Watching video on a cell phone has never been a very appealing prospect to me. The screens were small and relatively low quality. Downloads were painfully slow and, as a result, clips were abbreviated at best. This is yet another thing that the iPhone changes.
The iPhone got some good press for including YouTube as one of its default applications. I don’t find YouTube to be particularly useful or interesting, but I know that that’s not an entirely widespread opinion. YouTube content looks and works well on the iPhone’s big, pretty screen. Downloads over the EDGE network are a little slow, but they’re acceptable enough.
Movies and TV shows synced from iTunes make the video features of the iPhone look even better. I’ve never really enjoyed watching video on my fifth-generation iPod. The screen isn’t quite big enough to keep me wanting to hold the device for 30, 60, 90 minutes.
I haven’t watched a full-length movie on my iPhone yet, but after watching a TV show, I know I’ll have no complaints.
Movies and TV shows on the iPhone look fantastic. They’re bright, clear, and look great in the landscape mode used on the iPhone. None of the downsides of watching video on the iPod seem apparent.
And, since the video features are part of the iPhone’s iPod features, they work well when calls come in. If you’re watching a video when a call shows up, the movie is automatically paused, just like when you listen to music. You can accept or decline the call and then are returned to the video at the place you left off when you’re done.
Though the iPhone’s 8GB maximum storage space limits the amount of video it can hold, future iPhones with more storage could cause all of us to start carrying our favorite movies or season’s worth of TV with us everywhere we go.
