Seduced by the dark side.
That’s how I felt when I went to get my first iPhone – the 4s. And seduced was strangely appropriate too. All during the run up to the much bally-hooed 4s launch by Smart, I ‘d been sharply anticipating getting the new phone. As the appointed hour approached, I was deluged by information about how cheap the thing was going for and that only whetted my appetite even further. But as these things go, I reached a saturation point too early and by midnight on the 16th my anticipation – and desire for the phone – dropped precipitously.
Like a lemming falling off the cliff.
Along with the other lemmings – in my then-scornful mind at least – who were flooding my twitter timeline with oohs and ahhs about this new toy.
I, on the other hand, stood on the edge of the cliff, solitary and magnificent in my detachment and triumph over crass consumerism.
And then my trusty BlackBerry warbled.
“Your iPhone is waiting,” Globe tells me. With not a moment’s hesitation, I take a majestic and soaring swan dive over the cliffs of commercialism. My seduction was complete.
Later that afternoon …
Later that afternoon, after watching the former COMELEC Chairman accusing the trial Judge of some serious misconduct, I made my way to Globe and, with the hauteur of the entitled strode up to the nearest person with iPhone markings on her shirt. She whirled around, sending a cloud of softly perfumed hair in my face – making me suddenly realize that I was standing way too close – and smiled at me brightly. “Yes sir,” she chirped. “May I help you.”
“Uh, you sent me a message?” I stuttered, suddenly unsure of myself.
“Can I have your ID sir?” she tittered, and I just surrendered to her charm. I forked over my ratty looking company ID and let her lead me – grinning like an idiot – to a shallow couch that lined the walls of the place.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/jabjimenez/status/147527202408366080″]I was obviously stoked.
In less time than it took me to read through the brochures, I was being ushered to the iPhone demo – which incidentally, wasn’t a demo at all; all the lady did was to hook the phone up to iTunes so it would start working. Other than that, she pretty much just handed me the phone with a “any questions?”
Ah, well. I’ve always been one to jump into the deep end.
Of course, shallow …
Of course, shallow waters may have been a better idea.
All the rest of that day, I kept fiddling with the 4s – which I had named 戎戎 by the way – even though it still wasn’t pulling in any service from Globe. For the most part, I just kept shaking my head at how it was exactly like the iPad, only smaller. That’s a pretty basic observation, I know, but until I actually had the thing in my hand, the comparison was largely intellectual. Nothing compares to having the real thing.
And like the iPad, my first beef with 戎戎 was that it was too slim and smooth. Hard to hold, just like a beautiful and elegant lady ought to be. That’s when it sank into me that the expense of actually getting the 4s was just the edge of the money-pit. In short order, I’d come up with a list of things I needed to have if the 4s wasn’t going to be just another glorified personal communication device.
Just for starters,
- A case – none of these things, of course [except maybe the Factron Quattro], but something that would give me a better grip.
- A screen protector – I once scratched the touch screen of a new Sony Cybershot, despite the sales rep’s assurances that that was impossible, so I didn’t want to risk it. I can probably topple a Segway.
- A car charger – self-explanatory, as the 4s is the mobile phone equivalent of a Bugatti Veyron that goes 8 miles to a gallon.
In the meantime, I sent BBM messages to everyone on my list, telling them of the impending sign-off. It was heart-warming that the common response was “now we can talk about you behind your back all the time!”
By midnight, Globe service had kicked in and I set to work customizing 戎戎 .
And that was …
And that was when the second-guessing hit me like a body blow to the kidneys.
I started by trying to access the AppStore with the 3G Globe service. That was, to put it mildly, a massive fail. Connecting was proceeding at a nap-inducing pace. In fact, i got failure messages more often than I was actually able to connect. Still, I soldiered on. Once finally connected, I started installing the apps I wanted; the emphasis being on the word “started.” Before long, I had a bunch of grey boxes on my screen with pitch black progress bars. I suppose everything takes forever when you’re constantly checking; the watched kettle and all that. Still, all those progress bars eventually filled up and I got pretty much everything I wanted
But there’s always something to complain about, yes? And for me, it was that I couldn’t get my email Pushed to me. After a lot of whining and griping – and a lot of help from Twitter – I eventually got that sorted out as well. It actually took me longer to figure out what Twitter app to use.
I tried Echofon first, and it looked a lot like the native RIM Twitter App, so it felt comfortable and familiar. But then again, it was lagging like crazy, so I downloaded a bunch of other apps, including Hootsuite – which I found surprisingly un-friendly, considering I swear by it’s desktop version – and the fly new Twitter [check out the web version HERE]. None of these apps made me very happy, so I decided to call it a day.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/jabjimenez/status/147877756426915840″]Soon after that, a friend told me firmly that the only Twitter app worth using was Tweetdeck, so I installed that too. By then, however, something must’ve clicked somewhere because the native Twitter app started performing really well. Of course, the RIM application still leaves it pretty much in the dust. Still, I suppose it’s going well enough for me to say that the native app is much better than any of the others I’ve tried so far.
With Twitter working …
With Twitter working more or less the way I want it to, 戎戎 and I have become inseparable. I imagine there’s a whole lot more to the iPhone 4s than the use I’ve been putting it to since I got it, but that’s alright. With the basic needs met, there’s time to explore all the nooks and crannies of this device. Siri, for instance, has been fairly entertaining.
Before I got 戎戎, there were a lot of caveats about Siri not being able to understand Filipino accented English. I shrugged that off since I’m an Anglophone, but I’ve found that Siri is actually more capable than she was originally given credit for. All sorts of Filipino accents have addressed Siri on 戎戎, and so far the robot is batting a hundred.
As an aside, I have to admit that I haven’t asked Siri to sleep with me yet, although I’ve heard that she gives the most creative turn-downs. Nevertheless, I don’t think I can handle rejection from an automaton, no matter how polite.
Now the thing with Siri – and a lot of the other apps – is that her full potential probably won’t come to the fore unless she’s able to tell where you are in the world. Geolocation seems to be the key thing for truly personalizing the 4s. I can ask Siri the best way to get to the Golden Gate bridge, for instance, but the woman is useless at finding the closest 24 hour pares joint unless I turn the geolocator on. Which I won’t anytime soon.
The only app …
The only app I’m really itching to try out doesn’t depend on me telling the phone where I am anyway. All it needs is two dollars and ninety-nine cents, and a willingness to belt out “I’m on a boat!” at the top of your lungs. Speaking of which, I also haven’t tried playing YouTube videos on the 4s. I suppose it would be inconceivable that the 4s can’t manage that, but i’m in no great hurry to find out. After all, Globe’s 3G is hardly awe-inspiring.
In fact, I’ve been having problems downloading apps larger than 20MB. Whenever I try, I keep getting an error message that tells me I have to download over a wifi connection. This naturally precipitated a trip to a Globe center where the apparently befuddled service rep could only offer me the reassurance that, number one, “that shouldn’t be happening,” and number two “I’ve already e-mailed our IT department.” Not exactly comforting, but apart from that one inconvenience – because let’s face it, I truly cannot conceive of a situation where I would need to urgently download a 20MB app to my phone while I’m on the move – the service has been fairly adequate.
But then again, I get my Twitter updates and my mail pushed and I’m a happy camper. More intensive users will definitely not be quite as easy to please. Which makes me wonder just how many “intensive users” there are, versus people like me who need just a small fraction of what iPhones have to offer.
Like the games …
Like the games for instance. To date, I only have four games on there, all of which I’ve played once and not again. Still, I suppose there must be a game out there that doesn’t involve frenetic tapping and finger swiping. Or better yet, maybe it’ll have Snake. Just think of the possibilities. With the iPhone’s accelerometer, I can see myself getting all twisted trying to move that pixel snake around without chomping on itself. Sounds to me like a lot more fun than virtual racing although I’ve heard that’s a lot of fun too.
Again, all this comes down to the fact that I haven’t really explored the cosmos of available apps, yes? It’s not like I know of any app index, for instance, apart from the search bar. There’s bound to be one out there, I just haven’t bestirred myself to find it yet.
In fact, I don’t see that happening soon. BY the time next year rolls around, I imagine that the productivity apps will be the ones seeing the most action on my phone. As it is, I’ve been finding the Reminders app easily more useful than even the Calendar. I’ve also been thinking of getting the word processor, the spreadsheet, and the presentations apps, except that I wonder how useful that’ll all be since I work on PCs not Macs.
As for the tech…
As for the tech, versus the user experience, side of things, I’m not even going to pretend that I completely understand what’s going on under the 4s hood. Like Arthur Clarke said, any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. And that’s the way it is with me and the 4s. It’s nice and pretty and shiny, and it does all these nifty things, and I take it all for granted. Typical consumer, I would say, and I wish more people would NOT feel shame at that.
Over the past couple of days, I’ve had my fill of people acting all over the moon about how the 4s antenna is a redesigned version that doubled the file transfer rate of the iPhone 4, or that the A5 processor has been improved tremendously. Ask them what the redesign was about, or how the A5 processor is tremendously improved and, like Chapman, they all fall back on brochure-talk anyway. Yeah, that’s right. It’s all in the brochures, boys.
Seriously. There’s enough in the iPhone 4s to stagger anyone, without people having to pretend like they’re in on all the jargon and industry-speak. Myself, I have to admit I was floored by the experience and I’m still learning new things about the 4s everyday. I still the relative simplicity of the BlackBerry, but then again, isn’t that always the way it is? As things get more advanced, they also get a lot more complicated, and if you think about it objectively enough, its a lot like choosing between a Toyota and a Ferrari. Both will get you where you wanna go, but one of them will get you there in a heck of a lot more style.
And that’s one sweet seduction.