My Review: iPhone Rocks

[bubbajim]

Sorry, no memory expansion. The top slot is the Sim slot. Unit is extremely sturdy. It's very solid indeed. From some reports out there the stress tests have come out very well. Touchscreen is solid glass. It's not like the HTC or palm pilots of old where they had a plastic film over it that felt spongy.

I took a couple of shots with the camera so far and it's a common camera, no extra frills with it. I find I am able to take decent pictures with it as opposed to my old cell-cameras which resulted in shaky shots.

Looking forward to other opinions on this as I'm sure I am a little bias.

[mw84]

Glad about the screen, was a bit worried about leaving a key or something in the same pocket and ruining it, remember the soft ones on older pdas seemed a bit flimsy.

Any chance you could post a couple of camera pics?

[bubbajim]

Here's a quick shot from my couch. I would get up and get an outside shot, but as you can see from the photo, the couch monster would not be very happy with me as she is resting up against me.

[mdnky]

PC World did some tests on one (durability) and reported that it passed with flying colors. Besides a key test, they also dropped it from varying heights on varying surfaces, the most extreme being over the tester's head onto concrete a few times. The phone came out with nothing but a few scratches/dents on the stainless trim surrounding the edge.

iPhone stress test video
(Note: There's a really stupid commercial before the actual test video plays...)

[mdnky]

Originally Posted by from video test

Hey that's pretty darn impressive. That's one hell of a resilient screen they've got on there. Look at that, still shiny - no scratches.

He's really trying towards the end, possibly a bit miffed that it won't scratch.

[ScottW]

Today, I went out of town, out of the KC metro area, into central Missouri (1.75 hours outside KC) where only farmers live, cattle are raised for food, and the corn is about 8 ft tall.

While I knew that having data service from a carrier like Sprint was out of the question, I didn't figure AT&T had data coverage in the middle of nowhere. Low and behold, I was wrong. While I never did get it to pull up a web page when I tried it, the phone was checking my email and pulling in new email for me, when I wasn't looking. The "E" showed up on the signal indicator, so I know things where working good. I was at a farm the entire time, so I wasn't moving much, other than in/around the yard at a home.

With Sprint service, that would have been a pipe-dream. Thanks AT&T.

The iPhone was getting pretty low on batteries. The "usage indicator" said that it had around 6 hours of use, and 15 hours or so of standby time. I had only used 3 minutes of that time as a phone, and downloaded around 6mb of data from the Edge network. I still had battery left.

I was the talk of the event, especially in such a rural area, the City Slicker I was, with my iPhone, waiting in line for 10 hours etc. People where pretty amazed by it.

The PC World tests are awesome, love to see it. I feel more comfortable with my phone and letting others touch it now.

As others have mentioned, screen is solid, but very very responsive. Once thing I have been VERY surprised is smudges and grease on it from your skin. Last night, after fingering my phone for quite some time, I had yet to notice any smudging on it. But, with the screen off and in the right light, wow... it looked pretty nasty... and yet, clear as day on the screen when turned on. I have used PDA phones where you get grease on them and everything was "blurry".

The screen is BRIGHT, very BRIGHT. Then I realized, it was only about half-way on brightness, so I turned ti all the way up, and I think I could light a room with it. Very clear and bright screen.

You can lock the phone, so that you enter a code to gain access, which is nice.

A few disappointments at the moment, but I'm sure will be added later...

1) Calendar App has no TODO list sync, in fact, nowhere are your TODO items synced to the phone.

2) If you run IMAP and have mail rules setup to send certain emails to certain folders, the iPhone mail application doesn't check individual folders for new emails, just the main inbox. Outside of that detail, it seems to work pretty good. T

I am already coming up with a Wishlist, and some things can't be done via Web 2.0 programming... and so hopefully down the road Apple will open development on it.

Using WebShell for iPhone, I was able to SSH to my servers with the iPhone and while the default layout of the web app needs reworking with some additional functionality, my iPhone is now basically fills my primary mobile need, which allows me to feel comfortable getting a desktop system vs a laptop for my next system upgrade.

Camera takes the best photos of any camera phone I have had. It does wonderful pics in good light, and in overcast or poor light situations, it leaves much to be desired, but so has any other camera phone I have had. So, I don't really see this as a disappointment, just par for the course.

I tried out the headphones today, and they worked well. It was nice to be listening to music, have someone call you, take the call, all while your headphones are on, and then ending the call and going back to your music. The headphones have a mic built-in along with a remote. Very nice.

The "loud" speaker on the iPhone is not the best I have heard, but at the same time, is fine for most needs. It sounds like most typical tiny speakers on phones, so not much of a disappointment in that department, par for the course.

Overall, the device is smaller than I thought it would be and many of commented on that. I can type VERY fast with two thumbs and the autocorrection feature is very awesome and works much better than I imagined it would.

My wife did drop it (ugh) about 2-feet to our padded/carpeted floor and it was fine.

I am glad to see the PC World tests... the phone is VERY small in your hand and I can see that it would be easy to drop, as my wife proved today.

Visual voice-mail was kind of weird. I've only had one voice mail come in since getting it, and the voice quality of the messages seemed less than what I was typically used too. But, it's a voicemail that you'll probably delete anyhow and so not real downfall for that.

As others have said... very snappy, not slow anywhere... and pictures really just fly across the screen as fast as you can slide your finger back and forth across the screen... so fast you can hardly see the photos going by.

[mw84]

Is the auto correction intrusive at all? I know on phones the t9 dictionary thing that constantly tries to guess the word you're typing can be irritating, especially as it never seems to come up with the right word!

Very impressed with how sturdy it sounds, like I said my phones do tend to get bashed about a bit so its nice to know it's not going to (hopefully) break easily. I suppose being built as one solid unit rather than having the battery clip in, then the back slide on etc etc like on regular phones helps a bit.

From the picture posted, the camera looks quite sufficient for snapshots and quick videos aswell. Can you upload directly from the phone to Youtube or Flickr?

[chevy]

Can you change auto-correction language ?