iPhone Part IV - Features and Connectivity

Connectivity
I expected the iPhone to really shine when it came to connectivity. Unfortunately it doesn’t even meet some of the most basic needs. For example the iPhone supports Bluetooth but without A2DP compatibility. You can use just a normal earpiece but not a stereo Bluetooth headset.

Secondly, there doesn’t seem to be any option for sending data via Bluetooth either. In fact, when you switch on the Bluetooth radio and start looking for devices, I’m not sure it’ll ever find any other device. The reason I have this impression is because I tried for almost half and hour with 5 mobiles around me with Bluetooth active. And only 2 mobiles detected the iPhone but couldn’t pair with it nor could any data be sent across. So that sucks!


The Safari browser is a delight to use. It allows you to open multiple pages so you don’t have to worry about checking out information one page at a time. The gyroscope screen will also allow you to view the page in landscape mode. You can also zoom in to the screen using the pinch method. The iPhone supports GPRS and EDGE and also has Wi-Fi connectivity. It’s easy to set up and there are no issues with connectivity when using either of the options. There are also options for setting up various mail accounts through Google, Yahoo and AOL to name a few.

The iPhone also has a separate option for hooking up to YouTube directly. Here too you have the option of viewing the pages in landscape or normal mode simply by tilting the screen. You can bookmark the links of your favorite videos so you can access them quickly. This may actually be the best feature in the whole phone.

You can use your iPod’s proprietary USB cable for the iPhone to hook it up to your PC. But this 8GB or 4GB sized phone only allows you to access the images you take from the camera through the normal USB mode. No other drive will be created. The only other way you can access any other information is through iTunes. And the problem with that is, once it’s been synced with one PC it can't be synced to any other without erasing any of the data on it. Ain’t that just dandy. It should have allowed you to access the 4GB or 8GB drive or at least a part of it, to store data. But alas and alack so far.

The Bottom Line
The iPhone is not equipped with too many features to be totally blunt about it. There are no preinstalled games either and as I said the Bluetooth radio is practically a non-existent option. What it has going for it with the existing applications is just the large display and fabulous touch screen that makes the navigation of these features an easy task. But then the question of the day is – Is that all the iPhone is all about? I guess so, is the only answer I can provide at this time. There are plenty of developers out there coming up with third part apps for the iPhone (God bless their souls) that should help enhance the experience of using it. So the silver lining on this cloud is – thank goodness it’s not here. Yet. Hopefully by the time it is, we’ll have the fully loaded, Bluetooth working, third part application rich version. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that happens soon.