Akhirnya...setelah lelah menunggu selama lebih dari setahun sejak kemunculan iPhone, pada hari Jumat, 21 Maret 2008 lalu, gua berkesempatan memegang, meng-explore, bahkan memiliki iPhone :) Penantian lebih dari setahun itu disebabkan oleh constraints dari berbagai hal seperti: ketersediaan di Indonesia, kemampuan akan harga (awal keluar di Indonesia harganya sekitar 10 juta), kemungkinan untuk di-unlock (karena iPhone belum bisa menggunakan GSM provider di Indonesia), dll. Baru sekitar awal tahun ini harga iPhone di Indonesia mulai mendekati harga aslinya (dalam dolar). Karena kebetulan sudah menabung cukup lama, saatnya membeli iPhone supaya bisa dioprek pas long weekend kemaren.
In this posting I'm gonna tell the story about my experience of one day with iPhone, from the moment I buy it, until..... (I'm gonna tell you later :P)
Buying Process
Kesan pertama adalah waktu mencarinya di BEC. Pertama-tama bertanya ke sebuah toko di lantai dasar, harganya Rp6,2 juta. Lumayan cukup murah (cukup murah jika dibandingkan harga awal-awal kehadiran iPhone yg sekitar 10jt)...Terus coba dulu naik ke lantai 3 yang menjual computer-related stuffs. Bertanya ke dua toko ternyata harganya malah Rp7 juta. Kok bisa ya...mungkin disebabkan importir-nya berbeda sehingga harga awalnya beda. Kok bisa beda...ya karena memang iPhone belum resmi masuk Indonesia, jadi authorized dealer belum boleh mengimpor dan menjualnya. So, alternatifnya iPhone diimport oleh importir yang gak resmi...Itu cuman analisis gua :)
Akhirnya kembali ke lantai dua dan mendapatkan iPhone dengan harga yg sama dengan toko di lantai dasar tadi, Rp6,2 juta. Ya sudah...dengan perasaan yg sempat ragu2, akhirnya gua memutuskan untuk membeli.
Kesan kedua adalah waktu memegang kotaknya yg mungil dan membuka isinya. Isinya gak macam-macam, cuman ada:
- iPhone device (obviously)
- Charger with foldable plug (cool...)
- USB cable, untuk menghubungkan iPhone ke komputer atau ke charger
- Desktop dock
- Five page quick start guide dan beberapa petunjuk tentang keselamatan and other craps
- Earphone
- Screen cleaner
- 2 Apple logo sticker...hore akhirnya punya stiker ini :)
Nggak ada CD apapun (yang biasa diperlukan untuk instalasi software di komputer untuk keperluan sinkronisasi), karena all you need is iTunes. iTunes tinggal di-download di apple.com. Dalam CD yang dipaketkan dalam box PDA/phone biasanya ada aplikasi-aplikasi bonus. Di box iPhone gak ada CD semacam itu, sepertinya Apple confident bahwa orang udah puas dengan aplikasi default di IPhone...which I'm not.
Saatnya memasang kartu SIM ke dalam iPhone. Untuk membuka slotnya perlu pakai jarum atau pinset karena harus dicolok dulu ke lubang yang kecil sekali. Setelah memasukkan jarum dan menekan cukup keras, barulah slot SIM card terbuka. Oya, di dalamnya sudah ada SIM Card dari AT&T (siapa juga yang mau pakai SIM card AT&T di Indonesia :P). Setelah SIM card kartu HALO gua dimasukkan, saatnya mengaktifkan iPhone untuk pertama kalinya.
Amazingly, proses booting iPhone cukup cepat, lebih cepat dari Windows Mobile 6 yang ada sekarang. Setelah booting beres, SIM card langsung terdeteksi tanpa masalah dan sinyal GSM langsung didapatkan. Langsung gua coba telepon dan nyambung tanpa masalah. So, unlocking SIM card memang berfungsi tanpa kendala.
Setelah semua ok, saatnya membayar Rp6,2 juta..(Hmm..kayaknya harus berhemat bulan ini). Jangan harap untuk mengisi kartu garansi, karena memang saat ini iPhone di Indonesia TIDAK ADA GARANSI apa-apa. So buy it with your own risk :)
It's time to go home and explore iPhone. It's gonna be a long long night.
Exploration
Before having iPhone, I have used Windows Mobile devices for quite long time, almost 5 years. So, in order to use this completely different device, deep exploration is needed.
When I get home, I jump into my seat in front of my laptop, browsing to apple.com and download iTunes. After installing iTunes, I connect iPhone to my laptop and iTunes detects it successfully. After setting some configs, iTunes synch my contacts & calendar (task not synched) in my Outlook into iPhone. It's fast, even faster than when synching with Windows Mobile device (I don't know why, somebody explain this please). I can also synch video and music based on available playlists. I try to play a song using iPod feature in iPhone, the sound is fantastic. The album cover flow feature is cool. Video playing is really great, smooth & no flicker. Unfortunately, it only plays video in mp4 format, so I have to convert wmv video to mp4 format which is quite time consuming.
It's time to try iPhone camera. By using 2 Mega pixel camera, photo quality is not bad, even in low illuminated environment. When I try to record video, where's the video recording feature? Unfortunately it's not available yet. You need to install additional application to do that. There's an application called ShowTime, but it's not free. You can download it for free but it only can record for 4 minutes. So be it..I don't really need it anyway.
The accelerometer censor is really cool. It allows you to rotate the device in order to rotate the picture or screen without having to rotate it by clicking some buttons manually.
OK, it's time to install some applications. I need an application to explore file system. There's an app called Mobile Finder. After installing and executing it, it shows weird file system that I'm not familiar with. In Windows Mobile, file system is not too different from Windows in PC. It's clear where the system files and folders are, where the user's files and folders. In iPhone, it's not that clear.
Since I mostly use PDA for mobile office, such as: email, browsing, word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation, it's time to check whether iPhone supports those stuffs. Email & browsing features are great. Safari browser that's included in iPhone is a complete web browser. It supports JavaScript, not like IE bundled in Windows Mobile. Portrait to landscape transition can be done by rotating the device. HTML element like Drop Down is rendered uniquely. But when I want to hide pictures in a web page (some time I need that feature in order to fasten page rendering and also to reduce downloaded data in order to reduce GPRS charge), there's no setting that allow me to do that. If I want to block and copy some texts from a web page so I can paste them to anywhere, I can't do that since there's no menu to do that and iPhone doesn't provide context menu and display copy context menu.
Email client is also a true email client. I can directly view recognized attachment file format like image, pdf, and doc file. But every time I open the email client application, it directly connects to server checking new messages and downloads them if any. Sometime I don't want that to happen to avoid GRPS charging (when I connect to the Internet using GRPS connection). And unfortunately, I can't find a setting to disable that behavior. Frustration begins...
OK, it's time to find mobile office applications, like Word, Excel, and Power Point Mobile in Windows Mobile. Frustratingly I can't find those kind of applications. There is some office suite available on the net, but that application suite is a web-based application, so you have to connect to Internet in order to use it, which is an expensive and not convenient option.
After using it quite some time, I need to check the battery status. Unfortunately, I can find no functionality to display the exact percentage of battery energy left. I also can find no application that can give me that functionality. Frustration increases..
After exploring iPhone for quite some time, I find the absence of many features those should be available in that kind of sophisticated device. It makes me frustration. I gonna recap all those cr*ps in following parts.
iPhone cr*ps
I'm gonna tell you how cr*ppy current iPhone is. I don't know where to begin so I gonna write iPhone cr*ps in a list in random order. Please don't make this list as a general judgement. It's only based on my experience and my point of view as an advanced PDA user, a geek, and a gadget freak. This cr*ps list is also based on iPhone OS version 1.1.3. In future versions I believe and hope there're some enhancements and fixing. Here we go...
Software-related
These are some software-related issues those have no solutions yet. I'm sure there will be some enhancements or fixing in the future even though you still use current iPhone device. It's a matter of time before people create some applications or patchs to overcome these issues.
1. Context menu
iPhone has no context menu that can be correlated with right mouse click in PC. Sometime, context menu is really useful when it come to do some actions related to some things we choose, focus, or block.
2. Copy-paste
It's still impossible to select some text or any object, copy it, and paste it to any place. Sometime, I need this feature when my friend asks someone's number that I have in my contact list and asks me to send that number via SMS or email. In bundled contact feature, I find no menu to copy a number or any data of a contact. There's an application called iCopy that provide copy paste functionality but it's only available for Safari. It just copies text data, not image or other object.
3. Battery Status
There's no functionality or application that can display exact percentage of battery energy left. I can't determine it exactly from small battery icon on top bar.
4. Office Applications
After searching for quite some time, I find no applications those can provide me offline office-related functionality such as word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation. There's a rumor that Microsoft will make Office Mobile for iPhone. Currently, there are some online office applications available outhere, such as EditGrid, Google, etc, those are honestly not specific for iPhone :) Off course, using online office application is my last option since it will blow up my GSM bill.
5. Task Manager
It's still impossible to view running processes in iPhone. Maybe it's not useful for regular users, but not for me. I need to know how many processes are currently running and how many memory space left, so I can turn off or kill unused processes.
6. Close button
The great (and also the crappy) thing about iPhone, it only provide one button called home button to close application. In most cases, that eases me to quickly close current application, but I don't know whether the application is really closed or just hidden/minimized and still occupies memory. It's impossible to know running processes since there's no Task Manager feature.
7. Image display in Safari
Some time I need to hide all images within a web page, so downloaded data will be reduced that makes page rendering will be faster and GRPS charge can be reduced. It's still impossible to turn off image display in Safari.
8. Automatic email download
When I open email client application and there's an email account has been set up, it will connect to server and try to download email message automatically. It's still impossible to disable that behavior.
9. GRPS/EDGE connection turning off
It's still impossible to turn off GRPS/EDGE connection. It will be always on, except WIFI connection is active. Looks like iPhone wants to be always connected to Internet. But I don't want this behavior and there's no setting to turn off the GRPS.
The combination of point 7, 8, 9 can blow up your bill. There is a case when a customer in US named Justine Ezarik received 300 page phone bill after using iPhone. Here's the complete story. So, watch out when use your iPhone :)
I myself accidentally spend more than Rp100.000 for browsing a web page using Safari. I wish I could turn off image display, maybe that will not happen :(
10. Searching
If you have billion contacts or messages, it's really helpful if you can search something you want. Contact and message application still don't allow you to search.
Hardware-related
1. 3G
Even not so smart mobile devices have include 3G feature. More over, the first iPhone was released when 3G has been a well known and default feature for smart mobile device. Why Apple don't include 3G in iPhone. Some says that because 3G will drain battery life in iPhone...Who cares?. There're some rumors that 3G will be included within next generation iPhone...hopefully :)
2. GPS and Map Software
I really need it since I'm often lost in Jakarta. Current iPhone doesn't have it. But there're some external device those can be plugged in iPhone to provide GPS functionality for less than $100. Who needs it?
3. Camera
Current iPhone has not so good camera quality. Default camera application doesn't provide any settings those allow you to customize camera capture, such as night mode. You need third party software to do that.
4. Bluetooth
You can't send/receive file from computer or other device to/from iPhone since bundled bluetooth feature in iPhone doesn't implement FTP functionality. I don't know whether this is software/driver issue or hardware issue.
Conclusion
That's it for now. I'll update above list if I remember other things later. Please correct me if anything are not correct or you can write post to encounter this post :)
Like my friend said, iPhone is like super model, beautiful but no brain :) I think it's right. Despite its beauty, it's so damn fool. After exploring iPhone for one day, I can conclude that current iPhone is still not enough for me. I expect more...
That's why after having iPhone for one day, I sell it tomorrow night. Yup, I own iPhone for just one day. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture showing me holding iPhone :) Its beauty and greatness don't matter anymore since all those matter for me cannot be given by iPhone. Maybe iPhone is simply not for me, at least for now. Hopefully iPhone will be better next time and sure I'll buy it when that time comes.
It's time to go back to Windows Mobile device. Windows Mobile device is still the best for me. I choose HTC TyTN II to accompany me in the days ahead.