User Experience - Interface

As one might expect, the user experience with the iPhone is graceful and simple. It's easy to figure out how to turn the phone on without needing to read the manual. You simply press the top right button and you're on your way.

The top switch on the left side of the phone is to choose between vibrate or ring. I like that Apple chose to use a switch as opposed to just a button to push with onscreen feedback. You can reach in your pocket during a meeting to make sure your phone is on vibrate, without having to pull it out and sift through menus or activate the LCD screen to check the status.

The button below is the volume switch. The operating system in the phone is smart enough to have the volume buttons be context sensitive. When you're in the home menu, it'll adjust the ringer volume; during a phone call it adjusts the earpiece volume, and during a song or movie, the volume buttons adjust the playback volume through the headphones or speaker. And in each mode, there is onscreen feedback that is very familiar to Mac users as it's the same iconology when adjusting the volume on a Mac computer.

The dock is a way to charge your phone. The dock features a 20-pin connector that plugs into the phone, a port to plug in the USB to 20-pin dock cable from your computer as well as an audio out jack for music and speakerphone capabilities. You can also plug the USB cable directly into the iPhone.

Once powered on, the home screen is the starting point for every tool. The button at the bottom of the face of the phone returns you to the home screen from anywhere. And just as important, it will leave whatever you were doing as you left it. Composing an email and need to make a phone call? No problem; click the home button, make the phone call, and click on the Mail icon to go back to writing the email.

Also found on the home screen are indicators. These small red circles usually contain a number, indicating how many new items are ready (missed calls, new emails, new voicemails). These indicators grab your attention, as they stick out and do not blend into the icons.

The screen works on touch sensitivity, and a very little amount of pressure is needed to activate the touch sensor. Unlike most touch sensitive technology, the screen supports the input of multiple touches at the same time. This is the foundation for Apple's zooming technology. By pinching or stretching out an area, you zoom out or in. This is used in the picture viewer as well as Safari.

One thing that I didn't like about the iPhone was the charging setup. The iPhone comes with the USB to 20-pin cable to connect your iPhone to the computer, as well as an adapter that will plug into the wall and accepts the USB plug to charge the iPhone without a computer. However, this means that I have to unplug the USB cable from my computer after I shut it off for the night (since it wont charge the phone when the computer is shut off - even if I plug it into my monitor's USB ports), and plug it into the wall, and back and forth every day. I was hoping that the iPhone would ship with a complete AC adapter. Instead I have ordered a second USB to 20-pin cable for $20 so I won't have to unplug the cable from the PC to charge overnight.

You might be asking why I need to charge it overnight as opposed to during the afternoon after I get home. Well, I tried this setup the first day I got my phone, and by the time I got home in the afternoon the battery was almost dead. Granted, I had been extensively using the phone's internet and video playback capabilities, but I didn't like driving home from work with little juice left in my phone.

The biggest problem I had with the user interface was the list selectors. They remind me of slot machines, and you spin the drum around until you pick the correct item from the list. I never seemed to get along with this way of picking things out of a list. I though it would have been more efficient for just a normal list with chevrons on the top and bottom to indicate more items above or below.