The last post started my two month experience with the bottom row of applications--the bread-and-butter functions upon which the iPhone has based its reputation--and I started with the Phone application. This post will focus on the second application, Mail.
Mail: Much hype was placed on the iPhone mail client, touted as the best available on a smartphone. Coming from the Treo world, I can state that the iPhone has raised the bar in many areas, yet in other areas, it has failed to leave the starting blocks. First, the good.
With the iPhone hardware, Mail has a great platform upon which to display rich HTML messages. The text is clear (even when "pinched" to magnify) with a bright contrast. Quite simply, the difference between the Treo 700p and the iPhone is a quantum leap in quality. Indeed, the improvement is such that Outlook on my PC has become a secondary reader and storage device (refer to my critique later in this post). Mail is displayed in full HTML formatting with embedded graphics, something that can't be matched on a Treo. With the large iPhone screen, one feels they are looking at a computer screen, not through a magnifying glass view seen on a Treo or other phone email client. Forward, reply, and reply-to-all is easy and intuitive, with the phone's contact list being artfully integrated. Where text is too small to read, "pinch" magnifying easily enlarges the text so that it can be read.
Other nice features that I have found useful include multiple mailboxes, the ease of creating messages, the specialized keyboard for quickly entering email addresses, the blue dot indicating unread messages, and the cute, animated trash can. Setting up and controlling email accounts is also easy in the Settings application.
Okay, now for the other shoe falling. First, as with virtually every iPhone application I've discussed, Apple needs to provide the landscape view for Mail. This is critical since HTML formatted messages can get very wide which means that the text can get very small when a full message is read into the application. When "pinch" magnified, it is a pain scrolling left-to-right in a long message. While not completely mitigated, providing mail view in the landscape orientation would reduce the hassle. When messages are too large (not sure how this is determined), only part of the message is shown and a button appears at the bottom of the message to download the remainder. Prior to downloading, the part of the message that is available for viewing is too wide for the portrait orientation. Again, enabling the landscape orientation in the Mail application would help eliminate this problem.
Second, it appears that even with the application downloading a full message, there are times when the message must be downloaded a second time (or third, or fourth) when attempting to subsequently view the message. I could find no clear pattern to when it must be subsequently downloaded, but it reduces the response time performance, increases load on the already marginal EDGE network, and causes problems when it is desired to keep a message on the phone after downloading it to a PC. (Since the message is no longer on the server, if the iPhone Mail application must re-download the message, the message can't be found. Since there are only infrequent messages that are desired to be kept, it is inefficient to keep all messages on the server.) The easiest solution would be for Apple's Mail application to download the message and keep it in memory until the user deletes it. The phone has the storage space. Use it to make the device more practical, save user wait time, save bandwidth, and save battery life.
Third, since getting the iPhone, I can go days without needing to use a PC (most desktop application work is done on my employer's PC). The ability to save documents for future reference would be a plus. This is a limitation that Web 2.0 applications cannot resolve for the iPhone. For example, if I get on a plane, it is the perfect time to review Word, Excel, PowerPoint (and issue discussed later), PDF, or pictures. If the documents are in an email message and they must be re-downloaded (as stated, it's a crap-shoot that they will be available), then they are of no use, otherwise productive time is lost, or the need to carry a laptop defeats the purpose of having a highly portable viewing device (such as the iPhone). In addition, there are times when a series of photos may be emailed and it would be desirable to save them in the Photos application. This would allow reviewing the emailed photos as a slide show or by "flicking" through the series. The current email limitation makes this impossible.
Fourth, develop a PowerPoint viewer. The Treo had one and the screen was not suitable for viewing slides. In contrast, the iPhone with its landscape orientation capability and "pinch" magnifying, is directly suitable for such viewing--but it is not available.
Fifth, there are numerous times when I receive emails with phone numbers and Web addresses. Sometimes they are hypertext and touching the link activates the phone or the Safari browser. That's great. However, sometimes those numbers and links do not show as hyperlinks. This is a perfect example of where a copy-and-paste capability would be advantageous. Alternatively, it would be desired to place the phone number and/or Web link into the phone contacts. Again, copy-and-paste would enable this.
But perhaps the biggest complaint that I have is the inability to "bulk" delete emails. While most of the time this is annoying, I had a spam attack a couple of weeks back where I received 50 to 120 emails at a time (as in every hour) over a period of two days. I don't care how easy the "swipe" and delete feature is or the edit, touch, and delete feature is, I want the ability to select a group of messages and delete them all at once. Come on Apple, even crude non-smartphone email clients have this capability.
While this is a rather long and extensive list of suggestions for improvement (or complaints depending upon how annoying they are), the base Mail application is a good start. It could just be so much better with just a few modifications.
In my next post, I will review the Safari browser application and my experience with it over the last two months. In the meantime, if you have comments or suggestions for Apple, please let me know.
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