Apple iPhone Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
|
Alfredo Padilla Published on June 29, 2007 Comment on this |
|
|
|
|
Accessing Music Software (6.45)
To test how easy it is to get music playing on the iPhone we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a song playing. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The iPhone was pretty speedy at this; we could get the tunes playing in an average of 3.1 seconds, and the process only took four screen touches. That's because Apple put the iPod application right on the front page; you don't have to scroll, dig through menus or otherwise search for it. However, it is a little slower than the N95; that could get the party started in just 1.69 seconds. But 3.1 seconds is pretty fast.
| Handset | Time (sec) | Score |
| Apple iPhone | 3.1 | 6.45 |
| Blackberry 8800 | 5.48 | 3.65 |
| Helio Ocean | 5.20 | 3.85 |
| LG Prada | 5.12 | 3.91 |
| Nokia N95 | 11.82 | 1.69 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 4.36 | 4.59 |
Dedicated Music Controls (1.0)
The iPhone does not have any dedicated music controls except for the volume keys on the left side. We judge whether a phone has music controls by playing music and then switching to the home screen. If there is any way to control music from here we award points. Aside from the volume keys the iPhone does not provide you with any way to control music; to pause or switch tracks, you have to go into the iPod application again. This is a pain; if the iPhone is in your pocket and someone asks you a question, you have to pull it out, unlock it, go into the iPod application and then hit pause. You can pause music if you are using the included headphones, though; a quick squeeze of the microphone bump on the right side cable pauses the music, and another starts it up again. But it's a pith that there isn't an easy way to control the music without having to unlock the iPhone. It's not difficult to do, but you need to have the phone open and unlocked in front of you.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (9.0)
Apple knows a thing or two about organizing music, and this shows in the iPhone. The Coverflow interface makes it a breeze to quickly skip through your albums; you just flick to the left or right to scroll, and tap on the cover image to pick the album, and the extensive support for playlists makes it easy to organize your songs. Or you can just hit shuffle and it'll pick songs at random. The interface is a little different than an iPod, though; there's no control wheel, so you control the music through screen taps. The iPod application gets its cover images and playlists from iTunes, so it'll only work to the full benefit if you have a well organized collection.
| Apple iPhone |
BlackBerry 8800 |
Helio Ocean |
 |
 |
 |
| LG Prada |
Nokia N95 |
Treo 750 |
 |
 |
 |
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The iPhone does not support any over the air download services; even though Apple runs is the world's biggest online music store, they don't allow you to download songs over either the EDGE cellular data connection or the WiFi connection. Instead, you have to buy songs through your desktop PC and upload them to the iPhone. In an age where all of the major networks (including Cingular) offer over the air download services, this is a pity.
Streaming (0.0)
The iPhone was unable to handle streaming audio in MP3 or Windows Media formats. It was also unable to work with streaming AAC files, which are easily handled by the desktop version of iTunes. This is a disappointment, as at least one of these formats is supported by most other cell phones. Basically, there isn't a way to listen to streaming audio on the iPhone at the moment.
Podcast Support (6.0)
The iPhone's iPod application allows you to view and manage synchronized podcasts, although the actual downloading is all done through iTunes on your PC or Mac. You have fairly advanced controls on what podcasts and what episodes get synchronized over to the phone, though; you can pick and choose which podcasts to take with you. This is a disappointment; even though podcasts would be slow to download over the EDGE connection the iPhone uses, it would be great to be able to automatically download new podcasts on a trip so you didn't have to bring your laptop along. The Nokia N95 can do this, and there are podcast clients for Windows Mobile cell phones like the Treo 750. Here's hoping that Apple is just being cautious, and will allow you to download podcasts to the device directly through a software update.
Music Sync with PC (8.0)
The iPhone uses iTunes to synchronize your music on both PCs and Macs. iTunes has evolved over the years into a very good music management application, and the syncing process is very simple; once you've decided what you want to synch, iTunes automatically updates the iPhone every time you plug it in. And the process of deciding what to synch is simple; you can tell it to sync everything, or pick specific playlists you want to synch. With some fiddling in iTunes, you can do a lot here; it's easy, for instance, to create a playlist that will give you 4GB worth of randomly selected folk songs, if that's your thing. You cannot, however, edit the playlists on the iPhone itself; but you can create a special playlist called On-The-Go, which allows you to pick a list of songs to play in sequence. For the synching application, it's iTunes or nothing: there is no support for synchronization with any other software such as Windows Media Player.
Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The iPhone supports AAC and MP3 encoded music. It does not support Windows Media Audio, Real or Ogg Vorbis encoded music. The only DRM supported is Apple's Fairplay, which allows you to listen to any music purchased from the iTunes music store on the iPhone. This is a boon for anyone who's invested a large amount into iTunes, which is probably quite a few of you as iTunes is the largest online music store in the country.
Music Interruption (8.0)
The iPhone did a nice job here; if you're listening to a song when a call comes in, it pauses the music and plays you a jaunty little tune to notify you; on-screen buttons allow you to take the call or decline. When you are done with the call, the music fades back in. However, one minor issue is that there is no way to decline a call if you are using the headset; all you can do is wait until the call gets forwarded to voicemail, at which time the music fades back in. So, if you don't want someone mellowing your musical buzz, set the iPhone to flight mode, which turns off the phone function.
Video
Video Software Access (6.25)
To test how easy it is to get video playing on the iPhone we timed how long it took to go from the home screen until we have a video playing. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. On the iPhone getting a video playing involved tapping on the iPod icon on the home screen, choosing the video tab and tapping on the video you want to play. Like playing music, this didn't take long; we were able to start playing a video in just 3.2 seconds; a touch slower than the audio as we had to select the video tab in the iPod application. That's a little slower than some of the other phone (such as the LG Prada, which took just 1.82 seconds), but it's not so long that you're waiting. One thing to note is that the iPhone automatically switches into landscape mode when you are watching video; you can't watch video in portrait orientation.
| Handset | Time (sec) | Score |
| Apple iPhone | 3.2 | 6.25 |
| Blackberry 8800 | 6.30 | 3.17 |
| Helio Ocean | 5.50 | 3.64 |
| LG Prada | 10.98 | 1.82 |
| Nokia N95 | 10.22 | 1.96 |
| Palm Treo 750 | 6.88 | 2.91 |
Video Controls (6.0)
Videos on the iPhone are automatically played in full screen landscape mode, but you can switch between filling the screen and widescreen views by double tapping on the playing video. When playing back video on the iPhone controls are brought up by tapping on the screen once. This will bring up volume control (you can also use the dedicated hardware keys to control volume), play/pause, next previous and a progress bar that allows you to jump to whatever point you tap on. There is no way to fast forward or rewind, but because the progress bar gives you somewhat similar functionality we awarded half points for those functions. It might have been nice if the fast forward controls on the screen which take you to the next video instead skipped ahead 30 seconds or so (like the skip button on a TiVo).
Video Software Score (6.0)
The iPod application is where the video playback happens, and it offers the same set of features for video that it does for audio; you can select (but not edit) video playlists, quickly flick through your list of movies and TV shows (iTunes, somewhat oddly, describes all imported videos as movies) and play them.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
As with music videos can by synchronized from your PC or Mac using iTunes. You again have a good amount of control over what is synchronized, being able to choose entire TV shows or only the most recent or unwatched episode. There is no support for synchronization with other software such as Windows Media Player, and you can't drag and drop videos onto the device.
Video Formats (3.0)
The iPhone can play back MP4 and Quicktime video. It does not support 3GP, flash, real media or windows media. Those who have invested in a file format that isn't supported should go find some conversion software quick. Apple will no doubt be happy to sell you a copy of Quicktime Pro, which can convert any of these formats to Quicktime files of the appropriate resolution.
Video DRM (5.0)
As a video iPod the iPhone is able to play back copy protected videos purchased from the iTunes music store. This includes TV shows, movies and music videos. Other forms of copy protection such as Windows Media protected content sold by Amazon's Unboxed service are not supported.
Video Organization (8.0)
The iPod application provides a good selection of tools for organizing your videos, although as we noted before, much of the hard work of organization is done in iTunes on the desktop. But the iPod application on the iPhone itself has plenty of ways to sort your songs and videos; by default, buttons for playlists, artist, songs and videos are on the main page of the iPod application. However, these can be swapped out with others; buttons to access podcasts, audiobooks, genres, composers and compilations are available.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
To test video playback smoothness we attempt to play five MP4 files encoded at bitrates ranging from 56 kbps to 768 kbps. The iPhone had no problem playing back all of our test files, so it seems to be very capable of handling both high and low bitrate files without issues.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The iPhone does not support any over the air video download services; everything comes in through iTunes on the desktop. Given the size of video files (a typical 1-hour TV show takes 500MB), this is perhaps fair enough.
Video Streaming unscored
Because video streaming services have not standardized on a format we do not award points in this section. We do however test several services to see if the phone supports them, but the iPhone failed to work with windows media, real and 3GP streaming videos. It does have one big ace up its sleeve, though; the YouTube application. At this time the selection of videos on offer is limited, but still much better than what most services offer, and we are promised full access by the end of the year. We found that the YouTube videos played surprisingly well, even over the relatively slow EDGE connection that the iPhone uses; videos started playing quickly. There is one minor irritation, though; you browse the YouTube site with the phone in portrait mode, but the videos play in landscape mode, so you end up doing a lot of rotating the phone. It would be better if the YouTube browser application automatically rotated in the way that the Safari Web browser does.
| Previous Next | |
|
|
|