Derrick
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- Joined
- Nov 22, 2010
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Believe the hype. The iPhone 3G has finally landed and is everything it's billed to be.
Believe the hype. The iPhone 3G has finally landed and is everything it's billed to be. The handset, made by Apple, is selling quickly, despite its high price. Exclusive supplier Vodacom will be hard-pressed to meet demand.
It's not hard to see why people rave about it. Its large, touch-sensitive screen immediately captivates. Though other handset manufacturers have begun shipping keypad-less, touch-based phones, the iPhone is still king of the hill, 15 months after the original 2G version was released in the US.
But Apple's rivals are circling. Samsung has fired a shot over the company's bows with its new Omnia smartphone; and HTC recently released the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro handsets. But the Samsung and HTC phones have a serious drawback: they run Windows Mobile from Microsoft. Next to the iPhone's software, Windows Mobile is outdated.
The iPhone's biggest flaw is undoubtedly its lack of a tactile keyboard. Apple has done a good job ensuring the on-screen keyboard can be used with a finger rather than a stylus, but it's still painfully slow to write e-mails and text messages.
However, the iPhone wins big in other areas. It's great for reading e-mail and for browsing the Web. I found that I could use the handset to read for hours on end, making it a competent reader for electronic books (I can recommend eReader in the iTunes Apps Store). And the phone's built-in accelerometer means that when you tilt the phone sideways, Web pages and e-books automatically re-orientate themselves for widescreen viewing on the 320 x 480-pixel screen.
The handset, which comes in black or white, is available on prepaid and on a number of iPhone-specific contracts from Vodacom. All offer 250 MB/month of data. This is more than three times the average consumption of iPhone users in other markets, Vodacom says, but still seems stingy. I ploughed through 70 MB in 48 hours without much effort. Thankfully, Vodacom's bolt-on data bundles can be applied to the iPhone contracts, so heavy data users won't have to pay the R1,50/MB out-of-bundle rate.
There are other disadvantages to the phone: it has no local maps so GPS navigation is a no-no. Push e-mail also chews through the battery. But the lack of a keyboard is the biggest failing. The Apple rumour mill suggests the next version, possibly to be announced in January, could have a slide-out keyboard. When that happens, the iPhone will be almost impossible to beat.
Believe the hype. The iPhone 3G has finally landed and is everything it's billed to be. The handset, made by Apple, is selling quickly, despite its high price. Exclusive supplier Vodacom will be hard-pressed to meet demand.
It's not hard to see why people rave about it. Its large, touch-sensitive screen immediately captivates. Though other handset manufacturers have begun shipping keypad-less, touch-based phones, the iPhone is still king of the hill, 15 months after the original 2G version was released in the US.
But Apple's rivals are circling. Samsung has fired a shot over the company's bows with its new Omnia smartphone; and HTC recently released the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro handsets. But the Samsung and HTC phones have a serious drawback: they run Windows Mobile from Microsoft. Next to the iPhone's software, Windows Mobile is outdated.
The iPhone's biggest flaw is undoubtedly its lack of a tactile keyboard. Apple has done a good job ensuring the on-screen keyboard can be used with a finger rather than a stylus, but it's still painfully slow to write e-mails and text messages.
However, the iPhone wins big in other areas. It's great for reading e-mail and for browsing the Web. I found that I could use the handset to read for hours on end, making it a competent reader for electronic books (I can recommend eReader in the iTunes Apps Store). And the phone's built-in accelerometer means that when you tilt the phone sideways, Web pages and e-books automatically re-orientate themselves for widescreen viewing on the 320 x 480-pixel screen.
The handset, which comes in black or white, is available on prepaid and on a number of iPhone-specific contracts from Vodacom. All offer 250 MB/month of data. This is more than three times the average consumption of iPhone users in other markets, Vodacom says, but still seems stingy. I ploughed through 70 MB in 48 hours without much effort. Thankfully, Vodacom's bolt-on data bundles can be applied to the iPhone contracts, so heavy data users won't have to pay the R1,50/MB out-of-bundle rate.
There are other disadvantages to the phone: it has no local maps so GPS navigation is a no-no. Push e-mail also chews through the battery. But the lack of a keyboard is the biggest failing. The Apple rumour mill suggests the next version, possibly to be announced in January, could have a slide-out keyboard. When that happens, the iPhone will be almost impossible to beat.