Apple iPhone 3G Cell Phone Review - Messaging

The Apple iPhone 3G has seen a couple of minor messaging upgrades, you can delete and move in bulk now, for instance. The problems of moving around accounts, no MMS and no IM are still there, however.

Supported Email Services (10.0)
The iPhone 3G supports several popular email services including Gmail, AOL and Yahoo. It also supports any standard IMAP or POP email server. About the only thing missing is support for Hotmail, which is a not uncommon omission. Setting up email is done in the settings rather than the email application.

Push Email (5.0)
One of the iPhones newest features is support for push email via Microsft's Exchange server. Simply plug your Exchange settings in and the iPhone will automatically receive push email from that account. The iPhone also supports push email via IMAP idle, so services that support this like Gmail will push email out to you. Finally the iPhone now supports push email via Apple's new Mobile Me service, which cost $100 a year and comes with an email account, online storage and some other assorted benefits. Having the option of three different push email services is defintely a step up from last year where the iPhone only supported IMAP idle. In particular the Exchange support will be huge for many working in enterprise environments.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The iPhone 3G supports at least five different email accounts, which is the maximum we test. We should note, however, that you can only have a single Exchange email account.

HTML and Attachments (11.0)
Like its predecessor the iPhone 3G supports viewing full HTML emails, so no gobley-gook here. The iPhone 3G also supports several new document standards for attachments, including Powerpoint and Apple's iWork file types. We don't award points for the latter as they are not in widespread use, but the iPhone does just fine in this section without any extra points.

Email Customizations (6.0)
The iPhone 3G offers you the option to change the number of lines that are displayed for each email in a mailbox. You can also change the font size and create signatures. Nothing's new here compared to last year's iPhone, but the options are still pretty good compared to many other phones.

Time to a New Email Message (7.14)
In this test, we look at how quickly we can go from the phone being standby to typing in a new email message. We found that, with some practice, this process took 2.8 seconds on the iPhone 3G.

That's a touch slower than the origional iPhone, and underlies our general conclusion that the iPhone 3G is a little slower to respond than the older model. However, 2.8 seconds is an acceptable time for most users; only the most avid emailer would be frustrated by this delay. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to New Email (sec)

Email Usability (8.5)
The email interface on the iPhone 3G has changed in only minor ways compared to the original iPhone. The biggest change is the ability to mark multiple email messages for deletion or move. Other than that you get a list of your email accounts on the main screen. Tapping on an account will take you to the folders for that account and then you have to go to the inbox to see those messages. This means that if you want to switch between account you have to go back to the account list and then go into that accounts inbox, an annoying process that's much more involved than switching accounts on BlackBerry or Windows Mobile devices.

Moving up and down a list of messages is as simple as a flick of your finger and tapping on a message will let you view it. There are buttons to move, delete, forward/reply/reply all and compose a new message at the bottom of the screen when viewing a message. We very much appreciate the support for bulk delete/move, but the iPhone 3G's email program still lags behind other smart phone platforms in terms of power. That said it is straightforward and easy to use.

Instant Messaging (0.0)
The iPhone 3G does not support instant messaging out of the box. There are third party applications available to enable this support, currently the only application we see in the application store is the AIM client, which is thankfully free.

MMS Support (0.0)
The iPhone 3G still lacks MMS support, an omission we find particularly annoying since almost every other phone on the planet supports MMS.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Alas smiley faces are once again omitted from the iPhone 3G, they are displayed in simple text when received and there are no handy options to insert them when sending an text message.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (5.0)
The SMS interface on the iPhone has seen a few upgrades over the past year, nothing specific to the recent software upgrade but the biggest change is that you can now send text messages to multiple recipients. When you enter the SMS application you see a list of your current conversations. Swiping your finger through a conversation will allow you to delete it, you can also accomplish this by tapping on the edit button in the top left. In the top right is a button to create a brand new text message.

Clicking on one of the conversations will take you to a threaded history of messages with that person. At the bottom is a blank field that you can tap on to create a new message and at the top of the conversation are links to Call the individual or see their Contact Info and at the very top right is a button to clear the entire conversation, but there's still no way to delete individual messages in the conversation. We really appreciate the threaded view, it's a feature we like a lot, and the ability to send to multiple individuals is a big improvement over the original iPhone's release.

Time to a New SMS Message (3.85)
Our other timing test in this section looks at how quickly we can get from the iPhone sitting in standby mode to entering a new text message. We measured this at 2.6 seconds, which again is right about what the original iPhone got and right about average, as you can see below. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to New SMS (sec)

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