One Month With The iPhone 5

iPhone 5 Screen

On September 21, 2012, Apple shipped the iPhone 5 to those that signed up early enough and I got mine late in the afternoon. It is my first iPhone so I thought it would be interesting to see what I though one month after switching platforms.

First, you should know my bias. Everyone that writes any sort of review has a bias. I've been a Microsoft Pocket PC/Windows Mobile/Windows Phone user for years. Apple products have held very little interest for me. I've always said, I don't use the operating system, I use the apps, and there are a number of apps critical to me on Windows that keeps me from looking seriously at any OS X machine. Similarly, on the phone (or back when they were just PDAs), the best apps, for me at least, were in Microsoft's platform. They were far superior to what PalmOS apps could offer me.

Then Apple released the iPhone in 2007. It had no third party apps for the first year, just web apps. It wasn't until the iPhone 3G came out in 2008 that the app store was opened. So, at the time Windows Mobile still was the best choice for me.

Then in 2010 Microsoft rebooted their mobile phone platform with Windows Phone 7. I got a chance to play with it a few months earlier and I was very impressed. To this day, I think Windows Phone has the best platform. However, that isn't enough. I forgot why I used platforms. It wasn't for what the platform itself does, but is what the apps available for the platform can do for me. That was a mistake I had to endure for nearly two years.

Two years later, the app story for Windows Phone is still anemic. I don't care about numbers. Yeah, I know, nearly 100,000 apps, but honestly the earlier version, called Windows Mobile, had a richer app story even though there were far fewer apps. I got sick of reading articles at sites like Lifehacker or in magazines like Fortune, Time, Money and Runner's World that had useful apps, none of which ran on Windows Phone. That is still the story today.

In March of 2012, I got an iPad 3, or New iPad, or whatever Apple wants to call it. Other than an iPod Nano I got for running in 2010 (the awesome little square), the iPad was my first true Apple computing device, and I got it primarly for one reason - Evernote. Yup - the apps drove the purchase, as it should be. I fell in love with the iPad, and still use it daily. I've added great apps like Drafts, Kindle, Blogsy, PocketBible, Feeddler, Sworkit, Pocket, Skitch, and more. Every financial institution I do business with has an app for iOS, eight for eight is not bad. Windows Phone only has one, and it just got it in the last 30 days, and is for a credit card I rarely use.

My phone contract was up in 2011 and I had an unlocked Windows Phone 7, an HTC Trophy, for Verizon. Again, the phone and OS itself are really good, but the apps, well, I just didn't enjoy using the device. I stubbornly stuck with WP though because the OS itself is superior.

After having the iPad for a few months I knew I wanted to try the iPhone, but decided to wait until the 5 was released. By now, my two boys and wife had each picked up an iPhone 4 in early-mid 2011 and I was sick of borrowing their phones to deposit checks.

So, I got up early on September 21, and ordered a white 32GB iPhone 5. The thing is simply a work of art. I am not going to bother posting pics of it - there are better images on Google than I could take anyway.

So what do I think after a month, and do I miss Windows Phone at all?

Well, honestly, I don't like the iPhone 5 as much as I like the iPad. On the iPad, everything can be used in landscape mode, which is great for typing. On the iPhone, many apps won't rotate, like Facebook. I really don't like typing in portrait mode. This isn't an issue with built-in apps like Safari, iMessage and the mail app, but a surprising number of third party apps simply won't rotate. The iOS UI I also think is better suited to the iPad. The latter lets you keep 6 apps at the ready and you can quickly go back to the previous app or home screen with multi-fingered gestures, which cannot be done on the iPhone. I am afraid I am going to wear that little home button out with all of the single and double tapping. The iPad's larger screen holds 20 apps plus 6 on the bottom app bar and none of it appears cluttered. On the iPhone 5, it too hold 20 apps (compared to 16 on its smaller screened predecessors) plus 4 on the bottom bar, but the screen is much smaller and it feels busy.

The app experience though is amazing. As I said, all 8 financial institutions I work with (think savings, insurance, credit cards, 401(k), brokerage, etc.) are fully supported on the iPhone. Evernote on the iPhone is good, though I prefer the iPad version simply because of the screen real estate. But then there are all of the apps I've read about that make the device so useful - apps like Fooducate, The Consumerist, Amazon Video, Hulu+, PocketBible, SugarSync, Starbucks, Slice and more. Then there are lesser known apps that are useful for me, like Wonderful Day, Recall, Find Friends, and Stroll Free. Heck, I even like the new Passbook app from Apple. American Express and Starbucks have both integrated well with it.

The OS itself still lacks in many ways compared to Windows Phone. Live Tiles on WP are phenomenal compared to the grid of icons on an iPhone. Compared to WP, iOS integration of Facebook is a total joke too.

That said though, the iPhone experience for me in the last 30 days has been vastly superior to what Windows Phone was delivering, and it is 100% due to the apps.

I also feel better about my iPhone purchase. The iPhone 4 devices my family own are all running iOS 6, just like my brand new iPhone 5, so when you invest in an Apple device, Apple will take care of you. I am 100% confident I will have iOS 7 and iOS 8 on this new phone in the next few years. With Windows Phone, you may or may not get an update depending on the whims of the carrier, and for the second time in 2 years, Microsoft is abandoning 100% of their users by requiring them to buy new phones to get Windows Phone 8. That leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

Bottom line is, I am very pleased with the purchase. I miss the slickness and deep integration Windows Phone provides, but iOS 6 isn't shoddy in the least. In fact, many aspects of iOS are very well refined and insanely intuitive. iOS also has more features than Windows Phone. The only area of confusion in iOS is in the Settings icon. It can take a long time to find a particular setting. Just one example is the useful Do Not Disturb feature, a feature that allows you to have your phone, or iPad, turn off all calls, texts and other reminders at night, or whatever hours you choose. You can set it to also allow certain phone calls though, like from family members in the event of an emergency. The problem is, I had to do a Google search to set it. To configure DND, you go to Notifications, not the Do Not Disturb setting.

With iOS I find I have the opposite problem I had with WP when it comes to apps. With WP, I was looking for no-named alternatives to popular apps and rarely finding them. With iOS I find I install too many apps because there is such a fantastic selection.

Knowing now what I know, I wouldn't hesitate for a second to by the iPhone again over Windows Phone or Android. (See here for my reasons for not seriously considering Google's mobile OS.)

Will I ever go back to Windows Phone? Maybe. First the share of the platform would need to be 15% to 20% at a minimum  I figure it would take that much share to get mainstream app developers to really take notice and support the platform. I would also need to see a pattern of upgrades available in a timely manner from the carriers for WP devices. That latter point also applies to Android, though the propensity of Android device makers to heavily customize the UI still turns me off to the platform overall.

And the hardware... the iPhone 5 takes a back seat to no other phone when it comes to fit and finish. The build quality and design are excellent. From a hardware standpoint, it is the best there is in my opinion. From a platform standpoint, I would like someone to go in and redo the Settings to make it easier to find things, and from a UI standpoint, I'd like to see more icons with live information. After all, it isn't always sunny and 73 is it?

There are things the iPhone excels at, and others where it doesn't do the best job compared to the competition, but overall, it is the most intuitive and integrated device available.