When I got an iPhone, I put my iPod on the shelf and used the iPhone exclusively as my iPod for the last couple of weeks. The iPhone is a very cool device, and beats the iPod hands down for video, but as an in-car audio device – which is what I use my iPod for most often – it doesn’t hold a candle to my aging iPod.
The soft buttons on the iPhone are placed along the bottom of the screen and at the top corners – not very convenient for one handed (thumb) operation, and you have to look down at the device since there aren’t any tactile buttons. And if you set it down at an angle, the screen will rotate removing a lot of your buttons entirely. You also have to unlock the device with the finger-swipe every time you want to skip a song, etc. All together it’s a bit of a hassle compared to an iPod.
So today I synced up my iPod and took it with me in the car as I went to Denver in the morning and Boulder in the afternoon. It’s a no-brainer, the iPod is just a better device in the car.
One other interesting note on playlists on the iPhone: it appears that playlists marked as “live updating” will actually live update while on the iPhone. I noticed this on 2 playlists:
- My “unrated” playlist shrunk on the iPhone as I rated songs on it. Once I rated a song, it disappeared out of the playlist. It doesn’t do this on the iPod, and it’s probably a good hint of things to come on the iPhone.
- My “recently added” playlist looks entirely different on the iPhone. Instead of copying over the songs as shown in iTunes, it’s actually just a random assortment of songs – I never did find any pattern to the songs it included. Turning the “live updating” option off that playlist results in the playlist working as expected.