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The iPhone 2.0 - ready for business?

The hype surrounding the Apple iPhone has been over-whelming. Many people that I speak to believe the iPhone to be the ultimate gadget with very few flaws. Take a read of any of the popular press, or the specialist gadget magazines, and the iPhone is touted as the phone to beat – the phone that broke the mould.

But, is it as good as everyone says? I’ve been using the iPhone for the last two months now – religiously carrying it with me everywhere I go, alongside a Windows Mobile Phone, and a Blackberry. Why have I laden my pockets with three phones when surely one smart-phone is enough for anyone? Well, I wanted to see which phone I reached for when I really needed to get something done.

Reviewing smart-phones is fun. You get to try all the functions and attempt different ways to get the basics done – like sending an email, creating a calendar appointment, and ticking off a task from the to-do list. But, when I’ve only got 2 minutes to play with, and sending that email is crucial to keeping a client happy, which phone do I actually reach for?

The first thing I can report is that the Blackberry was the first device to leave at home. I’ve never got on with the Blackberry user interface – and whilst this is my own personal opinion, I recognise that it’s not a good enough reason to dismiss it from the test. However, the Blackberry is a very expensive option. When you enable all of the functionality on the Blackberry Tariff to get it to connect directly to the Exchange Server, then it starts to cost three times the amount that a Windows Mobile Phone or Apple iPhone costs.

So, that leaves me with two phones – so which one is the best? Before I answer that question, let’s take a few moments to review the Apple iPhone. But, before I do that, some ground rules...

I like Microsoft and Apple equally. I’ve got a Mac at home – but in business I use a Windows PC. I don’t trust anyone who says that a Mac doesn’t have its place in the world, and I don’t trust anyone who says that Microsoft is rubbish. There are valid reasons for using both platforms. I’m looking at the iPhone from a business point of view – specifically, I’m reviewing how it works with my main business tool, an Exchange mailbox accessed via Outlook on my PC and Mac (for business use, we always recommend this over a ‘consumer-focussed’ email solution’).

There’s no doubt that the iPhone’s impact on the Smart-Phone world is immense. It may not have been the first touch-screen phone – but it’s raised awareness to a more mainstream audience of what’s possible. There has been smart phones that surf the internet for several years now – but the iPhone is helping to redefine how the mobile operators charge for this privilege. And sending an email on a smart-phone has been possible long before the iPhone hit the scenes.

The iPhone does some things very well - if I want to check the BBC News website at home, then I use the iPhone from my sofa. It’s good enough to allow me to see all the information I want, without feeling the need to go into the study and use my laptop. If I want to look at my email Inbox, then it’s nice and easy to see what’s come in, and what the first few lines of the email say. However, opening an email takes a long time, and the screen can’t be rotated when viewing an email.

The whole iPhone experience is wonderful – using the iPhone, once you are used to it, is lovely. But, there are a few limitations – not being able to copy’n’paste is a real oversight. Receiving email on ‘push’ all day long (like a Windows Mobile phone, or a Blackberry) will flatten the battery by 6 o’clock in the evening (and that’s without taking a single voice call on the iPhone). And the Calendar is diabolical – you can’t invite anyone to a meeting, and accepting/cancelling a meeting reminder/alarm re-sends a meeting confirmation/cancellation to the meeting organiser. And, you can’t even see your Task list!

Sending an urgent email on the iPhone takes too long – and I’ve found that the email delivery is unreliable (the emails I send are often found sat in my outbox several hours after I thought I sent them!). And things like the Google Earth/Google Maps applications that work really well are not exclusive to the iPhone – you can get them on a Windows Mobile phone too.

So, overall, it’s been the Windows mobile phone that has been the smart-phone that I reach for when I need to do something important. The iPhone is great – but if I’ve only got one pocket, and only want to carry one device, it’s the Windows Mobile phone.

But – the narrow victory to the Windows Mobile phone is due to the integration with my Exchange mailbox – so it may not be the answer for everyone. It’s also a victory to a Windows mobile phone that is getting on for 9 months old now. There’s a new batch of them being released at the moment – check out the HTC s740, the Sony Xperia X1, the HTC Touch HD – and even the new Blackberry Storm. I’m sure these new Smart-Phones will extend the gap on the iPhone for the business user, and leave the iPhone squarely in the hands of the fashion-conscious consumer.

Watch this space for reviews of these new devices, as and when they become available.

Steve Coburn,
Managing Director, projectfive.

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