Apple iPod Operation: Phone and Email

As stated above, syncing my contacts was a breeze.  On Monday morning I had some meetings around the state, so I was going to be on the road most of the day.  I decided to leave my laptop behind to see if indeed the iPhone would be a worthy replacement for a day on the road. 

Let me now concentrate on the four major features of the iPhone:  the phone, the email, the internet browsing, and the iPod.

The Phone

When you turn on the iPhone, the display wakes up and you are greeted with the time and date at the top of the screen along with whatever photo you have chosen as your wallpaper (this can be chosen from included stock images, a photo you have taken with the camera, or an imported photo).  At the bottom of the screen is a slider which says "slide to unlock."  You simply drag your finger across the slider and and you hear a mechanical "click" and the home screen appears.  It consists of three rows of colorful icons for all the extra features of the phone.  Along the bottom of the screen are the 4 main functions, Phone, Mail, Safari & iPod.   If you have any mail, the Mail icon will have a red dot (with the number of waiting emails in it) in the top right corner.  The Phone icon will also show the number of missed calls and/or voicemails. 

Voicemail is one of the really cool and innovative features of the iPhone.   When you have received several voicemails, you touch the voicemail icon (while in phone mode) and you are presented with a list of your voicemails.  It has the names or numbers of the calls you have missed, and you can choose whichever message in the list you want to listen to rather than having to listen through several messages to get to the one you want.  This feature is called Visual Voicemail, and it is one of the features that AT&T had to rework their wireless technology to accommodate.  To me, this is easily one of the best features of the phone.

Call quality was excellent - loud and clear, and people I talked to said it sounded great as well.  The speakerphone was also clear and loud enough to use effectively in my car or office.  Calls can be made from your contact list or if you prefer, a virtual number pad.  Along the bottom of the screen in Phone mode are the following buttons:  Favorites (save a list of frequently called contacts here), Recents (if a call was missed, it appears in Red in this list of recent calls), Contacts, Keypad, and Voicemail (an icon with number of unheard messages will appear here if there are any).

When you place a call, the screen shows the following six large buttons:  Mute, Keypad, Speaker, Add Call, Hold, and Contacts.  Everything you need without having to remember how to do something.  For example, your friend you are talking too asks if you have someone's address or phone number - just press the contact button and navigate through the contacts screen.  Or how about adding two more friends for a conference call?  Just press the Add Call button, then dial from the keypad or contacts list.  When that person answers, the Add Call button has changed to "Merge Call," which you press to activate the conference.  Even on an office phone, creating a conference call has always been confusing, but the iPhone makes it simple.

The Email

When you touch the Mail icon at the bottom of the phone, you are presented with a list of your accounts (assuming you have multiple email accounts).  You touch the account you want to see, and you are taken to a screen showing your Inbox, Drafts, Sent and Trash.  Touching any of these takes you to that folder.  Navigating to the Inbox, you are presented with your current and new emails.  Touching the message you want to view brings you to a full view of the message.  At the bottom of the screen are icons for checking for new mail, filing the current message, deleting current message, replying to the current message, or composing a new message.  Word, Excel or PDF images attached to a message can be opened and viewed, although not edited or saved.

To compose a new message, you touch the compose icon and you are presented with a blank new message with the cursor blinking in the "To:" field.  The virtual keyboard is presented in the bottom half of the screen.  This is probably the main learning curve issue with the iPhone - the virtual keyboard.  Using your thumbs, you press the virtual key you want and as you touch it it enlarges, which allows you to see what key you actually hit.  The first time I tried it I was only 50% at best (hitting the key I wanted).  But as I began to type words, I noticed that under the word I was typing was a drop down window showing the word the iPhone thinks I was trying to type.  If I had misspelled the word but continued to type it, once I hit the space key to begin the next word, it auto-corrected my typos and inserted the correct word.  This was remarkably accurate, and I realized that the more I just kept typing, trusting the intelligence of the software, the more it worked.  But it is something that takes getting used to.  One advantage I have is that I have not been using tactile keys, such as on a Treo or Blackberry.  I would assume that if you are used to one of those devices, it will take a bit longer to get used to.  I saw Walt Mossberg on the Charlie Rose show and he said that the first day using it he was frustrated, the second day of using it he was getting angry, and by the third day he wanted to throw it out of the window.  But by the fifth day, it had clicked and he loved it.  (He has used a Treo for several years now).  There is a number and symbol button at the bottom of the page that changes the QUERTY layout of the virtual keyboard to a numbers and symbols layout when you need it.

Once you have finished your message, you hit the 'Send' key and you soon hear the "woosh" sound (familiar to Mac Mail users) that lets you know the message has been sent.  One complaint I have is that there are multiple inboxes (one for each email account you have configured) rather than one master inbox.  This means you have to hit the back button quite a bit to navigate between your different incoming mail.  (There might be a way to change this, but I have not found it yet.  Remember, my disclaimer is that I am only in my first 24 hours with the device!)