iPhone Review

Well after much debate I broke down and bought the iPhone. Maybe I'm nuts or maybe I just couldn't think of anything better to do with $600. It just so happened that I was in Paducah, KY visiting my parents when the iPhone went on sale last Friday. I figured that in a smaller rural town the interest in the phone would be limited and the wait would not be so bad. I was right. I drove about 35 minutes south to a small-small town called Mayfield aka "The Pearl of the Purchase". At least that's what the sign said when we drove into this sleepy town. They had an AT&T next to their Super Walmart. (What small town would be complete without one?) When we arrived at the store it was about 5:35 pm CT. We were 10th in line. Everyone in line seemed to know everyone else and even pointed out that they knew people in the Walmart parking lot across the road. When the doors opened at 6:00 we inched forward. It was about 6:25 when I got my hands on the glorious new gadget.

The Good:
The cool factor of this phone is off the chart. It is well made, solid, sleek, and the video clarity is very impressive. The calls are clear and the reception I get is much better than I used to get on my Motorola RAZR. The phone also paired nicely with my current Bluetooth headset so luckily I won't need to pony up $125 for the Apple headset. The iPod also works just as nicely as advertised. No complaints there. Photos taken on the camera look surprisingly good and are easy to resize (using the pinch) and assign to Contacts. In fact I could go on and on about the things I like about this phone. Maybe I should skip to the bad.

The Bad:
The list isn't that long. Safari has some troubles. I've crashed it a couple of times and usually with no more than 2 or 3 windows open. Once it even froze the whole phone requiring a hardboot. Not having iChat is a common complaint. I concur. The web application idea is troublesome. So far the applications I've seen were poorly coded and did not work as advertised. This is largely because you're dependent on the network. If you're not wifi then you could have problems. SMS works pretty well. It looks like iChat but there is a problem. The phone requires a connection. It will not queue a sent message until the connection is established.

Network:
I've heard everyone complain about the EDGE network being slow. They're right...if you're trying to surf the web. It reminds me of a fast dial-up connection. However, when it comes to using some of the other features on the phone the EDGE network works very well. Weather updates, email, and Google Maps work great.

The Unboxing








As always everything is neatly and elegantly packed without messy packing material or difficulty removing the contents.






Entire contents of the box.


Powered on prior to activation.


Phone is only capable of making emergency calls at this point.