A cell phone less ordinary

Zatni Arbi ,  Contributor ,  The Jakarta Post   |  Mon, 06/08/2009 11:11 AM  |  Sci-Tech

Spend a little time with the iPhone 3G, and you will soon understand why everyone craves one.

The iPhone 3G may not be a better smartphone than its top-of-the-line rivals, but it does have one very powerful attraction: Like most of the products that come out from Apple's mill, it is chock-a-block with features.

Apple, as with BlackBerrys, sells the iPhone 3G only through local operators and their partners. So if you buy an iPhone 3G from one of the stores in Roxy Mas or somewhere else, you may be able to have it cracked but you will not be able to benefit fully from the services.

In Indonesia, only Telkomsel - the largest nationwide cellular operator, which claims to have 74 million subscribers - offers iPhone 3G. The company has been aggressively marketing the iPhone 3G. While it cannot reveal how many units of iPhone it has sold because of a nondisclosure agreement with Apple, Telkomsel spokeperson Suryanda Stevanus assured me that their sales were growing steadily.

Meanwhile, the number of Telkomsel's BlackBerry subscribers has exceeded the 100,000 mark and it is still growing, Suryanda told me. Interestingly, many of those who queued to buy an iPhone at its launch a couple of months ago already had a BlackBerry in their pocket. "We have seen no exodus from BlackBerry to iPhone," added Suryanda. "We believe they want to have both." Could it mean that the BlackBerry and iPhone serve different purposes? I think so.

In April, I got an invitation to join a hands-on training session at Telkomsel's head office. So, one morning, six journalists including me were shown what it could do and how we operate it. Courtesy of Apple Singapore and Telkomsel, each of us was lent a brand new unit for three weeks. Because, at the same time, I happened to have plenty of devices to try out, I requested an extension. I ended up borrowing their iPhone 3G for more than two months. I bid a fond farewell on the day I finally had to return it to the operator.

As you must already know, this handset, which was one of the most sought-after gadgets last year, is another touchscreen smartphone. Physically, the iPhone looks very simple. There is only one hardware button on the face, the Home button. Volume controls are found on the left side. The power button discretely located on the top right hand side, and on the top left-hand side there is a 3.5 mm RCA jack for the headset. The tiny camera lens is located at the back underneath the power button, and the ring that circles the lens is actually the smartphone's antenna. Too bad it has only a 2 MP camera.

Strangely, the speaker is on the bottom left corner while the microphone is on the bottom right corner. Small as it looks, the sound is quite enjoyable, though. Not really very surprising for a product from Apple.

Two versions are available, the 8 GB and 16 GB, but Telkomsel is selling only the latter in Indonesia. This will give us plenty of storage to keep our media files. My demo unit was a black one, but there is a white version, too.

The most prominent hardware component is certainly the generous, 3.5-inch diagonal wide screen with capacitive touch mechanism. An accelerometer, like many of the other touch cell phones, automatically changes the orientation from portrait to landscape depending on how we hold the device. The screen resolution is 480 x 320, which is enough for great video watching.

To activate a function, we just need to tap the multi-touch screen with our fingertip. If you have long nails, just remember that the transparent capacitive layer on the screen needs to detect the static electricity of your body so this type of touch screen does not work with a long nail - or a stylus.

In the area of connectivity, the iPhone 3G supports UMTS/HSDPA/GSM/EDGE and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0 plus EDR. My experienced showed that it also had quite sensitive reception. Like most other upper-range cell phones today, it also features an assisted GPS.

Basically, the iPhone is an iPod Touch with cellular phone capability added. Therefore, it has a slew of other uses that make it a mouth-watering device. It comes with a browser, links to YouTube, search sites, Facebook and other social networking sites, push email that also works with Microsoft Exchange, an iTune application to download free and paid music and video files, an e-book reader (it reads Amazon.com's Kindle, too, if you are the US or anywhere else it is available).

In the past there was no way to forward a message without a third-party application. But, an authoritative source told me Apple has fixed it in the latest OS upgrade.

To really benefit from all the capabilities of the iPhone, we should also register at Apple's App Store. Apple lets other people develop applications for the iPhone and iPod. There are around 35,000 applications now available at App Store. Some of them are free, others must be purchased. But with so many to choose from, we can turn the iPhone 3G into different devices with different functionality. We can download classic books, maps, dictionaries, games, podcasts - you name it. Unfortunately, because the applications are developed by different people, their integration with each another can sometimes be quite poor.

The Home button always takes us to the customizable Home Screen. We can put on this screen the icons and widgets for all the applications that we use most of the time. Along the bottom, of course, we have the buttons for the telephone, for creating, sending and checking email messages, for running the Safari browser and for entering the iPod mode to play back media.

Has Apple made a completely intuitive user interface? In most cases, it has. Small arrows usually show that there are further options available. But when I wanted to delete an item from my contact list, I have to admit I got very frustrated as I did not see how it could be done. And then, in desperation, I tried scrolling down to the bottom of the Edit screen. There it was! The bright red "Delete Contact" button was there.

But, as I said, the sometimes-puzzling way of getting things done is actually the main charm of the iPhone 3G. You will be spending endless hours trying out all the features and the downloaded applications. As before, I still cannot type messages quickly enough using the screen keyboard, and that is why, I think, people still want to keep their BlackBerry Bold, Javelin, Nokia E71 or E75 Mini Communicator.

If you want to have this device to complement whatever status symbols that you already have, Telkomsel offers different packages starting from Rp 4 million.

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