Thursday, September 18, 2008

iPhone - layers of integrated functionality

It's easy to make a list of what my iPhone can't do. No cut, copy paste -- which I miss all the time. No cross-application search (I can imagine why not, but I sure miss it). No tethering - yet. No standard sync infrastructure, so every vendor has to roll their own.

I'll omit "no tasks, no notes sync" because I love Appigo's solutions and they wouldn't exist if Apple had done these things.

What gets missed is how much deep and integrated functionality there is ...
Gordon's Tech: iPhone notes you won't read elsewhere

... The silver on/off button has context dependent behavior. In standard mode it locks the phone and turns off the display. When a call comes in one push silences the ring, two sends it directly to voice mail. When you're on a call, one push locks the phone, preventing errant touches from messing up your call. (I lost a lot of calls until I learned this.)

... When you search for a business on the Map and select a pin, you get a pop-up with an arrow. Touch the arrow to see the contact. What's not obvious at that point is that if you scroll down, you can add this to your address book (you cannot, however, specify to which group). I do this all the time. The form of contact that's created is very complete, including a map link.
And, of course, there's the App Store, which gets more amazing every day.

It's the deep integration though that really impresses me. Very elegant, very, I must admit, Apple.

Update: Oops. Looks like a minor iPhone glitch led me to think pushing the wake/sleep button when on a call would lock the screen. In truth it's supposed to disconnect the call. I do wish there was a way to lock the screen during calls. I switch to another app to avoid pressing keys that will interrupt the call.

1 comment:

JGF said...

oops! Tha silver button disconnects. My test was probably fooled by a bug I think.