As a marketing & technology professional, I’ve been interested in the iPhone since its original launch last year for three main reasons:
- As a professional, how will the iPhone enhance my productivity?
- As a marketer, how will the iPhone impact the mobile channel, and thus our ability to reach out and create meaningful experiences and relationships with consumers?
- As a tech geek, will the iPhone satisfy my insatiable hunger for ultra-cool gadgets?
Canadians, at long last, now have legitimate, fully-functional access to the iPhone. But was it worth the wait? My short answer: a resounding Yes. Here’s why.
New Features
The iPhone 3G launched with new software (version 2.0 firmware) that enabled many new capabilities. Chief among them, from a noise and publicity perspective, is the App Store, a centralized repository for 3rd party applications. While I appreciate the significance of this gesture, it is, in fact, “old news” for enthusiasts who have hacked their iPhones and iPod Touches to load 3rd party applications since the iPhone’s original 2007 release.
For me, the real surprise came in the form of enterprise support, specifically for Microsoft Exchange. With ActiveSync support, I managed to setup (with zero involvement from IT) access to my Exchange email account in less than 3 minutes. It was as simple as entering my email server, username and password.
I immediately had ultra-sexy, BlackBerry-like access to my Exchange email and calendar, much to the envy of my Treo-toting peers. (Contact synchronization is also available.) While there has been some criticism of the current state of Exchange support on the iPhone, I have not encountered any lack of functionality from a typical (and fairly picky) power user perspective. The iPhone thus immediately becomes an interesting option for businesses on the fence considering mobile email – Apple has effectively reduced the cost of entry by eliminating the need for a dedicated BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
The Data Debacle
Much controversy greeted the Canadian launch of the iPhone. The lack of an “unlimited” data plan irked many prospective customers. Rogers, the exclusive iPhone carrier in Canada, finally relented and made available a limited time offer of a $30 “unlimited” 6GB plan. While I would be the first to welcome more competition in Canada’s limited telecom space, I seriously questioned the average user’s ability to burn through gigabytes of data on a mobile device, even with 3G and the rich web capabilities of the iPhone.
Since my purchase, exactly 3 weeks ago, I have done everything possible to use as much data as possible: push email (Exchange ActiveSync), pull email (Gmail IMAP), web, YouTube, GPS + Google Maps, 3rd party applications. Despite all that activity, I have managed to only use a grand total of 87.3MB, which translates to 12% of my available 750MB monthly allocation.
A simple extrapolation suggests that I will be at 116.4MB by the end of my first month, a far cry from even the least expensive Rogers plan that provides 400MB monthly.
Battery Life
The one dark spot of my initial iPhone experience was not entirely unexpected, but quite unwelcome nevertheless. With Exchange support (push email and calendar) fully configured, I looked forward to casually pulling out my iPhone in any one of my multitude of Monday meetings. To my horror, I reached less than 50% battery power by noon – and I hadn’t made nor received a single phone call (my old BlackBerry could last a week!). By the end of the business day, I was in the red, and I seriously wondered if I would have enough juice to make a phone call (if I needed to) on the drive home.
At first, I considered tweaking some settings to conserve battery power – e.g., turning off 3G, GPS, push email – but then, what would be the point of buying the latest and greatest mobile device? I stubbornly left everything ON. A good friend and former colleague, Jerry Lee, an early adopter of the original iPhone, assured me that after a few battery recharge cycles, the battery life would, in fact, increase. Following his advice (and really, not having much choice) I charged the iPhone 3G every night. After one week, the change was astounding. Qualitatively, battery life increased roughly by double – I went from barely getting through 1 day to comfortably getting through 2 days of normal usage.
New Marketing Channel
Many firms have created iPhone-optimized versions of their websites. My favorites include CNET News and The Toronto Star. The New York Times has gone one step further and has provided, via the App Store, a native client that resides on your iPhone that will pull news content and make it available for offline access (think subway ride). In the case of the NY Times, the content is ad-supported by a non-intrusive, simple banner along the bottom of the screen.
The buzz right now is social networking on the iPhone, and the proliferation of iPhone-only social networking applications, completely bypassing traditional networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Eventually, we will see location awareness enabled applications that (with permissions) will alert you that the person, who just entered your favorite watering hole, is single, prefers Rickard’s White, and loves long, romantic walks on the beach. The greater question of, would we really want this, I’ll leave to greater minds.
Bottom Line
The iPhone 3G does a great job of providing useful, compelling applications that are wonderfully integrated – the experience of snapping a 2 megapixel photo and emailing it (with 3G speed) to any number of my contacts with just a few, simple keystrokes is priceless.
Pros:
- Microsoft Exchange integration (mail, calendar and contacts)
- Virtually unlimited access to 3rd party applications via the App Store
- Visual Voicemail allows you to pick and choose which messages to listen to first
- Excellent voice quality and iPod music playback
- Newly purchased songs made via iPhone iTunes app are automatically uploaded to iTunes on your PC/Mac on your next sync
- Super intuitive integration of core applications (e.g., Camera and Email)
Cons:
- Low battery life
- No Flash support (yet)
- No video recording capability
The competition in the smart phone space will continue to heat up with the introduction of RIM’s counter-attack to the iPhone 3G, the BlackBerry Bold, scheduled for release this month.
Filed under: Gadgets
