The iPhone is shiny, let there be no doubt. It’s a fascinating device, but since you can find a hundred articles about all the good it does I won’t waste too much time on that. Instead today I’ll describe some curious slowdowns I’ve experienced. Nothing too problematic, certainly these are slowdowns I’ll live with as it’s a great overall device, but as a new owner it’s just one of those things I notice with a leeettle bit of annoyance.
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Today’s example will be that of sending an SMS. Obviously launching the SMS application incurs a wait, but that’s okay, it has to take some time to open an application. It’s almost instantanous anyway, maybe half a second. But while the interface pops up very quickly there’s an additional delay of half a second until the New Message button responds to tapping. Waiting for an application to open is fine, but an unresponsive interface is just frustrating. I’d prefer it designed so the interface wouldn’t even show until the button worked. Then the new message window appears, and another there’s a delay before the button to add a recipient responds. This is a serious wait, over a seconds worth. Reasonably annoying. Now the contact list appears, and a delay of several seconds before it responds to swiping. Then when I click a name there’s another delay before it registers, though it’s only little less than a second. At this point I get to start typing my message.
So that’s like four, five seconds to start typing a message, most of that waiting spent trying to get the interface to react to the finger-mashing. In comparison my old cell phone took maybe half a second to launch the SMS functionality and all its delay was up front. Waiting for an interface is more frustrating than a simple delay until you have access to the functionality you desire.
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I know this sounds more negative than the iPhone deserves, because all told it’s really not a terrible source of frustration at all, and it does so many other amazing things that it’s forgiven. It’s just one of those things I can’t help but notice.