So I managed to get my hands on an iPhone, and in true Geek style wanted to bring you my first thoughts on the must-have-phone from Apple. Being so keen to bring you the details, you are getting this even before I have had time to take photos of the iPhone. This is the first Apple product that I have ever had that hasn't had photos taken first in its virgin, fingerprint free state. That should give you some idea of how excited I was after opening it.
The iPhone form factor is superb, in fact a lot slimmer than I had expected. The actual screen real estate makes it comparable to the sleeker PDA's available today. The rounded corners make it feel smaller than it actually is. In the hand, it is weighted just right and feels (as Apple products normally do) like a really high quality product. The touch screen definitely needs a screen protector on, so if you are getting an iPhone on November 9th, be prepared and order some protection in plenty of time. The majority of the back is brushed silver aluminium, with a small portion at the base being black. This gives a very luxurious, yet slippery feel, but at least not a fingerprint magnet. The camera, also located on the back is tiny and recessed back into the unit, so again you would struggle to get a greasy finger on it.
Now, when you switch the iPhone on for the first time, make sure you are seated. The screen is just awesome, pin sharp, bright, vibrant, spot on. Only when I had dug a little deeper into the settings did I find it was set to half brightness, so bumping it up a couple of notches had those colours popping. On playback of some video podcasts and a few cartoon videos, I was wowed, for this alone, the device is worth its asking price. If the iPod Touch is anything like this, it will also be just as popular.
The internet worked just as I expected, but doing the double-tap to zoom in, as I had seen in the demo videos, was all the more satisfying. Email was also a very smooth experience, just like a mini Mail.app with all my account settings taken from my Mac and transferred onto the iPhone. Hopping into my car I tested making a few calls and the voice quality was again very good. Back onto Safari and the main let down was the speed on surfing the internet over EDGE. Not entirely Apples fault, but the network does not support lightning fast speeds, far from it. So, I hopped back on the road and headed to a local restaurant that has a Wi-Fi hotspot run by The Cloud. Logging on was really easy and made the internet, email and YouTube a joy to use. So my advice is that you will need to use Wi-Fi if you are a heavy data user, otherwise you will get frustrated. EDGE should be treated as a backup solution.
I have only really covered here my early experiences. My opinion of the iPhone so far is that it is superb. Most certainly one of the most exciting Apple products I have had the pleasure of using to date. When launched on November 9th, it will make a lot of people really happy. If you were having second thoughts, then don't, you will not be disappointed.