In the first part of my iPhone review I wrote about my experiences with features like the camera, SMS, Calendar, Widgets, YouTube, and the iPod function.  Today I want to give my review on some of the more important features, and give you my gripes and final thoughts on the Apple iPhone.  It's now over 2 weeks that I have had the iPhone and I spent more time using the features I'm going to talk about today.

Lets continue with Part 2 of this review.

E-Mail:  This is another feature that is very important to me, as I like to check and send e-mail from wherever I am at.  I use GMail as my primary personal e-mail and the iPhone already had most of the settings taken care of from start.  I just had to enter some basic information such as username and password, and the e-mail started coming through.  This also appears to be the case for Yahoo Mail, .Mac,  and AOL.  You also have the option to configure POP mail and IMAP.  Configuring a POP account was just as simple and I was up and running with just a few clicks.

The problem with using GMail is that all the mail comes through to the iPhone regardless if you have read it or not.  There is no option to select mail as read, and you have to manually delete all mail.  There is no option to "select all" which I have found to be quite annoying.  The iPhone also does not include any type of spam filter.  Many people have reported problems with receiving loads of spam, but I have not had any problems with it, so I can't comment too much about that.  On the good side is the e-mail is the same as you would see on your computer at home, it's not broken down into text as other phones commonly do, and is very easy to read.

Turning the iPhone gives you the "widescreen" view which is much easier on the eyes, and definitely gives a better view of the sites you are visiting.  One of my biggest problems with Safari is its lack of a password manager.  I visit many sites that require a login and having to log in every time gets old real quick.  I visited many websites over the past week and have not found any rendering issues, although some users have been reporting some slight issues with some sites.

 Phone:  I guess I should mention the phone part since it is the iPhone.  Nothing real groundbreaking here, it has all the normal functions of a phone just with a nicer interface.  The contacts are nicely displayed although it could use some improvements on navigating through a large contact list.  The call quality is fine on both sides of the conversation, and the speakerphone worked well although it could use a slight volume boost.

The much talked about Visual Voicemail feature is a cool addition as well.  You will appreciate this if you have more than a few messages and try to navigate through them.  The iPhone displays all the voicemails and you simply tap the one you want to hear, and you easily navigate through that particular message with a slider on the screen.  I have only used the voicemail a few times, but it seems like a feature that will come in handy.

EDGE/Wi-fi:  Now this has probably been the biggest source of complaints regarding the iPhone is the use of the EDGE network, and its lack of 3G support.  Now I'm not going to get into the 3G vs. EDGE argument because there is pro's and con's on both sides, and it really doesn't matter anyways.  I am averaging about 130kbps using the EDGE network here where I live, and while that is not the greatest speed in today's world, it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.   Most pages load in under 10 seconds, but more graphic heavy sites do take a bit longer, and updating widgets and maps takes just a few seconds as well.  My last data service was through Sprint and the speeds I'm getting now are equal to, if not better, than with them. 

Now EDGE is not the only way to get data as the iPhone also supports wi-fi.  When I'm at the home the iPhone asked if I wanted to join my network, and then asked for my pass key, and that was it.  It now seamlessly switches to my home network whenever it's in range, and if I'm in public, it also will notify me if I want to connect to any available networks.  The town I live in has free wireless to the entire town, so having that ability is great.  I'm seeing average speeds of 3.5mbs using a wi-fi connection, and it's obviously a much better experience.

 
Maps:  I think Maps was one of the first commercials of the iPhone I saw, and I wondered if it could really search for a restaurant or store and have it pop up with the directions, map, and info.  Well in short, it does.  You simply type the name of the location you want to find, and it will pop up with an option to see it's information such as its website, phone number, address, and directions.  I did quite a few general searches as well, and what that means is I searched for things like "grocery store", "restaurant", etc. instead of the direct name of the business I was looking for. The majority of times the results that came up were pretty accurate to what I was searching for.  This is a very handy feature, and something I will definitely use often.

 
Battery:  This is very hard for me to review because I never sat down and timed when I was using (insert feature) and for how long.  On a typical day I will use the actual phone for 1-2 hours, check e-mail maybe 10-15 times, and spend maybe 1-2 hours on the internet (using wi-fi mostly), and that will bring the battery meter down to about 50-60% if that.  Battery life was probably the biggest concern I had about the iPhone as stories of it being less than average seemed abundant.  For about 3 days I had it on standby mostly with very little use and it got down to about 10%. 

I wish I could give better numbers, but from a typical user standpoint, I don't think battery performance is a big issue.  Obviously if you are going to have heavy use watching movies and listening to music than it will greatly affect performance, but for what the iPhone does the battery life is sufficient for me at least.

Keyboard:  Many of the features I have already gone through such as Safari, e-mail, and SMS would be pretty much worthless if the keyboard was unusable, and being used to actual buttons was another area I was concerned about.  The first few days of use were "interesting" to say the least, but over the past two weeks I have become quite proficient at typing on the "keypad".  I still make a few mistakes, but the auto-correct feature usually takes care of any misspellings I might type.  The biggest downside is not being able to look away from the screen while typing, as with "normal" phone keypads you eventually get used to the layout and can learn to type without looking.  When you are using Safari you can turn the iPhone to get the "widescreen" view, with a wider keypad also, but it's a shame that it doesn't apply to everything else, especially with e-mail.