Apple iPhone Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls
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Alfredo Padilla Published on June 29, 2007 Comment on this |
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Dialing Speed (5.05)
To test dialing speed we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have dialed each of five different test numbers. We take the average time for our score. The iPhone took an average of 3.96 seconds to dial. This is solid score compared to other phones as you can see in the chart below. It's faster than the Blackberry 8800, LG Prada, and Nokia N95. The Helio Ocean was slightly faster when dialing. It's impressive to see a phone with a touch screen interface do well on this test. The Prada, which also uses a touch screen interface, took significantly longer at 5.86 seconds.
| Handset | Time (sec) | Score |
| Apple iPhone | 3.96 | 5.05 |
| Blackberry 8800 | 4.35 | 4.60 |
| Helio Ocean | 3.10 | 6.45 |
| LG Prada | 5.86 | 3.41 |
| Nokia N95 | 4.62 | 4.33 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 4.25 | 4.71 |
Talk and End Buttons (5.0)
The iPhone uses on-screen talk and end buttons rather than physical buttons. When you are using the on-screen dial pad ,the send button is highlighted in green near the bottom of the screen. The button was a little small for our tastes. The end button is a long bar along the bottom of the screen that appears while you are on a call. The larger button is easier to hit, which we appreciated. The send button is a little small to use without looking and we found ourselves making mistaken presses when trying to dial quickly. The large end button can probably be used without looking once your muscle memory gets set. Compared to the physical send and end buttons found on most other phones we found the iPhone's on-screen buttons in almost every respect except of course tactile feedback. In fact, we prefer the on-screen buttons to the Nokia N95's terrible send and end buttons.
Call Management (7.0)
The iPhone's call history is accessed from within the phone application. You are presented with a chronological list of all incoming or outgoing calls. Missed calls are indicated in red. You can also filter the list to only view the missed calls. If there are multiple calls to or from a number you will see the number of calls in parentheses next to that number. You can clear the list by hitting the button on the upper left of the screen, however you can't remove individual records. Tapping on an item in the list will immediately call that number. Tapping on the small arrow on right of the record will take you to further details. Here you can see additional information for the caller if they are in your contacts, as well as more detailed information about the time and date of the call and the option to send a text message to the number. There is no way to see information about the duration of an individual call, or the duration of all calls.
During a call the iPhone gives you several large on-screen controls in the center of the screen. These six icons allow you to mute the call, access the keypad, turn on the speaker phone, add a call, place it on hold or access your contacts. Information about your ongoing call is shown at the top of the screen, and if you have multiple calls ongoing it shows two lines for each call. When two calls are ongoing the "add call" button turns into a merge call button, which creates a conference call. As a multi-tasking platform you can access all of the iPhone's features while on a call, just like a Windows Mobile or BlackBerry device. Simply hit the home key and you will be able to launch the application(s) you want. A bright green bar at the top of the phone shows you that you are on a call, and a tap on this bar will take you back to the call screen.
We found the call management features on the iPhone to be fairly complete and easy to use. About the only thing that was missing is the ability to record a phone call and more detailed call and data meters. These are not significant missing features, although the latter may be important to people who are on metered calling/data plans. Overall the iPhone's call management features are very good.
Startup to Call (3.83)
We time how long it takes to turn the phone on and make a call to each of the same test phone numbers we used for our dialing speed test. We take the average time for our score. The iPhone took 26.12 seconds to complete this process. This is better than smartphones like the Nokia N95, which took 36.4 seconds or the Treo 750's 42.26 second time. The BlackBerry 8800 and Helio Ocean do better however at 6.5 and 9.5 seconds respectively, as you can see in the chart below.
| Handset | Time (sec) | Score |
| Apple iPhone | 26.12 | 3.83 |
| Blackberry 8800 | 6.50 | 15.38 |
| Helio Ocean | 9.50 | 10.53 |
| LG Prada | 27.46 | 3.64 |
| Nokia N95 | 36.40 | 2.75 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 42.26 | 2.37 |
Ring Volume (8.49)
To test ring volume we set the phone's volume to maximum and find the loudest ringtone we can on the handset. We then use a sound pressure meter from four inches away to measure the volume of the ring in decibels. The iPhone's ring measured 84.9 decibels, which is pretty run of the mill. As you can see from the chart below it's within a couple decibels of most other phones, except for the Nokia N95 which measured an incredible 105.3 decibels
| Handset | Volume (decibels) | Score |
| Apple iPhone | 84.9 | 8.49 |
| Blackberry 8800 | 84.00 | 8.40 |
| Helio Ocean | 85.40 | 8.54 |
| LG Prada | 84.60 | 8.46 |
| Nokia N95 | 105.30 | 10.53 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 83.2 | 8.32 |
Ringtone Customizability (0.0)
The iPhone does not allow you to use your own MP3 or other files as ringtones, and you can't use any of the existing services that send new ringtones to your phone. We would be very surprised if Apple didn't start offering a Ringtones service through iTunes, but for now, you're stuck with the existing. This is very disappointing since phones like the Nokia N95, LG Prada and Treo 750 all allow you to use your own music files as ringtones.
Non Audio Alerts (7.0)
The iPhone has a vibration alert that seems a little weak. We were able to just feel in our pants pockets, but we seriously doubt that you will notice it in a jacket pocket or a bag. We were pleased with the full screen alert that shows up when a call comes in, making it very easy to see if you happen to be looking at the phone.
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