Posted on June 30, 2007 at 2:01 PM in @earthlink
Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.
Weekend blog entries are fairly rare for me, but I wanted to write up some thoughts about my first day with the iPhone while they're fairly fresh in my mind. Now that I have both an Ocean and an iPhone in my hands, I'm well equipped to start thinking about how they stack up side-by-side.
I'm putting this entry in the "@EarthLink" section as a reminder that Helio is a joint venture between my employer, EarthLink, and SK-Telecom, and that Helio provides me free use of their devices and services. This entry reflects my own opinion and experiences.
Getting to know the iPhone has been really really fun. Especially because of the innovations around the touch screen interface, I think along with the Ocean it does point the way to the beginnings of a new kind of device, and Helio's "don't call it a phone" mantra equally applies here. In fact, the interface is so different from what I'm used to, I feel much more like a newbie learning a brand new operating system than I have in a while. As an example, when I first started browsing the web, I couldn't figure out how to just close the browser window. No "X", no obvious box to hit. Or how to wake it from sleep. Depending on what you're looking for, the prospect of being a total newbie again could either excite you or turn you off.
Read on for more.
In my experiences so far, there are some things the iPhone does exceptionally well, but then there are things I vastly prefer to do on the Ocean. iPhone Web browsing via Safari when you're on a Wi-Fi network is really an unparalled experience. Navigating a page by flicking and moving it around, and zooming in by tapping just makes good sense. This morning I took in my feeds via Reader.earthlink.net on the iPhone and it almost felt like it was made for it. To move around in your river of news, you just flick and drag your finger up and down the scrolling vertical page. When you want to read closely, you zoom the browser in for a closer look. When you open a new browser window, you get a nice scrolling window manager screen that keeps track of everything you have open.
On the other hand, as has been widely reported, web browsing without Wi-Fi, relying solely on AT&T's EDGE data network, is painfully slow. The download speed gets in the way of usability, and if I had to rely on EDGE all the time, browsing would suck eggs. The Ocean can be a little slow to load up the browser for the first time, but once it's open I've never had a speed issue with its EV-DO 3G network.
The Cover Flow application on the iPhone is insanely fun. You can flip through music albums by running your finger across them on the screen. It's an interface I look forward to seeing applied to documents on my OS X desktop.
The iPhone on-screen keyboard handles better than I expected. The correction and visual feedback are quite nice -- if you haven't seen the demo videos, it looks sort of like a typewriter hammer coming back up at you. For now, though, my sausage-like fingers are having trouble being accurate and quick. You can't get any of that offgliding from one key to the next that you can on a physical keyboard. I still far prefer texting and instant messaging on the Ocean, both for the hardware keyboard and the on-board apps. AOL Instant Messenger on the Ocean is excellent, and there's no equivalent so far on the iPhone. And I like having it all stacked up in one place, and the accompanying alerts.
The Ocean's integrated communications approach isn't as flashy or playful as the iPhone, but it's nicely streamlined. I keep track of a small number of my Twitter contacts via SMS, and since the iPhone plans have metered SMS(unless you want to add on additional cost to the plan), the Ocean is ahead there too.
There's a lot to talk about here and I could go on and on with the comparisons, but so far my bottom line is that the iPhone is better for browsing(assuming Wi-Fi coverage) and iTunes integration, but for personal communications like texting and IM the Ocean is better. Also, if you want to have the experience of being a rank newbie and brave guinea pig, you'll have more fun investing time in learning the iPhone. But if you want a device that you'll figure out and run with fairly quickly, the Ocean might be a better choice.
For more information in a better reference format, take a look at this comparison chart Helio has done up recognizing the commendability of the iPhone and showing where some of the differences in hardware, software, cost, and services are.
Comments
Dave,
I really liked your review... and even though I haven't used an Ocean yet, based on what I know about it, I'm inclined to agree with you on all points but one.
I don't think that the iPhone is hard to learn for a newbie. The reason it seems hard is that we're conditioned that cell phones and other mobile devices rarely have intuitive interfaces. Once you realize that you basically just do "what makes sense" with the iPhone interface, it becomes tremendously easier. I had basically mastered every single function of the iPhone within 30 minutes.
That said, I am going to have to figure out how to thumb-type on this thing... supposedly it's possible to do once you get used to it a bit. That's the only major annoyance for me so far is having to type with one finger. Aside from that, my iPhone experience has been great. :)
Posted by Shawn Reed | June 30, 2007 5:04 PM
Thanks for your thoughts, Shawn. I'd be curious to hear how non-native Mac users and the non-geek set react to the interface, seeing it for the first time. The stacked alerts on the Ocean is a really useful feature. We'll have to have a geekphone/phonecamp lunch some time and compare notes on both.
Posted, in reply to Shawn Reed's comment, by Dave C. | July 2, 2007 10:42 AM