PRODUCT REVIEW
The iPod in the iPhone: How's the Music?

So what about it? How's the music experience of the iPhone?

On the surface, the answers are simple, but dig a little deeper and minor quibbles abound.

The Best iPod Ever?

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs claimed the iPhone was Apple's best iPod ever. He's right, of course, but he's also wrong.

Starting with the look and feel, the iPhone's 3.5-inch widescreen is super-crisp and clear, with intuitive navigation. You can tap artists, songs, playlists, scroll through them, shuffle songs or fast forward. You can also flip through album covers in Cover Flow mode, which is a lot more fun using your finger than using a mouse in iTunes. As a navigation aid, you'll probably tire of it soon enough, but it brings up one of the most important features in the iPhone -- album cover art.

In a digital music world, the typical CD cover art is all-too-often lost. The covers reflect the personality of the artists and the music in the album, and it's a joy to see the cover art as a song is playing.

Your iPhone is preset to auto-lock in one minute, so you only see the cover art for a minute unless you're somehow touching the screen. You can get around this by increasing the auto-lock time, but if you're running on battery, you'll burn your battery faster.

Whenever you're playing a song and flip to widescreen mode -- simply by reorienting the iPhone to a horizontal position -- the iPhone slides into Cover Flow, which lets you examine cover art and the songs you own that are on a particular album. Selecting those songs is a finger tap away, of course.

Overall, the gorgeous widescreen will probably show up on the next full-featured iPod, giving it a similar navigation and feel. As of now, the iPod functionality via the iPhone is absolutely the best ever.

The Sound

Audio quality is at least as good as it is in iPods, and the included headphones are solid performers. There's even a handy mic button built into the right side cord. By clicking the mic button once, you can pause music playback. Click it again, playback resumes. Want to skip to the next song? Click it twice quickly. It also works for answering incoming calls -- click to answer, click to hang up. To decline an incoming call, press and hold for two seconds.

For an iPod that's also a phone, it's highly user friendly. If an incoming call comes in while it's playing a song, the music fades out, the phone rings, and the screen gives you the option of answering or declining the call. Of course, you can answer with the mic button or the touch screen, and either way, when you're done with the call, the iPhone continues playing right where it left off.

The built-in speaker works, but it also distorts at high volume, which is pretty much on par with most every other external speaker built into a small device.

The Frustrating Headphone Minijack

The iPhone includes a built-in, 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack, which means it will technically work with headphones or external speakers that have a standard 3.5-mm minijack plug. The problem is the iPhone's jack is recessed within a small-diameter access hole. Most existing minijacks have plugs that are too wide to fit, rendering the headphones or speakers useless to the iPhone.

You can get around this by using the included dock, which lets you stand the iPhone upright at a slight angle. It includes a 3.5-mm minijack that isn't recessed, and most minijack plugs will work. Using the dock lets you use external speakers, but forcing the user to pack around the iPhone in the dock just so you can use your headphones of choice -- maybe a pair that you find most comfortable, or some noise-canceling headphones -- is freaking stupid. I'm surprised that Apple didn't provide an adapter, but then again, I'm sure the company is expecting the audio world to adapt to its small diameter minijack hole (and many manufacturers will most certainly submit).

Belkin makes a headphone adapter that you can get for about US$10 online, even from the Apple store, but availability seems to be at least a week out, maybe longer. In the meantime, you can probably file down the plastic around your existing 3.5-mm minijack plugs (but I've so far opted for the Belkin solution rather than risk filing off too much material).

Of course, you can also buy cables that attach via the 30-pin dock connector, which opens up a wide variety of accessories already on the market for iPods. You'll want to confirm iPhone compatibility before you buy.

Audio Interference

The cell phone portion of the iPhone can generate audio interference around speaker systems -- basically, it can make your external speakers crackle and pop. It's an irritating side effect, but fortunately it tends to mostly occur during connections or incoming phone calls ... and with some speakers systems, hardly at all.

Sometimes when you connect a device, the iPhone gives you a pop-up message that reads, "This accessory is not made to work with iPhone." The message gives you the option of turning on Airplane Mode to reduce audio interference, which works fine, but you won't be able to make or receive calls. Sometimes when you select "No," you have to reconnect the iPhone to get it to start pushing audio out to the device again. Seems like a hit-and-miss issue for now. I'm assuming that Apple is working with manufacturers to create speaker systems designed to specifically combat audio interference with the iPhone.

The Alarm and Sleep Timer

The Alarm function is particularly handy but also lacking functionality compared to an iPod. With an iPod, you can set the alarm to sound to a playlist. With the iPhone, you're limited to using Apple's built-in ringtones for the alarms. If you like slowly waking to the sound of music, forget it with the iPhone.

You can, however, set multiple alarms, set them to automatically go off on certain days of the week, leaving you the option of setting automatic alarms for workdays as well as weekends. Plus, there's a cool snooze feature.

Similarly, the sleep timer function is hard to find. To use it, you must navigate to the Home screen, choose Clock, then Timer, then set the number of hours and minutes you want the iPhone to play music. When you want the music to stop, you have to set the iPhone to "Sleep iPod" when the timer expires.

Syncing Is Limited

For seemingly inexplicable reasons, Apple only lets you sync the iPhone to iTunes via pre-selected playlists. While you can create an On-the-Go playlist on your iPhone, you can't manually drag and drop songs from iTunes to the iPhone. You've got to manually create playlists in iTunes first.

While the core music functionality is built into the iPhone, using your iPhone as a portable stereo system isn't as quite as easy as using an iPod. Sure, you won't miss any phone calls because the music is blasting, but if you're barbecuing on the back patio with a bunch of friends, sometimes it's nice to simply turn down the music and take the call at the same time. Then again, simply turn on Airplane Mode and enjoy the moment -- after all, you're busy.