I waited in line at the King of Prussia, PA Apple Store Friday night and picked up the 8 gig iPhone.  Before you read my review I must admit that before I bought the iPhone I hardy ever used my existing phone (Motorola SLVR) so my impressions may be a bit skewed.  I am generally techno savvy, but frankly every cell phone I had ever used previously basically confused me so I usually just used the phone features.  The SLVR had iTunes on it so I did use that sometimes, but it was basically a poor excuse for an iPod.  So honestly I usually just used the 5g iPod for music.

That being said, I have spent the weekend really kicking the tires on the iPhone.  My family was in Rehoboth Beach, DE for a short holiday and we stayed at my parents’ beach house.  I had recently installed a wireless router for them so most of my experience was with using the wifi connection.

Safari works rather well with non-flash sites.  I actually watched a bunch of trailers on http://www.apple.com/trailers and they loaded instantly and played smoothly.  Learning to tap the screen to enlarge what you need to read takes some getting used to.  Often I’d tap too close to a link and then I’d be redirected to a new page rather than zooming in on what I wanted.  But as the weekend progressed it became easier.  Safari does seem to crash sometimes, but it reloads quickly enough so it wasn’t that annoying.

The camera takes pretty decent pictures, but does not handle movement well.  It reminds me of my old Apple QuickTake 200 in that regard.  But for still shots I was rather impressed.  Plus it automatically switches from portrait to landscape so you always get the shot the way you want it.  Oh, and it has no flash.  So low light pictures are out.

YouTube seems to work ok.  I’m not a huge fan of most of the content, but I did get a few chuckles out of watching a few clips.  It works as advertised.

Mail is pretty much a copy of OS X Mail.  The only thing I didn’t like is that you have to check each mail account individually.  So if you have more than one account you need to tab back to check the next account in the list.  Slightly annoying, but not that big a deal.

Google Maps turned out to be the star for me today however.  This morning after leaving the beach I bought my kid a stuffed animal at a store on the boardwalk.  We loaded up the car after that to head back to my parents place before leaving to come home to PA. 

After leaving for PA I needed to stop for gasoline.  At the gas station I saw I did not have my American Express card.  So I got in the car, used Google Maps to find the store.  Immediately got the phone number and called.  Sure enough I had left my card on the counter when I left.  The iPhone’s Google Maps had just saved me a huge headache.  Ran to the store quick and got my card, It was great.

When we were almost home my wife used Google Maps to get the phone number of our local pizza joint and she ordered us dinner for pick up.  Got off the turnpike and got the food before we even went home.  I was very impressed.

And all the complaining I’ve been reading about AT&T EDGE is really overblown.  Its no speed demon, but certainly better than dial up and sure helped me retrieve my misplaced AMEX card.

I’m giving the iPhone a big thumbs up!

Fletch

[quote author=“Fletch”]

I’m giving the iPhone a big thumbs up!

Fletch

Interesting review. You gave just the sort of real-person information that many of us would like, rather than techno-babble. Jobs has often said that what is really important is how something works—not the “features” nor the “options,” but how well it does what it is supposed to do. As David Pogue said and wrote, “Simplicity sells.” That’s why the iPod has 75% of the US music player market.

[quote author=“rjackb”]
Cons:
- No To-Do list app. I use this much more than a calendar. Sure hope it’s high on Apple’s to-do list.

37signals makes a free iPhone to-d0 app.

tadalists.com

Anyone else have the phone just die?  Just seems to go dead.  My wife was using the iPod in her iPhone and paused, when she came back it was a dark screen.  I have not tried a reset yet though.