Pros: The perfect marriage of voice and data.
Cons: A whole set of annoyances that may turn you off.
The bottom line: For those looking for the perfect marriage of their voice and data lives, the iPhone is the only way to go.
When Steve Jobs took to the stage and introduced the iPhone, I blew it off. I figured the iPhone with its ridiculously high price tags ($599 for the 8GB version and $599 for the 4GB version) was going going to be the next PowerMac G4 Cube or the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. Both were beautifully designed machines that had one fatal flaw: An exorbitant price tag. History was about to repeat itself, or so I thought.

The iPhone went on sale and it was a hit. People mindlessly snatched it up at these high prices. I was amazed, but I still was not going to jump on that boat – the price was too high for me. And, it also meant that I hate to leave T-Mobile, which for the last four years was treating me well. Exactly 66 days after the iPhone went on sale, Steve Jobs came out and announced that Apple would be dropping the price of the iPhone by $200. Not only were early adopters outraged at such a quick price drop, I was happy to see that the price had finally dropped to where the iPhone was actually interesting.

Lets look at the highlights and the annoyances of the iPhone.

Design and Hardware

The iPhone is a gorgeous device. And who wouldn't have expected that from Apple? When it is off, it is a black slab with a silver lining and a single button on the face of the device. If you did not hear about the iPhone or seen the pictures of it, you would not know that it is a phone. There are no physical buttons on the face other than the Home button. Down the left side is a rocker switch for volume control (context sensitive to if you're on the phone, using speakerphone, watching a movie or listening to music) and a “quiet” switch (which lets you put the phone into vibrate mode). The quiet switch is a welcome piece of hardware as it saves me time from digging around in menus to put my phone into vibrate mode – and it also gives me a quick visual and tactile feel about which mode my phone is in. On the top is a headset jack and the sleep button. The problem with the headset jack is that it is recessed into the outer face of the iPhone. This makes it all but impossible to use any headsets or headphones other than the ones that are included with the iPhone – or some specially desgined ones, or using an adaptor. On the bottom is the Apple standard 30-pin dock connector.

Unlike the iPod touch, which feels awkward in had, the iPhone feels very good in hand. I believe the rounded chrome edges on the iPhone's face give the iPhone this feeling – the iPod touch has a black sharper edge around the face of the device. The iPhone is not heavy, but not light either. It has enough heft to it that it feels solid and well-built.

The face of the iPhone is a large slate of glass. This is one of the reasons the iPhone feels so solid. The glass is very scratch resistant and durable. My friends keep their iPhones in the same pocket as their keys and loose change – they have had not scratching issues with their screens. I keep my iPhone in a leather slipcase, but that is just because I am paranoid.

Underneath the glass is one of the brightest and sharpest LCD screens I have ever seen. Clocking in with 163 dots per inch, this screen makes reading text very easy on the eyes. The brightness of the screen also helps to make fingerprints on the iPhone's screen “go away”. In bright sunlight, the screen is very readable.

It is worth mentioning that the back of the iPhone is made from brushed aluminum – just like the MacBook Pros and old Powerbooks. This is in contrast to the iPod's reflective stainless steel backings. This makes for a very durable backing to the iPhone that resists both finger prints and scratching.

Software

Navigating the iPhone is easy with its multi-touch interface. It is intuitive and easy to learn. The software behind the iPhone is also very well thought out and I here is a section on the software.

The standout piece of software on the iPhone is Safari. Never has mobile web browsing been so good! The Safari experience on the iPhone is near perfect and makes all other handheld browsing look out, antiquated and basic. When you browse a webpage with Safari on the iPhone, it looks almost exactly like it would on your desktop computer – with one major flaw, there is no Flash support, so a lot of websites that sport media heavy Flash content will not be able to display that content. Otherwise, you are getting desktop webbrowsing on a mobile platform. It is a wonderful experience.

Mail.app on the iPhone also works well. It is also not perfect either. Email is rendered perfectly in Mail.app – HTML mail looks like how it should when read on a desktop mail application, all pictures, all fonts, all formatting is completely rendered. You can setup as many email accounts as you want in Mail.app. To make things simpler, Apple lets you sync over mail account settings from Mail.app and Entourage (on Macs); or Outlook on Windows machines. That way you'll never have to type in your settings. If you have a Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL, or .Mac account, Apple has made it easy to setup these accounts on the iPhone itself with setup wizards. The iPhone supports IMAP and POP email, the IMAP implementation is good, but not perfect – I wish that the IMAP implementation would support IMAP's IDLE command so that we can get a semi-push-mail style IMAP setup. That being said, the Yahoo! Mail support on the iPhone is awesome as it does support push-mail – meaning that your mail gets “pushed” to your iPhone as it arrives on Yahoo! Mail servers. The other mail setups use a manual or automatic mail checking (can be set for manual check or every 15, 30 or 60 minutes automatically).

Google Maps makes its web-based brother look bad. The Google Maps implementation on the iPhone is gorgeous and so easy to use because of the multi-touch interface. The iPhone does lack GPS, so the Google Maps application is less useful than it could have been. But, that being said, the way that Apple and Google integrated Google Maps with the iPhone makes Google Maps invaluable. Since my Lexus has built-in GPS map and routing, that functionality I don't miss. What I do miss is updated listings for restaurants and easy access to restaurant information. This is what makes Google Maps invaluable. I can get on Google Maps and zoom into a specific location (say area in South San Jose). Then, I can type in what I am looking for (say “pizza”) and Google Maps will return to me all the pizza joints in that visual area. But! That's not it. If I click one of the markers on the map – for the place that I am interested in – it will bring up the address, website and phone number of the place. And, if I want to get information, I can click the phone number and the iPhone will dial the place for me. Or, if I click the website address, it will pull up the website for me. It is this sort of integration that sets the iPhone apart from other mobile phones.

Stocks and Weather applications are provided from Yahoo! and they are quite useful also. I use both frequently. They are easy to setup and use – they also provide information in a fashion that is quick to glance at and understand. If you are using these applications, you can click the Y! logo in the bottom left-hand corner. That will send you off to the webbrowser where you'll get more detailed information about what you were looking at in on of the applications (say about a company that you were looking at or a city that you were looking at). By having these applications built-into the iPhone, it makes it quick and easy to get at the information without having to surf around on the web.

The calendar application on the iPhone syncs flawlessly to iCal, Entourage or Outlook. It works well and I use it a lot to keep track of appointments. I do wish that the calendar has someway of helping me differentiate between my different calendars – for instance in iCal, my Home events are in green boxes, my Work events are in purple boxes, and my Holiday events are in red boxes. On the iPhone all events are in a blue box.

The photos application does just what it says and it does it well. Nothing special to write about. The same can be said about the clock, calculator, YouTube and text applications. The Notes application works, but disappoints on one front: No synchronization. I wish there was someway for me to synchronization the notes on my iPhone with my computer. Hopefully, Apple will have some sort of solution for this soon as I don't use the Notes application that much because of this situation.

iPod

The iPhone is the best iPod ever – even besting the iPod touch. The reason the iPhone beats the iPod touch (I have both) is that the screen on the iPhone is noticeably better than the iPod touch's. The blacks are darker and the colors are richer. Apple says that both machines use the same screens, but I am thinking that the iPhones may get a batch of better screens than the iPod touch units.

I won't go into much details about the iPhone iPod functionality as most everyone has seen Coverflow working before – Coverflow is neat, but I find it useless. The actual iPod functionality takes a bit to get used to, since there is no longer a scroll wheel. Everything is done in hierarchical lists, which works very well. The sound from the iPhone is excellent if you ditch the included headsets for some real ones – the sound quality is on par with my first generation iPod shuffle (which means “excellent”) and a lot better than my first generation iPod nano (which was “muddy”). The 3.5” screen on the iPhone makes it a powerhouse when it comes to watching videos. The picture quality of the screen is phenomenal.

The mult-touch interface also makes the iPhone fun to use as an iPod.

The iTunes Wifi Store is neat, I have used it once. But, I don't find much use in it because I usually don't buy music from iTunes – their encoding bitrate is too low for my taste.

Radios

There are three radios crammed into the iPhone: Cellular, Wifi and Bluetooth.

On the cellular network, the iPhone gets great reception. Calls sound clear and I have heard no complaints from people on the other end of the line. The calling interface for the iPhone, like all other software components, is very well thought out. While on a call, you'll be presented with a box with six buttons: mute, keypad, speaker, add call, hold and contacts. No longer will you have to say, “I'll call you back if we disconnect.” That's because Apple has put all the necessary functions into these six buttons. You can have conference calls without any problems. You can put people on hold and call others without problems. Activating speakerphone is one button away.

As much as I have heard people complaining about the AT&T network being bad and spotty, I have yet to run into any issues with the AT&T network. I guess, your mileage will vary. For me, AT&T is just fine and works as well as my previous mobile service provider, T-Mobile.

Getting on a call is easy also. The iPhone offers many different ways of dialing. There is the contacts list which syncs with Addressbook, Entourage or Outlook. There's a favorites list with a list of all your most dialed people (“Hi mom!”), the recents list with recent calls, and the old keypad to dial a number (contacts dialing is for wimps!). But, the standout part of the telephone portion of the iPhone is Visual Voicemail. Visual Voicemail downloads voicemails to the iPhone and, if available, labels each voicemail with a name or number. This allows you to listen to voicemails in any order you wish – got one from the annoying friend who is no longer a friend? Delete it without listening. Got one from the wife? Skip the rest and play that one first. Visual Voicemail is an outstanding feature of the iPhone.

The cellular network also gives the iPhone EDGE (2.5G) data access. The speeds of AT&T's EDGE network are pretty pokey slow – they may remind a lot of people about when they used to use the internet over a dial-up connection. It is ashame that Apple did not integrate 3G data access into the iPhone for quicker internet access on the road – Steve Jobs says that they did not do 3G because 3G is a battery draining feature, I don't believe him. This 2.5G data network would have killed the iPhone if it were not for the next radio.

Thank goodness the iPhone has Wifi built in. The iPhone supports 802.11b (11Mbps) and 802.11g (54Mbps). For me, this makes a huge difference as 90% of the places that I am at have Wifi converage: My home, work, the local malls, my parent's place and some of the surrounding cities (Mountain View has blanket Wifi coverage and San Jose downtown has Wifi coverage). When the iPhone is on a Wifi network, it is really screaming. If Apple had left out Wifi, it would have sunk the iPhone. This is the best way to get on the internet from the iPhone – the other 10% of the time, EDGE is the “better than nothing” solution.

The third radio is the Bluetooth radio. Unfortunately, the Bluetooth functionality of the iPhone is neutered. The only think that the iPhone can do with its Bluetooth radio at this point is connect to bluetooth headsets and handsfree devices (like my Lexus). The Bluetooth radio cannot be used to transfer files, synchronize the iPhone, send business cards, or be uses for wireless music streaming. This is all very disappointing. I hope Apple updates the software to add some of this functionality. I would love to be able to use the iPhone with wireless Bluetooth headsets to listen to music and to also transfer pictures off the iPhone.

The Camera

The camera on the iPhone is a 2 megapixel camera. It feels like the camera was added just so that they could list it as a feature. It is a barebones “phone camera”: No autofocus, very slow, almost unusable in low-light conditions, and somewhat blurry. The camera is good for those moments when you don't have your dedicated camera around. But, it is definitely not a digital camera replacement. The pictures that the camera snaps are good if you have good lighting and the subject is not moving around – taking pictures of kids indoors, out of the question.

The pictures snapped from the camera can be sent via email – but not MMS, because the iPhone glaringly does not support MMS. But, when pictures are sent from the iPhone from the Mail.app, they are resized to 640x480 (almost a quarter of the 2 megapixel size). There is no way of changing this, you always have to send small pictures around. This is a bad software limitation that I hope Apple will remove in future firmware updates – my two year old Nokia can send full 2 megapixel pictures if I want it to, why can't the iPhone?

The Keyboard

The iPhone keyboard maybe the most controversial thing about the iPhone. Most people hear “smartphone” and thing about little tiny chiclet-size keys – like your Blackberry or Treo. With the iPhone there is no hardware keyboard. Instead, there is a software keyboard which changes some keys depending on where you are at. For me, the software keyboard works great – I had a Treo 600 and I could never get used to the chiclet-sized keys since I have big, fat and stubby sausage-like fingers. I do miss the tactile feedback of a hardware keyboard, but it's ok. What I would love to see is Apple implement a vibrate per keystroke, that would be good enough tactile feedback. The thing that makes the software keyboard work so well is the software behind the keyboard. It is constantly learning from me as I type. It guesses and adjusts misspellings as I type on the keyboard. It takes some time, but I had to learn to (Star Wars talk here: ) trust the keyboard. Once I got comfortable knowing that I don't have to type everything exactly right, I got pretty quick with the software keyboard.

Annoyances

There are some major annoyances with the iPhone, none of them are show-stoppers, but they are nevertheless very annoying.

Of all the things that Apple left out of the interface, the most annoying missing feature is cut and paste. There is no way to cut and paste text from any of the iPhone applications! That is a major feature of all OSes, why Apple decided to cut (no pun intended) it from the iPhone's stripped down version of Mac OS X, I don't know. I hope they add it in with a future firmware update.

There's no way of doing things to multiple items in Mail.app. For instance, if I want to move four emails from the inbox to a folder, I have to do it four times. There is no way I can select all four and do one operation.

The battery in the iPhone, like all other iPods, is not replaceable by the end user. Instead, we have to cough up $80 plus $8 shipping. Sure, a user replaceable battery would make the iPhone thicker, but $88 to replace a battery is highway robbery.

The Dock connector on the iPhone breaks compatibility with previous video accessories. Did you spend $200 on that video accessory that let you play videos from your iPod Video on your TV? It won't work with the iPhone. Apple purposely added a software limitation that forces third party hardware makers to buy a video authorization chip from Apple. If your video accessory does not have this chip, it will not work.

I am running the latest firmware on my iPhone, 1.1.2. This is the fourth iPhone firmware update since the iPhone was released. And still, my iPhone crashes from time to time. Sometimes applications go nuts and stick. Sometimes I am in the launcher window and push an application icon multiple times without anything happening. Although the iPhone's OS is stable enough for day-to-day use, it still has some very annoying instability in it. Apple needs to iron these things out.

Activation

The last thing I want to mention is the activation process for the iPhone. It was really easy and quick. The whole activation process happens through iTunes – though, I don't see why it can't happen directly on the iPhone, but I digress. I transfered my number over to AT&T from T-Mobile and the whole process of activating and transferring my number took less than 30 minutes. I was quite impressed by the ease of the whole process. And I really enjoyed doing it myself instead of having it done by some salesperson trying to pressure me into extra “features”.

Conclusion

The iPhone brings some new features to the mobile market, but by in far, it really implements nothing that new. What the iPhone does is implement things so well that the end user forgets that they are using a small computer running Mac OS X in the palm of their hand. Is the iPhone perfect? No. Is the iPhone the best mobile device on the market? Yes, most definitely. The iPhone is a game-changer for the mobile industry and it sets the bar pretty high for other mobile phone manufactures. Should you get an iPhone? It really depends on what you are looking for. For those looking for the perfect marriage of their voice and data lives, the iPhone is the only way to go.