I now have used my iPhone for two weeks, which replaced the Sony Ericson Z610i I had been using for two years. Comparing the way both phones have been designed is quite interesting.

Physically, the iPhone is more bulky, and I still prefer the clamshell design, which protects the screen when the phone is not in use. Having a clear, mechanical mean of telling the phone it is not in use is very useful. I already had a few cases of putting the iPhone to my belt without pressing the button that “closes” it. The result was some random app launching, possibly using costly bandwidth. The iPhone’s screen is of course way larger and this makes it possible to have useful applications. It also means that while taking pictures you have an idea what you are taking. The Z610i had five external buttons, the iPhone has basically three, but they actually do something, while on the Sony they were programmed to do stupid things – I suspect Swisscom fiddling with the firmware explains why one of the external buttons would display the phone’s status on the internal screen. Both phones have a proprietary external port, but the iPhone also has a regular audio jack, which is nice. I only realized recently that the earbuds that came with the phone had a three polarity connector and included a microphone, which is even better.

I found the call quality of both phones similar, but having the option to use my earbuds for phoning is really convenient. I had some earbuds for the Sony, but as I could not listen to music with it, I never carried them. This brings us to the whole music player thing. Theoretically, the Sony could play music and decode both AAC and MP3 files. In practice, the Firmware would only accept to play signed audio files. This was not even a serious security feature as I could find a program that would sign arbitrary audio-files, but only for Windows. As audio playing never worked, I had to buy an iPod, which was really silly. The iPhone is an iPod, with all the bells and whistles, so this means I don’t need a mp3 player in my pockets. The camera of both phones have similar resolutions, but I had the feeling the actual quality of the iPhone’s picture was better. The iPhone cannot record movie, whereas the Sony could but I never really managed to shoot anything vaguely useful with the camera in movie mode, so this is no great loss.

The main advantage of the iPhone is the Wifi connection and proper internet programs: web browser, mail, maps. The last one, coupled with the GPS is for me already worth a lot (I have a bad sense of orientation). I also liked the fact that there are plenty of useful applications. Having a specialized interface to facebook is nice, I also recommend Tramdroid if you live in Zürich, having the schedule for all trams stored in your phone is a really nice feature. While the Z610 had a web-browser, I was never usable beside for visualizing rich-text files converted.

I see two weaknesses of the iPhone compared to the Sony phone: bluetooth and tethering. While the iPhone has bluetooth hardware, only one functionality is supported: connecting a headset. Nothing else, no way to send data to another device. This was something useful when I wanted to push a picture to a computer, or send a vcard to another phone. The other part is using the Edge/3G connection of the phone from a computer. The Sony supported two modes, bluetooth internet sharing and the ethernet emulation over the USB connection. The iPhone cannot do either, but this seems more related to operator stupidity than to anything technical. Finally I wish the phone could track ToDos and also a Swiss-French keyboard, because currently, if I want French spell correction, I need to use the awful French keyboard.

One thought on “iPhone”

  1. Un jour mon iphone viendra…
    Sérieusement, il y a un autre truc qui n’est pas pratique, exemple on t’envoie un sms ou un mail pour te demander le numéro d’une tierce personne, tu es obligé d’aller sur le carnet d’adresse, noter ce dernier et ensuite aller écrire un sms ou un mail de réponse… avec le sony tu peux envoyer directement la fiche comme sms…

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