The iPhone Challenge - Post 1 (Initial Thoughts)

I now have the device in hand, reset to factory defaults, and ready to go. Before we begin though, I wanted to talk a little bit about the device itself.

1. PROS
1. External Design is nice, it feels comfortable in my hand
2. CONS
1. Glass exterier seems like an accident waiting to happen
2. No removable battery
3. No removable memory (i.e. MicroSD card)

I turned it on for the first time, and was immediately asked to set up my wi-fi connection. After I did so it demanded that I sign in with the same Apple account as the previous user (my wife) because she had Find My iPhone turned on. Apparently if I were a thief, I wouldn't be able to use it even after resetting it! I thought this was a pretty nice feature, although I assume people have already figured out how to get around it since it requires an internet connection to verify the device ID.

1. PROS
1. External Design is nice, it feels comfortable in my hand
2. Theft protection out of the box
2. CONS
1. Glass exterier seems like an accident waiting to happen
2. No removable battery
3. No removable memory

My wife signed in, removed her Apple account, and we reset it again. This time I had no problems and created a new Apple ID and set up the phone. This gave me my first impressions of the iPhone's keyboard. The way it types is definitely better than my Droid, even with the Google Keyboard, and the autocorrect is a lot more intelligent than my Droid's. That being said, it annoys me beyond belief that the period and comma aren't on the main page, and you also can't access alternate keys by tapping-and-holding. So I'd call that one on both sides.

1. PROS
1. External Design is nice, it feels comfortable in my hand
2. Theft protection out of the box
3. Keyboard has nice feel and autocorrect
2. CONS
1. Glass exterier seems like an accident waiting to happen
2. No removable battery
3. No removable memory
4. Keyboard requires accessing secondary menu too much

Being the techie I am, the first place I go when I get a new phone is to the settings menu. On my Droid I do that by hitting the menu button and selecting settings, but the only button on the iPhone is the home button. This was definitely frustrating, and kept throwing me off. Some settings can be accessed by scrolling up from the bottom, but any other settings get annoying fast. While we're at it, I’m really starting to miss my widgets. I have my Droid set up with widgets and shortcuts that let me access most of what I need extremely easily and without spending too much time, but the Apple home screen only lists the apps. Now, the way that they display the apps is a lot nicer than the Android app drawer. I find the dynamic icons extremely helpful, it's really nice knowing how many emails, etc. I have without opening the app, and it seems to work more smoothly than any 3rd party widgets I've seen for Android. Scrolling through the home screens is also a lot smoother than on my Droid Incredible, which I have no doubt is because of the uniformity of the icons. There's one thing that still troubles me though. For a phone which is supposed to be user-friendly and intuitive, how is there no option to organize the apps alphabetically? I get how "cool" it is to sort them by folders, etc. but you'd think there would at least be an option to sort them automatically. 

PROS

1. External Design is nice, it feels comfortable in my hand
2. Theft protection out of the box
3. Keyboard has nice feel and autocorrect
4. Dynamic app icons
5. Smooth scrolling
6. Bottom-up quick-settings

CONS

1. Glass exterier seems like an accident waiting to happen
2. No removable battery
3. No removable memory
4. Keyboard requires accessing secondary menu too much
5. No easy way to access settings
6. No widgets
7. No auto-sort of apps

So I didn't even get to the settings menu this time, we'll keep that on tap for a different post. What did you think about this first look? Is there a feature I missed? Thanks for reading!