Remember all those preliminary things people were saying, like the fact that every previous phone that used a touchscreen for it’s keyboard had ended up a pretty major failure. The fact is people don’t like to type on glass not when their are alternatives that offer much better thumb boards like the treo’s and a lot of other windows smartphones
But apple has stood by the iphone saying that their glass covered screen and multi touch allow for the ultimate keyboard entry. Well Engadget got someone on the inside with some hands on time with the iPhone. And lets just say the look of it doesn’t look good. It might even show why the iPhone isn’t the jesus phone people have claimed it to be
- The keyboard was described as “disappointing”, Keyboarding with 2 thumbs was useless most likely the negative impact of the multitouch. The keyboard registers multiple keypresses (2 – 3 at a time) resulting in a number of mistakes.
According to the hands on report, the best and pretty much only reliable way to type is the crappy way apple shows in their demos, 1 index finger you know kind of like those newbie computer users that can’t really type.
- The text auto-correction also seems to be somewhat “first generation” only handling simple words, and no Proper Names. Though the hands on reporter says that he hopes that apple will expand the text dictionary eventually.
- What’s most interesting is the direct statement he made that “IT WONT REPLACE A BLACKBERRY, It’s not good for text input, it’s just not a business product”.
- The touchscreen also had something else negative to it, with the glass surface, apparently it requires a lot harder key presses to register a input, and will definitly turn some people away and also require some getting used to for those that do get an iphone.
- Also in a funny move, the iphone will be coming with a polishing cloth because well of course its a fingerprint magnet as everyone figured.
- The bluetooth headset will be in the 120$ range (quite high for a headset thats described as “typical” when it comes to sound quality.) the headset will come with a dock that can charge itself and the iphone, and the power adapter will be a magsafe type connector.
- The next big negative feature is the lack of 3G support. this is a biggie, considering apple’s trying to push the iphone as the next gen internet phone, though it has at most EDGE speeds, which were described as working well but with subpar load times.
- On top of the slow browsing due to no 3G, the big non-suprise, was that using the big YouTube feature that they announced, is quite useless unless your on wifi.
So from initial impressions the iPhone isn’t looking to hot, from the looks of it it’s more show than go. Couple these initial hands on reports, with the fact that they aren’t releasing a real SDK, or the ability to handle business file types like .DOC or .XLS and well lets just say the launch for those that aren’t fanboys is a little bit lackluster.
Especially with the miniOne around the corder for 1/3rd the price and a better screen, and 3G support being rumored.
Source: Engadget
