start a new conversation with someone, it adds the conversation to the stack.
Woops, I accidentally clicked on this person - there's no easy way to close this conversation, I have to go back to the main menu, select active IMs and then delete it.
For example, let’s say I want to send my friend Manny an IM. I’d select his name from my buddy list and it’d bring up a chat window, simple enough right? Now let’s say I want to go and IM Gary; I go back to my buddy list, select Gary’s name and another IM window is added “behind” Manny’s window. If I am done talking to Manny, there’s no good way of closing his IM window. I have to select Active IMs from the bottom of my screen, hit edit, then delete our conversation, which as you’d expect, also deletes our conversation.
The AIM iPhone client also uses standard IM sounds, which can be pretty annoying. Obviously putting your iPhone into silent mode will get rid of the sounds but it’d be nice to be able to customize the AIM sounds.
The AIM client is obviously in beta, but I honestly can’t help but think that the best option would be for Apple to develop its own iChat client for the iPhone. The Apple-made apps continue to be the best made software for the iPhone, by a large degree, and I suspect that this will continue for quite a while as iPhone app development is in its infancy.
The biggest issue is the lack of background notifications, which makes the AIM app pretty much useless as I don’t keep my phone unlocked and running AIM all the time. We’ll have to see what happens come September, but as it stands this is one major feature that I wanted last June that Apple still hasn’t delivered.
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buckdutter - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
AT&T's coverage could indeed be better, but then again they are still rebuilding from when they decided to switch from TDMA to GSM, instead of following the natural path to CDMA, which Verizon, Sprint, and Alltel (soon to be Verizon) use, as well as many more localized carriers. The problem with CDMA is that it is going nowhere. The majority of the world is GSM, and CDMA is becoming more and more marginalized, in fact in the next 4 or 5 years CDMA will be practically phased out in the US. Verizon (and Alltel) will be switching to LTE, a GSM based technology which will be a rough transition - either resulting in sacrificed coverage, or more expensive devices (like Verizons expensive "world edition phones") that will run on both their networks. Either way, they will be doing what AT&T (Cingular, whatever) did 4 or 5 years ago, and much later in the game.Meanwhile AT&T will make a natural transition from their 3G, which is in all fairness not nearly as widespread as EVDO at the moment, to LTE. Sprint will be going WiMax. Not one major carrier in the US or abroad has made a commitment to the future of CDMA. Verizon has held on to EVDO as long as it could, and has prolonged having to switch, but they are beginning to hit the limitations of EVDO, meanwhile 3G is just getting started, with AT&T planning to follow suit of carriers abroad and boost the speeds to around 20mbps in mid-2009. EVDO will be topping out around 3.2 at most, if even that.
While having used all the services I strongly disagree with saying that Sprint or T-Mobile even come close to AT&T for coverage, it is largely regional subjective, and is really not fair to work in experiences in one localized area into the review for the phone. Like them or hate them, AT&T recognized early that GSM was the roadmap to go. Like it or hate it, blame Verizon for delaying the inevitable for so long...it makes no sense for Apple to make a CDMA phone when it is so limited in implementation globally. Because of that decision they are the most widespread GSM provider in the US (the US was a little late in getting into the GSM game).
In the end, AT&T may have a lot of ground to cover, but we should be excited what at least one U.S. carrier took the leap and is building out a GSM network in the states, even though it meant making the sacrifice of less coverage in rural areas as they build the new network out. It will be interesting to see how Verizon copes with having to change over.
Hrel - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
Over 2 years the new iphone plane costs an extra 60 bucks, but the upfront cost is 300 dollars less. The iphone 3G is less expensive in every way; even with the incremental increase in contract cost. I'm confused that I need to point this out considering you say it in your article then contradict yourself by saying the old plan and phone was less expensive. Total cost over two years the new one is 240 dollars less.maxnix - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
With no user replaceable battery, it is a toy, not a reliable business device.It seems to me that 90% of the users I see are fiddling about on it with their fingers and not even 10% use Bluetooth. Are there still no voice driven commands? That's how I use my phone.
Seems like a great device for someone who wants to make calls on their iPod when they are not listening to a lossy audio source.
Jobs is the new PT Barnum in that he fully exploits the "A sucker's born every minute..." credo. The world is full of lemmings.
maxnix - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
Welcome fanboys to AT&T's limited 3G. The rest of the world has been there for 5 years.Lezmaka - Monday, July 21, 2008 - link
I think there's a fairly obvious (to me anyway) reason why the talk time measured is almost half the time the specs state, beyond the best case scenario stuff.In most conversations, there's a significant amount of dead air. Even if it's only 1/10 - 1/4 of a second at a time, over the course of several hours, that will add up. But with most music, there's almost no dead air. Even when the person isn't saying something, there's at least some sound being generated. Detecting that dead air and not transmitting would probably be the best for battery life, but even if it continually transmits, the compression would reduce the amount of data transmitted to almost nothing.
I would guess that choosing an audio source that more closely matches an actual conversation would provide a somewhat more accurate test result. But I'm not expert, so what the hell do I know?
Giacomo - Monday, July 21, 2008 - link
Ehm... No man, there's no way this could influence battery life. No matter how intense is the information in the call, most of the energy drain is due to the "line" itself... Keeping the full-duplex conversation online.Everything else left to the battery is the loudspkeaker consumption... But it's a ridicolous amount, you won't be able to measure its impact.
Giacomo
donhoffman - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
Actually the original commenter on this was correct. This is a time-honored technique for getting more battery life out of cell phones. Channel allocation for voice calls is done at call setup. A continuous data stream is not needed to keep up the "line". If either end of the call has nothing to send, it does not need to transmit, saving significant power. The technique used in this article probably does underestimate the battery life. Not by 100%, but maybe 20-30%. Transmit power is much larger than audio power. That is why you get 24 hours listening to music on the iPod side, but only 5 or so hours doing cellular phone calls.nichomach - Sunday, July 20, 2008 - link
Not wishing to get into whether the new iPhone is all that, I'd note that the enforced PIN code when using Exchange is usually a policy setting defined in Exchange, and there's a choice about enabling it. That choice'll be made by your Exchange admin(s). If they enable it - personally, I do - then I'd expect it to be enforced on any device that claims to support Activesync. One of my arguments with Nokia's Mail for Exchange client, for instance, is that it doesn't (or didn't) properly support policies like that; that the iPhone does makes it a viable choice if I end up with a director demanding one. If you're using your phone in a corporate environment, then you may be sending and receiving confidential stuff. Enforcing a PIN and supporting remote wipe properly is the sine qua non as far as I'm concerned.Schugy - Sunday, July 20, 2008 - link
Openmoko will have the best 3rd party support while Nokia and Google (Maemo / Android) have their own ressources. But regarding their openness they are evil. The FIC Freerunner is a nice phone but the Openmoko project still has to develop a lot.On the other hand I think that a Open Pandora handheld with a USB HSDPA modem (maybe builtin in future revisions) is a lot more usable and even has game controls. Telephony and navigation could be done via a bt headset+voip and gps receiver.
All the platforms will feature ports of killer apps like pidgin IM, scummvm, evolution e-mail and lots more. Ports of gnash, the GNU flash player, are possible too but I would suggest to get rid of these stupid and annoying banner ad players. A nice stream or download link for mp4-files will make your full featured (fullscreen / post processing filters) mplayer happy.
cleviticus - Saturday, July 19, 2008 - link
A basic one-line plan with Cingular (I know they go by AT&T now)without ANY extra features runs you $45/month and that is with just enough minutes to tell people that you'll call them back after nine. Unlimited internet and data runs $45, last I checked, and that somehow doesn't cover much texting, something I do a lot of. Texting is another $10. So to get service and data BEFORE tax you spend $90. My provider offers unlimited voice/data/text/GPS/e-mail for $100 with coverage that exceeds AT&T's.That fact alone is enough to keep me away from the iphone for good. I admit that the interface is unbeatable but the functionality of the phone is not. That being said I don't think it deserves as much attention as it receives. Also coverage varies drastically from city to city. In NY my phone works great but in Vegas it blows. In Chicago I'm golden but anywhere between Arkansas and Virginia- forget about it. I used cingular for two years and their coverage was only good in large metropolitan areas. As soon as I got out of the inner city my reception was weak and I couldn't even text. I think they are a horrible company but since they bought up most of the old bell empire- they're here to stay.