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That’s right, we said it — and we’re not taking it back. The iPhone may
be
the greatest handheld surfing device ever to rock the mobile Web, and a fabulous media player to boot. It may be the highest-rated mobile phone on CNET UK, rocking the pockets of
half of our crack editorial team. It’s certainly the touchscreen face that
launched a thousand apps. But as an actual call-making phone, it’s rubbish,
and we aim to prove it.
Say what? iPhone call quality is bad
Call quality on the iPhone is pathetic, and it’s mostly because of the
tiny
speaker. It has to be aligned with your ear canal with the accuracy of
a laser-guided ninja doing cataract surgery, or else the volume cuts down
to nothing as the sound waves bounce uselessly around your ear shells.
The earbud headphones that come with the iPhone include a
hands-free microphone, but they’re tinny and as weak as a kitten, with
no sound-isolating rubber nubs. Rumour has it Steve Jobs is hard
of hearing and Apple has been criticised for making iPods too loud. We
don’t want music players blasting the hearing of future generations into fleshy
tatters, but we could use some of that power in our iPhones’ speakers.
The microphone is similarly craptastic, letting in all and
sundry sounds to pollute your important calls, from fire alarms to
passing
unlicensed mopeds. Thank heavens the 3.0 version of the iPhone’s
software supports Bluetooth, so we can get our headset on and make some
calls.
Dropped calls and data gaps
If, like Will Smith in Enemy of the State, you’re trying to
avoid
the eagle eye of Big Brother, the iPhone could be for you. It drops
calls, fails to connect and doesn’t even ring sometimes — not for
everyone, but more often than any other phone we’re currently using.
Most iPhone 3G and 3GS users can share stories of phone calls
that
disappeared mid-chat or voicemails that frighteningly appear, fully formed,
without the phone ever ringing. But the people we’ve talked to who own
the first iPhone, which sticks to the 2G network, don’t tend to report
the same problems.
Unsurprisingly,
where voice is bad, data is often worse, and cries of ‘no network’ are a
familiar sound for some iPhoners — there’s even a blog about it. Others complain about failed text
messages, but it could be worse: some 52 people took the
time to mention in Apple’s support forum that their iPhone calls random
people by itself.
For iPhone users, there are no straight answers about where
the problems come from. As
usual, Apple sticks to, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say
anything at all,” and has kept its mouth shut about the issues.
We could point the finger of blame at O2’s network, which has
the thinnest 3G coverage in the UK,
according to maps
released by Ofcom this year. In our tests, however, it’s
common for other O2 phones to work well in places where the iPhone gets
nothing.
O2 admits it does have capacity problems “from time to time”, and notes it has seen an 18-fold increase in data in the last year. Traffic continues to double every 3 months. Apparently, “watching an average YouTube video on a smart phone can be the network equivalent of sending 500,000 text messages”. But O2 claims it’s investing £100m over the next year on pulling its socks up, with £30m of that going to the over-burdened London network.
Others blame the iPhone’s hardware, but an antenna test for a
Swedish newspaper found the phone’s antenna works fine. Bluetest, an
antenna-testing company that spun off from Chalmers University, took
some iPhones to their lab — including phones that seemed to work
perfectly and samples from people wth complaints — and decreed,
“If these mobiles do not keep the connection with the network like they
should, the reason is not the antennas or how they are mounted.”
But
the antenna is just one part in a phone that’s packed with
doohickeys and whatsits. Those plucky Swedes struck again when Swedish
engineering mag Ny Teknik wrote about a report from an unnamed expert
that some iPhones are less sensitive to 3G than they should be.
According to AP, the news agency, the report said the most likely cause of
the 3G problems is defective
adjustments between the antenna and an amplifier that captures very
weak signals from it. This could lead to poor 3G connectivity
and slower data speeds.
Whether
it’s the network or the phone, users have been left languishing in
support threads by O2 and Apple, and left to try voodoo such as adding a
piece of sticky tape to the SIM card to try to make their phone work
properly. At least thanks to its tight iTunes integration, the iPhone
has the option to wipe everything and restore all your apps, content
and settings from a backup.
You can’t answer if it doesn’t ring
Perhaps the worst of the
iPhone’s problems is its ability to sit there stealthily and
ignore incoming calls. With no ring or vibrate to clue you in, your
friends and family are redirected to voicemail… or just treated to
silence. If you’re in a two-iPhone family, it can be a case of the deaf
leading the mute.
But even if your phone works like a dream and
nary a call is missed, the iPhone’s very beauty can be its undoing. The
default ringtones and message alerts are so soothing and melodic
they can barely penetrate a pocket, and they certainly can’t out-wail a
crying baby on the bus. iPhoners can change to a custom ringtone, but
most just select the most irritating, blasting option from the built-in
list — leading to a massive over-subscription to
the traditional
‘Old Phone’ ringtone. For text messages, we recommend the honking horn
— you’ll look like an idiot, but at least you’ll hear it.
You’ll
suffer again if you want to increase the number of rings so you
have a chance in hell of getting to the phone once you realise the
lovely marimba tune is coming from your backpack. On most phones, this
is a simple matter of changing the settings in some menu. On the
iPhone, you have to type in an umpteen-digit number — possibly the
number of the Beast — to reprogram the voicemail settings, in the manner
of writing a BASIC program on the Sinclair Spectrum.
The iPhone might burn your face off
According to our
ultra-sciencey test,
it is extremely unlikely that the iPhone will burn your face off. It’s
probably just as likely that any smart phone will burn you, or even
your laptop, thanks to the masses of techno gubbins that are being
packed into ever-thinner cases.
Nevertheless, holding the the iPhone up to your face can be
uncomfortable, and not just because it gets rather warm. Pressing a
large, flat surface to your cheek is always going to be sweaty,
especially as you press it ever harder against your ear in a bid to
hear through the tinny speaker. Thus the current trend for people to
walk down the street with their phones on hands-free, yelling into the
mic at the bottom while they hold the rest of the phone away from their
faces. They look like idiots, but at least their faces aren’t sliding
sweatily along a touchscreen.
iPhone battery life
Battery life is the first casualty of smart-phone development, as the
power of 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi and heavy-duty processing sucks the power out
of over-miniaturised cells. But the iPhone was the first to really
flaunt its slim body while you watched the bars drop almost in front of
your eyes. A couple of hours of Google Maps over 3G and you’ll be lost
in the woods without even the possibility of phoning for help. Compare
that to the good old days when your phone would last a week without
charging, and you’ll wonder why you ever bothered to switch.
The iPhone 3GS is an improvement over the iPhone 3G. In our
tests, it
lasted over 45 per cent longer — but we were
comparing a new 3GS to a six-month-old 3G, and batteries do hold less
charge over time. And, if you turn off 3G, GPS and Wi-Fi, you can
squeeze a weekend out of the iPhone 3GS… but why would you want to,
without the best features of the phone?
The iPhone sucks — so what?
If the iPhone is inaudible, unconnected, on fire and out of
battery, why is the thing so popular? The fact is, although the
iPhone is the worst phone in the world, it’s the best handheld computer
there is. Web browsing is a revelation, it’s a fantastic music- and
movie-playing iPod, and it’s easy as pie to install thousands
of apps that do everything from editing your photos to tuning your
guitar. And unlike its competitors, its responsive touchscreen and
crystal-clear user interface make tapping away on the iPhone a real
pleasure.
Making calls just isn’t what it used to be, back when Grandpa
used to dial by shouting down the party line at the operator. Many of
us prefer Facebook and text messages to chatting on the phone, and the
home phone is dying out altogether. Meanwhile, for some of us, finding
a new venue without a little Google Map help is like trying to navigate
by the stars, and we can’t bear to wander without Wikipedia. For all
these features that make smart phones live up to their names, the
iPhone does a bang-up job. Just don’t try to actually make a phone call
on one.
