Apple iPhone Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Alfredo Padilla
Published on June 29, 2007 Comment on this

Synchronization (6.83)
The iPhone synchronizes PIM information with your PC or Mac using iTunes. Simply download and install the software (if you don't already have it) and connect the iPhone to your computer using the included USB cable. iTunes will walk you through the synchronization process. You can synchronize email accounts, contacts, calendars and bookmarks. You can select to synchronize all of your contacts and calendars, or choose a specific group from each. Once you're set up the iPhone will automatically synchronize information when it is connected to your Mac or PC. We found the synchronization system easy to set up and use with good control over what is synchronized across.

The iPhone supports synchronization via USB but not Bluetooth. Your contacts and calendars are synchronized over however tasks are not and there is no category support on the device. Rather you will need to assign which calendar/category items on the phone are assigned to when they are next synchronized. Contact photos are synchronized across. Strangely there is no support for notes synchronization. This is surprising because in Steve Job's keynote at Macworld in January notes were specifically mentioned as an item that could be synchronized.

Synchronization on the iPhone is compatible with both PCs or Macs using iTunes. On the Mac you can synchronize with either the built in PIM programs (Address Book & iCal) or with Microsoft's Entourage program. On the PC you can only synchronize with Outlook.

Alerts (4.0)

The only alerts you can set in the iPhone are for calendar appointments. Alerts can be set for one of eight presets ranging from five minutes before to 2 days before. When alerts sounds a dialogue appears on screen showing you the name of the event and giving you the option to open the event or dismiss it. Unfortunately there is no option to snooze the event, which is strange because you can snooze alarms. You also can't control what sound goes off for an alert. The alert support is pretty run of the mill, it certainly isn't as powerful as the options you get from BlackBerry or Windows Mobile devices.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The iPhone does not support any form of over the air PIM synchronization. This is unfortunate as this has become a key feature of other smart phones. At the very least it would have been nice to see over the air synchronization using Apple's .Mac service, and in the long run we hope to see support for Exchange Server synchronization.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (4.79)

To test how difficult it is to add a new contact to the iPhone we time how long it takes to go from the home screen until we have added each of five different contact names and their phone numbers. We take the average time for our score. The iPhone performed about average on this test, taking 20.86 seconds to add a contact. As you can see from the chart below this is better than the Ocean, Prada an N95, but not as good as the BlackBerry 8800 or Treo 750, our two business oriented devices. We found that we couldn't use the keyboard two handed while entering names for contacts because the auto correction software didn't recognize the names we used. As such we were forced to poke with our index finger, which takes more time.

Handset	Time (sec)	Score
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79
Blackberry 8800	16.30	6.13
Helio Ocean	21.24	4.71
LG Prada	27.24	3.67
Nokia N95	25.42	3.93
Palm Treo 750	16.1	6.21

Looking/Sorting/Search (2.5)
The only way to search through you contacts on the iPhone is to scroll by "flicking" the screen or by using the alphabet that appears on the right side of the screen. You can change the sort order of your contacts to either first or last name. These are the only search and sorting options you have. Compared to Windows Mobile phones that allow you to view your contacts by company and filter by category this support isn't as robust.

Fields (3.2)
The iPhone has 16 fields available for contacts, including the ability to add multiples of many fields like phone numbers. We were pleased to see the ability to add information like birthdays, nicknames and even notes, where you can add any additional details you like. This compares well to regular phones like the Helio Ocean and LG Prada, which provide 18 and 11 fields respectively. It doesn't compare well with smart phones like the Treo 750, which provides 40 fields, or the Nokia N95's 55 different fields. This is a place where power contact users may not find the iPhone's capabilities sufficient.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (1.17)
The iPhone does not have any speed dial in the traditional sense due to the lack of a physical keyboard. You can however create a favorites list in the phone application that gives you quick access to numbers that you dial often. This list can be easily edited and ordered to suit your needs. Those who are used to one touch dialing though should note that this takes several more steps. If the phone is locked you will need to turn it on, unlock it, launch the phone application, hit the favorites tab and then touch the favorite you want to dial. Because of this we are only awarding half our normal number of points for speed dial to the iPhone. There is no support for voice tags or voice command, which is an unfortunate omission as it would have seemed to be a natural fit for a phone with a touch screen interface. It is also surprising because some form of voice dialing has been standard on almost all phones for quite awhile now.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (5.29)

To test how easy it is to add calendar items to the iPhone we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a simple lunch appointment for the following day. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The iPhone took an average of 18.92 seconds to add our test appointment. As the table below illustrates this is better than the Ocean, Prada and Nokia N95, but falls far short of the business oriented BlackBerry 8800 and Treo 750. Although the iPhone's touchscreen interface is very impressive this is one area where the speed of good hardware keys and full QWERTY keyboard shows their strength.

Handset	Time (sec)	Score
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29
Blackberry 8800	6.92	14.45
Helio Ocean	24.20	4.13
LG Prada	32.50	3.08
Nokia N95	18.64	5.36
Palm Treo 750	6.76	14.79

Calendar Views (4.0)


List View	Day View	Month View

The iPhone's calendar provides three views. A "list" view lists all of the upcoming appointments you have in chronological order. The day view shows the current day divided into one hour increments with appointments inserted at their appointed times. The month view shows the current month. Days that have appointments are indicated with a small dot under the date. At the bottom of the screen in the month view you see a list of that day's events. We found the views to be very simple and easy to use, but would have liked to have seen a weekly view as well. Especially on the iPhone's large screen there could have been a lot of use for a weekly view in landscape orientation. One place where the iPhone again falls behind business oriented devices like the Treo 750 is that you cannot filter the type of appointments you are viewing.

Fields (8.0)
When you create a calendar appointment on the iPhone you have a good selection of fields to fill in. You can set a title and choose a location for the event. Start and end date are there of course, as is the option to create an all day event. You can also set a recurrence pattern. Recurrence on the iPhone is not a customizable as that found on Windows Mobile or BlackBerry devices, giving you the choice of five different patterns. You can set an alert for the appointment, again having to choose from a list of options rather than picking your own time. Finally you can add a note for the appointment. All in all we were rather pleased with the options available when you create an appointment on the iPhone. We do wish we had a bit more control over recurrence and alerts however. We were also missing advanced fields like categories and the ability to invite contacts.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The iPhone does not support tasks. So, it's going to score 0 in all of these categories. This is a disappointment; many other phones (such as the BlackBerry 8800 and the Nokia N95 aupport ToDo lists, and can synchronize these lists with desktop programs such as Outlook or Lotus Notes. With the iPhone, all you can do is to create a note that holds your ToDo list, which means you can't categorize tasks, set alarms for tasks or otherwise keep tabs on the list of things you have to do.

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
See above.

Fields (0.0)
See above.

Notes

Adding Notes (3.95)
To find out how easy it is to add a note to the iPhone we time how long it takes to go from the home screen until we have added a note reminding us about a lunch appointment the following day. We repeat this process five times and take the average for our score. The iPhone took 12.66 seconds to add our sample note. This compares well to other phones, with times simlar to the BlackBerry 8800 and Treo 750 and significantly better than the Ocean, Prada and N95.

Handset		Score
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95
Blackberry 8800	13.12	3.81
Helio Ocean	16.06	3.11
LG Prada	18.74	2.67
Nokia N95	17.70	2.82
Palm Treo 750	11.65	4.29

Note Interface (4.0)
The notes interface on the iPhone is fairly basic, if pretty (like everything else on the phone). When you first launch the program you are taken immediately to a new note interface. Once you have a note stored you are taken to a simple list of notes from which you can choose the one you want. When you open an existing note you have controls at the bottom of the screen that allow you to switch to the next or previous note, delete the current note or send it via email. The inclusion of the email button is a nice feature that we don't see on many phones. Although the interface is elegant, it does not give users advanced tools like searching through notes or categorizing them.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The iPhone provides not options to format your notes with things like colored text, different font types, bold/italics/underline or adding hand drawn items. The last surprises us the most, we would have thought that a touch screen interface would lend itself to a freehand entry format.

Voice Memo (0.0)
Unlike most phones the iPhone does not allow you to create voice notes. This is an example of several small items that are missing from the iPhone that are found on even entry level cell phones, things like MMS and voice command. Once again we are a little surprised by the lack of support for this feature since you would have thought that voice notes would be an obvious option for a touch screen device.

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