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.

Want an iPhone? Of course you do. It looks sexy, it’s innovative, and–for a while at least–it’ll be the ultimate status symbol. But in the fog of iPhone hype, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the latest Apple sensation will still have its share of disadvantages.

read more | digg story

The iPhone’s battleground is outside the home, where for nearly a decade, digital alchemists have searched for the ultimate hand-held gizmo: a true all-in-one device that will not only make phone calls, play music, e-mail, manage an appointment calendar and take pictures but also surf the Web. This type of device has been done many times but never well.

read more | digg story

Ok, lets get it out of the way. This is only my personal opinion and should only be taken as such especially by the Apple faithful.

So where to start? Well as everyone probably knows a while back now Apple commander-in-chief Steve Jobs announced the iPhone and the Apple world collectively starting weeping with joy. Mind you a lot of folks who aren’t real hardcore Apple users were also mesmerized by the shiny device that Steve demonstrated on the stage. I think for maybe the duration of keynote most people were probably slowly reaching into their back pockets for their wallet ready to plop down whatever money Apple was asking for….but then we were all told the dirty specs and pricing behind the iPhone which really, for me personally, made it a non starter.

Let me elaborate:

1. The iPhone runs on EDGE which is Cingular’s/AT&T’s 2-3 year old data network that maxes out at theoretical speeds of 75-135kbp which really isn’t saying much. To translate that into common terms we’re talking about a maximum speed of approximately twice the speed of dial-up (remember that? some of you may be too young!) but on average as fast (or as slow) as dial-up. Now this wouldn’t be a big deal except well, our friend  Steve-o decided that he wanted to put a full fledged OS on the device with a swanky Safari web browser, Google maps and more. If you don’t know where I’m going by now, you may never get it but I’ll say it for your sake: EDGE is too slow for the iPhone. You will have time to run home and browse a website on your PC while you wait for your faithful iPhone to load a website. Other mobiles work around this by using proxies to compress content such as the excellent Opera Mini browser but no, Apple wants you to browse the wonderful world wide web with all its annoying ads and flash based content at a speed that they themselves couldn’t honestly say was sufficient with a straight face.
2. Touch screen isn’t new and is horrible for typing. No I haven’t used an iPhone but guess what, the whole touch screen thing has been done for years with Palm and Windows Mobile devices. The fact is manufacturers stayed away from them because it just is not the best interface for typing more than 2-3 words. Although Steve made fun of Treos and Blackberry devices in his keynote, was he also calling the millions of users out there who use them and love them idiots? Reality is that using a touch screen for typing is just not as easy as with a dedicated keyboard. If you want to illustrate this to yourself (assuming you’re somewhat proficient in typing) go ahead and type something on your computer’s keyboard….see nice and easy right? Now find a flat surface, preferably a coffee or dining table and pretend there’s a keyboard on it (you can even cut out a piece of paper that looks like a keyboard if you want) and try using it as a keyboard. Notice something? Even there were “touch screen” keys there it doesn’t feel right. It’s because we rely a lot on the tactile feel of buttons, this lets our brains know that we’ve succesfully pressed the button and also allows us to learn typing without looking thanks to muscle memory.  Add to that the fact everytime you need to input something the keyboard has to take over the whole screen of the iPhone so you can tap on it which really takes away from the user experience. So in summary, good luck typing more than a few words on your iPhone  using the touch screen keyboard without having to constantly stare at it and watch every button you press.
3. Corporate integration is non-existent. This may not matter to most users but it seems Apple is comparing their iPhone to the likes of Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Both of these platforms are if nothing very capable when it comes to corporate integration. Both work flawlessly with Microsoft Exchange syncing not just email but your calendar, address book, notes, tasks and more. Apple’s offering? Yahoo IMAP email! Because I’m sure hundreds of thousands of people were jump ship and start using Yahoo IMAP email for their business purposes. Also although Apple calls their Yahoo IMAP email “push email” it’s not even close to it. The IMAP protocol is inherently push because all email is stored on the server so your email client stays connected to the email server, this both eats data and battery life since your iPhone has to keep a constant connection with Yahoo’s email server. Windows Mobile has a slightly more elegant method and of course Blackberry has the best push email method which truly “pushes” the email to your device which is one of the reasons Blackberry battery life is so good.
4. No removable battery. So I guess Apple feels that since you can’t remove the battery from your iPod why should you from the iPhone? Problem is that the iPhone is meant to be both your MP3/video player as well as your cell phone. My 5G iPod itself doesn’t have such stellar battery life and that’s with a tiny screen with mild usage. Now think of the iPhone’s massive screen, super thin form factor (where the battery is) the multiple radios onboard (Bluetooth, GSM/GPRS, WiFi) and I wouldn’t be shocked if the battery life in certain conditions would fall under an hour. Of course people will argue that this is the price that is paid for such an “amazing” device but alas when your battery dies on you unexpectedly, and trust me that it will at some point, you will be forced to pull out your charger in the middle of nowhere and hunt for a outlet. Meanwhile, those “dumbphones” as Steve Jobs likes to call the competition can easily slip out one battery and slip in another ready to go or even a higher performance battery if needed. To me this is one of the bigger glaring flaws with it and something that will come to bite Apple in their posterior as people start using the iPhone
5. It’s hard putting the price of the iPhone down as a problem since it’s subjective. For some people $1,000 is chump change but I think more than the sticker price what is going to work against it is the 2-year contract supposedly required with the purchase. Anything can happen but as of now we’re looking at ~$599 for the 8GB iPhone with a 2-year agreement with Cingular/AT&T. So what does that mean? Apart from the usual monthly $39.99 or whatever voice plan you have you will also need to make sure you pay for the data which currently looks to be around $20 EXTRA a month. For those of you who do not currently have a phone that requires a data plan, this will be an additional cost you need to take into account…$20 * 24 months = $480 over two years alone just for data. They may still come out with a cheaper data plan but so far that looks to be it.

I could go on for quite some time on this but these to me are five of the main issues with the iPhone. I know a few people are annoyed that it’s not an open system that people apart from Apple can develop software for, although for its worth I think that’s the least of their problems.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not naive or ignorant, I know the hordes of loyal Apple fans will still run out to their local Cingular/AT&T or Apple stores in June to get their iPhones. All I will say is make sure you can return it in 30 days because I have a feeling some of you may end up doing so. Good luck.