iRestmycase

iRestmycase

Why is my phone an iPhone?

Why does the sun rise from the East, people? How bad is it when you have the flu and your respiratory allergies at the same time (i hate spring because of my God damned allergies - #fact)? Is eggs and bacon tasty? Is the earth flat? Does the planet spin? You get the meaning? Not yet? O.K. let me use the big guns: Do rock stars age like the rest of us? Google "neil young neil old" and find out yourselves. And finally, does Lemmy drink a lot? Come on people, it is obvious.

That is why i will keep it plain simple. I use the "look mom, i now have a slightly longer screen that actually killed my former good looks but who really cares when they get an additional row for icons" iPhone 5 as my primary phone (if the phone=smartphone statement does not always return TRUE to you, you are reading the wrong blog (heck, you might as well be living in the wrong century) - you were warned) because it still delivers the best possible experience money can buy in the form of a normally sized (by now you should have been aware that size does matter)  mobile phone.

I could end this post right now, but i've never been the "homme fatale" kind of guy, you know the type who speaks little and impresses women with his air of mystery. My hit/miss ratio before i open my mouth is way too bad, but after i say what i want to say it gets significantly better (don't know maybe they just want to make me stop and give me their phone numbers - can't really say). Okay, i admit it, i babble all the time. That's why i keep the blog in the first place, i just need to get these out of my system otherwise the voices will drive my crazy. There is the Apple fanboy voice as well as the Apple hater one, that simultaneously speak inside my mind. Let's see what they have to offer, while both are still crystal clear.

Fanboy perspective

It just works. As it should. All the time. Let me put it this way: If i had to remote control a nuclear plant with a smartphone, i would demand that it was the iPhone 5. Moreover, if God Himself remote controls the universe with a smartphone, it has to be an iPhone, since no restarts have been performed over the last 14 billion years. One word: stability. Another one: speed. And the last one (okay, it's three words): ease of use.

The performance is stellar no matter if it is fresh out of the box or you have installed 41 apps (being the average US iPhone user)  or 1400 apps (which possibly means that your unlimited free time is your main problem). The damned phone runs smoothly. Always. The multitasking philosophy (with apps being suspended after some time - read this, it is very enlightening) is the child of a superior intelligence. It is the best possible implementation (android memory management used to suck big time) on a small screen where you do not want to have multiple windows.

From this point on, whenever you read iPhone you may assume it is the iPhone 5, unless the context leads you to understand that it means the iPhone line in general. Okay?

The iPhone has countless apps, most of them ranging from just good to plain outstanding. Most new apps that are not yet multi-platform are iPhone only. The camera is more than great. No manual settings, but who needs them when it manages to take decent pictures most of the time? Day or night, that is. The battery is enough for a day of very heavy use. There are more accessories than you care about.

If you happen to own other Apple hardware, you may enjoy a great degree of integration (iCloud is a great cloud implementation) that further simplifies your life.

The build quality is indeed fantastic! The industrial design that was launched with iPhone 4 is a case study on it's own. It is obvious that Apple takes care of even minor details both in the hardware manufacturing process as well as on the OS side. The size of the iPhone is "small enough to be comfortable to hold one handed", which is a claim few hi end smartphones can boast about nowadays.

To sum up, the iPhone provides an extraordinary ease of use for the vast majority of things the average  Joe (not the ultra geek propeller head type) does with his smartphone on an average day. That is also the reason many geeks (myself included) eventually fell in lovewith  the iPhone "peace of mind" after a whole second career in custom android ROMs and tweaks of the kind. Of course JB (note to self: do a dedicated post about this in the future) is a vital part of the iPhone experience for lots and lots and lots of people.  All in all, the iPhone makes your life a little better and that alone justifies it's heavy price tag.

Hater's corner

The iPhone 5 is ugly. Especially if you consider it's roots. It is quite a feat going from A to B in one step, where A is one of the most elegant smartphone designs ever and B equals A minus all it's grace plus an extra row for icons. Yes, it looks like a God damned TV remote control that costs 739 EUR to start with. It represents the Darwinian nightmare of de-evolution in the smartphone species. Take smth beautiful and twist it into ugliness while preserving 99% of it's original DNA. Once more: The iPhone 5 is ugly.

The OS is pretty simplistic. No widgets, notification bar still needs a lot of improvement (note to Apple engineers: see the various Cydia implementations or at the very least take a look at how android has been handling that for years now), and some minor but still very annoying bugs that Apple promotes as features: No SMS report for Christ's sake, no bluetooth file transfers, no easy way to mass delete emails  - these are just a few. Thank God for people like these who still manage to break the chains of Apple induced absolute control efforts. Thank you guys.

The iOS is not the platform developers tend to choose when we are talking about highly experimental implementations. That is because of Apple limitations, of course. See for example the Pebble smartwatch community. The watch barely works on iOS (although there is a certain guy who managed to overcome some of the Apple barriers for jailbroken iPhones at least), whereas connect it to an Android smartphone and it really shines. Same thing with the Metawatch Strata, as i have already told you about.

Last but not least, the iPhone screen could be much bigger if only Apple would stop avoiding the effort and cost of totally redesigning it in order to kill the home button and minimise the now huge margins above and bellow the screen. Don't even start doubting that. Of course it can be done. It was done in 2009 with the HTC HD 2.

The final verdict

Yes, despite it's bad points the iPhone still is the best phone money can buy. That is normally sized, that is. This is the sole reason i have an iPhone. I am not a fanboy and i am not a hater. I am just seeking the best user experience out of my smartphone.

But times change.

We have seen the HTC one which is the first non Apple device ever to boast a stunning design and top notch build quality. It would be my phone (instead of the iPhone) if it were a little smaller. Thank God for the HTC one M4 then, the rumoured 4.3 (perfect size, that is) inch little sibling of the HTC one.

We have also seen the Sony Xperia Z which is absolutely waterproof (see what these guys do to the Xperia Go that also offers same level of water resistance) and i think that manufacturers have to start thinking about this. It can be done. Why not do it, then?

Oh, one more thing. What about the next iPhone? Is it going to be a 5s with a slightly improved camera, faster processor and the same chassis? (God, spare me this torture!) What about iOS 7? Will it be more "open"? Will we be praying for the next JB as well or is there any hope that the best Cydia tweaks will become part of the OS? 

Nobody knows, people. But it all will probably be revealed this summer. Till then, i rest my case.