Apple iPhone Review

Interface:






Phonebook:

The iPhone’s phonebook has similar fields to any other phone but the main difference is that all the fields are much more organized. Instead of having three to four fields for a phone number on the main screen, there is just one at first. Each time a new number is added and saved, a new field for another number appears. Each number can be categorized as home, work, main, home fax, work fax, pager, other, or a custom field. You can also choose to add two numbers of the same type.

You can customize each user by adding a special ringtone or a photo so that they can standout from everyone else. Apart from just the number, you have the option to add an email address, URL, and physical address. Like the number, each time one of these is added, a new field comes up.

There are two fields that are special. First, when adding what type of number it is, you have a custom field where anything can be typed. Say that a person has three cell phones, one of which is his, another which is for his work, and a third which is just there incase of emergency. Well, you can add a special tag to each number to differentiate them apart. The second is the option to add information to the contact. This field lets you add a prefix, middle name, suffix, nickname, job title, department, birthday, date or note.

Well, when multiple lines are added to a contact, a problem occurs on which number to choose the user to call. With the iPhone, instead of just pressing on the name and calling the person, you are sent to a window with all of the information about the user. From here, you just select the number you wish to call or text message or the email address you wish to send a message. You also have the option to send a text message to the user or add them to your favorite contacts from this menu.

Once saved, all the contacts are listed in alphabetical order with the first name bolded and the last name normal. Eight contacts are visible on the screen at one time and the names are printed in a large font so it is very easy to read and distinguish them. The organization of the phonebook is just wonderful. It is very user friendly and doesn’t throw a lot of useless fields at the user all at once. Sadly, there is no search field to avoid having to sift through the entire phonebook looking for one user. While it is not a problem for people who have very few contacts, it can become annoying when there are many contacts in the phonebook.

Organizer and Widgets:

The alarm clock is access by going through the clock shortcut and then selecting the alarm shortcut at the bottom that appears. There is no preset limit on home many can be set, or at least none that we ran into. 15 alarms were successfully created without any issues and they all worked as set.

When adding an alarm, there are few fields to select from. The first is a repeat field. From here you choose when the alarm is repeated. If nothing is selected, the alarm will go off once and will turn itself off. If this is a more than a one time alarm, you can set it to repeat every day of the week that you want it to repeat.

Next, you choose which ringer you want to go off when the alarm is activated. After that, you get to choose whether there is a snooze associated with the alarm and then you get to add the label for the alarm.

Lastly, you choose the time that the alarm goes off. This differs from other phones as instead of just two blank spaces from which the time is inputted, there are three rollers, hours, minutes, AM/PM, which you scroll through to select the desired time. It is sad to see so few choices available. While they are the basic selections, it would be nice to get to choose how often or how many times the snooze goes off. Luckily, the alarm will still go off when the phone is set to silent.


The calendar has three views by which to see all of the events: list view of all the events which include date and time, day view which allows you to select a day by either scrolling through them individually or through the calendar and see all the events in that day, and monthly which allows you to see all days in the month and which ones have an event set.

An event can be set through any of these fields. There are five selections in the new event menu, title and location, starting/ending time/all day event, repeat (every day, week, 2 weeks, month year, or never), alert (prior 5/15/40 min, 1/2 hours/days, day of event), and notes.

It is a shame to see that there is no week view nor is there a way to change settings for the calendar in any way, such as start of the week. There is a wonderful feature to go from any date to the today’s date.


The calculator is a very basic one. There is no option for any type of scientific functions. The buttons are large and very easy to press much like the number pad. Only 9 numbers can fit on the screen at one time.

There is a note pad function available. When a new note is added and saved, a small description is shown on the main screen with the time that the note was added. When adding a new note, the keyboard will appear and to help you when typing, a field under the word will appear with the closest matches to the word. This is very useful as the buttons are small and the wrong one can be pressed. For example, when typing help and jelp comes up, help will appear right below and just tapping on it will change it.

The iPhone does not support voice commands or voice dialing. A dedicated file explorer is also not present. Apart from photos, all data is accessed through their associated program (photos can be accessed by either clicking on the shortcut for photos or by going through the camera). This is done to keep the complexity of the iPhone to a minimum. As much as it sounds confusing, the system works very well in the end and functions are very easy to locate.