Sometime around 8/12/07 (at 06:45 -0500) DeltaDave said:
I was hoping there might be more iPhone users here than that.
Maybe there will be after Xmas!
Quite possibly. I know I got into a bit of
trouble at home for just going ahead and getting
myself one so close to Christmas. 
And I know
a number of people who will be receiving an
iPhone this Christmas after their partners took a
look at mine.
It isn’t cheap. But it isn’t just a phone - it is
far more than that. Here’s a quick, incomplete
list of what I like about it:
It doesn’t do GPS, but I’ve been finding the
built-in Google Maps utility incredibly useful
for helping me get places. (And it caches map
data for the display and immediate adjascent
areas so I’m not scuppered if I need to check
again when I’m on the Underground.)
It reads my dot-Mac account so I get email on the
go. It does this using IMAP so I still get my
email retrieved and archived on my laptop. So I
can get and respond to emails immediately and
still be able to manage them as normal on my Mac.
I also have it checking a different account
(using POP), one set up on one of my other
domains. It works an absolute treat.
The iPod aspect is great. This makes the
cover-flow UI idea make complete sense, whereas
on desktops with mouse control it is fun but
slightly forced. The only thing to note here is
that the headphone socket is recessed slightly,
and the size of the recess is a little smaller
than normal. The shank of most headphone plugs
will be too fat to fit, so if you want to use
other headphones you’ll either need to trim the
sides down or get an iPhone headphone adaptor.
That’s on my Christmas list, so I can use my
mondo-expensive Shure in-ear headphones.
The only thing that will make me give up is the
ability to make/take phone calls using the iPhone
headphones with the their built-in mic, a
discreet blip on one of the earpiece leads. But
that’s not a major problem.
When a call comes in and I’m listening to
something, the audio fades down quickly - it
doesn’t just cut out suddenly - before playing
the ring tone. I love the way nothing’s abrupt,
it is all as ‘polite’ as it is efficient.
I download episodes of The Mighty Boosh to watch
when I’m travelling to and from work. (Download
on my Mac, transcode to iPod video scale/format,
sync to the iPhone with iTunes.) The screen is
simply amazing. Totally watchable, more than any
pocket-sized device I’ve ever seen.
I take short notes on it in meetings; the typing
thing is surprisingly good, although not suited
to more than a few sentences at a time. At least,
not at my current level of practise. Great for
SMS texts, shortish emails, notes, etc.
I have a long list of classroom and lecture room
door access codes on it, so I don’t have to keep
fishing for the scrumpled printout that keeps
ending up in the wrong pocket.
The camera is only 2 megapixels, not a match for
many cameraphones today. But the shots look very
good on the iPhone’s screen. Beyond that I would
always want a proper digital SLR anyway. But I
know I’m a perfectionist when it comes to
photography.
Safari works well. It does a new form of multiple
window browsing - not tabs, but pretty much the
same end result, in the abstract sense. Unlike
any other mobile-based browser I’ve tested,
Safari provides a smooth, usable experience.
It syncs with iCal, so I get my meetings and
classes listed, and iCal alarms will ping me in
my pocket even if I’m nowhere near my Mac. And I
can edit and create calendar events, and they’ll
be synced back to iCal when I next connect.
…So yes, it is expensive. But it is undeniably
FAR more than just a phone. The phone aspect is
great, and it is what other mobiles have tried to
be and failed, and more.
I paid £269 (inc VAT) for it, then picked the
basic £35 tarriff; 200 minutes, 200 texts per
month. Sure, I’m paying more for those minutes
than with some other contracts. But I get free
unlimited Internet access with that, both the
phone network (2.5G EDGE, slow but usable) and
wifi wherever The Cloud wifi is available. In
central London coffee bars and similar places
that’s a pretty good deal, but elsewhere The
Cloud is probably not so available.
I was paying about that much money for my
previous contract; a bit under £30 for the
calls/texts, plus £7.50 per month for 3GB worth
of data traffic for Internet use. I rarely make
200 minutes of calls or send 200 texts per month,
so I’m actually, in a very real sense, no worse
off than before, with what many people considered
to be a reasonable deal.
I’ve been using cutting-edge Windows Mobile
phones for the last couple of years, including
the 8GB, 640x480 display Ameo launched earlier
this year, and they’ve all been totally blown
away by this iPhone.
k
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