After a 2 hour wait in near 90 degree heat at our local ATnT store, we've got the 8 gig iPhone in hand. It's as beautiful looking in person as in Apple's web site shots, and it's not too terribly large: it's the same size as my BlackBerry 8800, but narrower, which makes it more comfy to hold.
The iPhone is surprisingly fast, much faster than any Windows Mobile, Palm OS or Nokia S60 smartphone. I'd say it's even a bit faster than my BlackBerry. Even rotating the display in the web browser and camera application is nearly instantaneous.
Given the 700 megs of Mac OS X inside, the phone boots in about 30 seconds the first time you turn it on. Yes, it does pretty much nothing until you hook it up to your PC or Mac and activate and sync it with iTunes. At first sync iTunes offers to sync calendar, contacts, email account settings and bookmarks (this is on a Mac). I upgraded my existing phone on my AT&T account and used the SIM included in the iPhone since I never mind getting the latest 3G SIM. This is a 3G SIM with the fireball logo and AT&T printed on the back. Yes, the SIM works fine in my Samsung BlackJack-- you can switch phones.
The touch screen, multi-finger press and gestures work well. So far I am not getting along terribly well with the on-screen keyboard, and on our unit, I find I have to tap a little to the left of the key. There is no screen alignment function, so not much I can do about this. Give me a day or two of typing for a final verdict though Update: after 2 hours I'm really getting the hang of the keyboard- much to my surprise!
The iPhone supports USB charging. It comes with a dock, USB cable, standard iPod style small charger (you'll need to unplug the USB cable from the computer and cradle to use it with the charger-- annoying. Also included is a polishing cloth and two very brief guides. Though the iPhone is very easy to understand and use, I'd appreciate at least a PDF manual . At least than can be downloaded from Apple's web site.
The web browser isn't bad on EDGE, our home page loads in about 35 seconds. The iPhone prompts you to connect to WiFi networks it finds when you launch the web browser. You can turn this off if it bugs you. Safari looks just as good in real life as it does in Apple's demos. Of course, pages won't load as fast as their demos unless you use WiFi. When setting up a WiFi network connection, the WEP password entry defaults to Apple friendly style and not HEX/ASCII. Unless you use an Apple Airport, be sure to change this option when entering the WEP key for a WiFi access point.
The screen is gorgeous and sound through the included stereo headset is very good. Syncing music is fairly fast. Using my Mac Pro, iTunes synced 214 songs (1 gig's worth) in 3 minutes.
Camera images look pretty good. It does not take video and I haven't found any camera settings to play with.
More to come. In the meantime, feel free to post questions!
Anyway, I'm curious how you got the SIM card out of the iphone? Did you have to take the phone apart to get to it?
(Some of the early disassembly reports of the device have shown the SIM card holder to be well inside the body of the phone.)
I guess this means that it is theoretically possible (but perhaps extremely inconvenient) to switch out the SIM card for alternate phone carrier service.
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LisaG
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Reged: 07/11/02
Posts: 7909
Loc: Texas
The SIM card tray slides into the top edge of the phone (similar to older Treo models). To eject it, you stick the end of a paperclip into a little hole beside the tray. It takes a good hard push, but other than that, it's easy.
-------------------- Lisa Gade Editor in Chief, MobileTechReview
I'd say it's worth $499. But it's really hard to say which PDA phone is best because folks have different needs and likes/dislikes. Like some folks hate slider keyboards while others love them. Some folks must have multimedia which others find email the most important thing and could care less about music and video. And while the iPhone is as much of a PDA as the original Palm Pilot which was the first popular PDA (having full PIM applications and the ability to add apps) and it also has a much better, browser and email client than most other devices. And of course it's a killer multimedia device. But it lacks an Office suite which is something that's pretty much a requirement on today's PDA (as compared to the old Pilot). We'll have to see what additional apps Apple and 3rd parties release to enhance the PDA features.
-------------------- Lisa Gade Editor in Chief, MobileTechReview
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Update: after 2 hours I'm really getting the hang of the keyboard- much to my surprise!
