After writing a rather scathing post on the iPhone and posting quite a few negative things about it, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and give it a shot. It turned out that the AT&T store near me had quite a few in stock and not a ridiculous amount of people waiting for one so I got one on Friday, June 29th at 6:05pm!
The reason I decided to even give it a shot is I came to the realization that the only features I consistently use on any of my cellphones are the music, video, web browsing, email and chat. I've had many phones that can do a lot more than that but beyond the initial period where it's fun to play with I've never used more than these five main things.
I'll be posting my iPhone review in the next few days but having used it over the weekend some of the things I expected to be not so great about it are true and some things have impressed me.
It is by far the best iPod and perhaps the best media player out there. The 3.5 widescreen lends itself immensely to watch videos, movies, tv shows,etc. It's also nice to be able to see full screen Album art of music, podcasts, etc. The controls are great, the sound and video are superb so the iPod part of the iPhone truly lives up to the hype.
The web browsing part is perhaps the second most stunning thing about the iPhone - especially when using Wifi as opposed to EDGE (Cingular's network). It renders web pages exactly as they would on your PC/Mac. There are no limitations except no Flash (which they may or may not add later). This is very refreshing since you can for the first time do all the things you can on your laptop/PC on a mobile device including paying your bills, shopping, searching for stuff,etc. The dedicated Google maps app also adds a lot to the device in practicality.
The email part is so-so, especially for me being such an avid Blackberry user. It does work as advertised but isn't the most fully functioned and typing long emails on the touch-screen keyboard is nowhere near as nice as using a dedicated keyboard. But the biggest upside is that HTML emails are rendered perfectly as if you were using Outlook or a desktop client. This is a huge improvement and something that no Blackberry or Windows Mobile device supports at this level.
Chat is perhaps the biggest letdown on the iPhone because they currently don't have one on the device. There's a lot of speculation that it will be added soon as a software update but I'll believe it when I see it. Currently only chat-like functionality is using SMS which costs money, which in turn sucks.
The phone part of it is great but a step backwards from current phones out there. There's no voice dialing (which I use a lot), there's no speed dial because there's no buttons - instead there's a list of favorites, there's no MMS (which I never used) and some other basic things.
The fact that it runs on EDGE is also a letdown since it's much slower than other 3G networks like Verizon or Sprint have. But it's designed to switch between EDGE and Wifi pretty seamlessly so anywhere you have a WiFi connection you're going to be surfing along fine. In the end it's a safe bet that also due to a recent issue with Qualcomm 3G chips not being allowed into the US, 3G cellphones may experience delays in being released in the US at least.
In the end, and I'll save more for the review, the iPhone has to be thought of as an absolutely stunning iPod with fantastic web browsing, excellent email and decent phone functionality. Also the user interface is a pleasure to use and makes you wish all things could be this easy to operate.
I still haven't decided whether to keep it or return/sell it but so far so good. Yes, I got an iPhone…the irony doesn’t escape me
After writing a rather scathing post on the iPhone and posting quite a few negative things about it, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and give it a shot. It turned out that the AT&T store near me had quite a few in stock and not a ridiculous amount of people waiting for one so I got one on Friday, June 29th at 6:05pm!
The reason I decided to even give it a shot is I came to the realization that th [...]
After writing a rather scathing post on the iPhone and posting quite a few negative things about it, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and give it a shot. It turned out that the AT&T store near me had quite a few in stock and not a ridiculous amount of people waiting for one so I got one on Friday, June 29th at 6:05pm!
The reason I decided to even give it a shot is I came to the realization that the only features I consistently use on any of my cellphones are the music, video, web browsing, email and chat. I've had many phones that can do a lot more than that but beyond the initial period where it's fun to play with I've never used more than these five main things.
I'll be posting my iPhone review in the next few days but having used it over the weekend some of the things I expected to be not so great about it are true and some things have impressed me.
It is by far the best iPod and perhaps the best media player out there. The 3.5 widescreen lends itself immensely to watch videos, movies, tv shows,etc. It's also nice to be able to see full screen Album art of music, podcasts, etc. The controls are great, the sound and video are superb so the iPod part of the iPhone truly lives up to the hype.
The web browsing part is perhaps the second most stunning thing about the iPhone - especially when using Wifi as opposed to EDGE (Cingular's network). It renders web pages exactly as they would on your PC/Mac. There are no limitations except no Flash (which they may or may not add later). This is very refreshing since you can for the first time do all the things you can on your laptop/PC on a mobile device including paying your bills, shopping, searching for stuff,etc. The dedicated Google maps app also adds a lot to the device in practicality.
The email part is so-so, especially for me being such an avid Blackberry user. It does work as advertised but isn't the most fully functioned and typing long emails on the touch-screen keyboard is nowhere near as nice as using a dedicated keyboard. But the biggest upside is that HTML emails are rendered perfectly as if you were using Outlook or a desktop client. This is a huge improvement and something that no Blackberry or Windows Mobile device supports at this level.
Chat is perhaps the biggest letdown on the iPhone because they currently don't have one on the device. There's a lot of speculation that it will be added soon as a software update but I'll believe it when I see it. Currently only chat-like functionality is using SMS which costs money, which in turn sucks.
The phone part of it is great but a step backwards from current phones out there. There's no voice dialing (which I use a lot), there's no speed dial because there's no buttons - instead there's a list of favorites, there's no MMS (which I never used) and some other basic things.
The fact that it runs on EDGE is also a letdown since it's much slower than other 3G networks like Verizon or Sprint have. But it's designed to switch between EDGE and Wifi pretty seamlessly so anywhere you have a WiFi connection you're going to be surfing along fine. In the end it's a safe bet that also due to a recent issue with Qualcomm 3G chips not being allowed into the US, 3G cellphones may experience delays in being released in the US at least.
In the end, and I'll save more for the review, the iPhone has to be thought of as an absolutely stunning iPod with fantastic web browsing, excellent email and decent phone functionality. Also the user interface is a pleasure to use and makes you wish all things could be this easy to operate.
I still haven't decided whether to keep it or return/sell it but so far so good.
After writing a rather scathing post on the iPhone and posting quite a few negative things about it, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and give it a shot. It turned out that the AT&T store near me had quite a few in stock and not a ridiculous amount of people waiting for one so I got one on Friday, June 29th at 6:05pm!
The reason I decided to even give it a shot is I came to the realization that the only features I consistently use on any of my cellphones are the music, video, web browsing, email and chat. I've had many phones that can do a lot more than that but beyond the initial period where it's fun to play with I've never used more than these five main things.
I'll be posting my iPhone review in the next few days but having used it over the weekend some of the things I expected to be not so great about it are true and some things have impressed me.
It is by far the best iPod and perhaps the best media player out there. The 3.5 widescreen lends itself immensely to watch videos, movies, tv shows,etc. It's also nice to be able to see full screen Album art of music, podcasts, etc. The controls are great, the sound and video are superb so the iPod part of the iPhone truly lives up to the hype.
The web browsing part is perhaps the second most stunning thing about the iPhone - especially when using Wifi as opposed to EDGE (Cingular's network). It renders web pages exactly as they would on your PC/Mac. There are no limitations except no Flash (which they may or may not add later). This is very refreshing since you can for the first time do all the things you can on your laptop/PC on a mobile device including paying your bills, shopping, searching for stuff,etc. The dedicated Google maps app also adds a lot to the device in practicality.
The email part is so-so, especially for me being such an avid Blackberry user. It does work as advertised but isn't the most fully functioned and typing long emails on the touch-screen keyboard is nowhere near as nice as using a dedicated keyboard. But the biggest upside is that HTML emails are rendered perfectly as if you were using Outlook or a desktop client. This is a huge improvement and something that no Blackberry or Windows Mobile device supports at this level.
Chat is perhaps the biggest letdown on the iPhone because they currently don't have one on the device. There's a lot of speculation that it will be added soon as a software update but I'll believe it when I see it. Currently only chat-like functionality is using SMS which costs money, which in turn sucks.
The phone part of it is great but a step backwards from current phones out there. There's no voice dialing (which I use a lot), there's no speed dial because there's no buttons - instead there's a list of favorites, there's no MMS (which I never used) and some other basic things.
The fact that it runs on EDGE is also a letdown since it's much slower than other 3G networks like Verizon or Sprint have. But it's designed to switch between EDGE and Wifi pretty seamlessly so anywhere you have a WiFi connection you're going to be surfing along fine. In the end it's a safe bet that also due to a recent issue with Qualcomm 3G chips not being allowed into the US, 3G cellphones may experience delays in being released in the US at least.
In the end, and I'll save more for the review, the iPhone has to be thought of as an absolutely stunning iPod with fantastic web browsing, excellent email and decent phone functionality. Also the user interface is a pleasure to use and makes you wish all things could be this easy to operate.
I still haven't decided whether to keep it or return/sell it but so far so good. 
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