TECHYTED: iPhone 1 week (and a few days) later

I have to start off by saying after a week (and a few days) later after standing in line for over 2 hours I am still digging my iPhone. I was really impressed just by opening my sealed AT&T bag to find a really cool sturdy box that the iPhone was in. The setup process seemed very simple, I was a Verizon customer and had to port my phone # over to AT&T and after about 30 minutes or so I was making my first phone call. I am going to start off by talking about the 3 things Mr. Jobs told us when the iPhone was announced back in January.

Revolutionary Phone:

I couldn't say it any better, the iPhone is flat out amazing. It is so simple to connect the phone to iTunes and it automatically imports all of your contacts. You can simple scroll through your contacts or bring up a # keypad and dial it like any other phone. If I get a voice mail it just saves it to the phone and you can see who the caller was and what time it arrived, then simple touch on the screen to listen to the message, if you missed something just drag to scroll back to hear it again. The speaker phone and mic work well, most people I call say that I sound louder than I used to. It is too simple with that large bright screen that I usually keep at 50% brightness and I am able to see the screen in full sunshine too. I can see all of the other manufactures trying to develop a phone that is comparable to the iPhone or they will see a dramatic decline in sales.

Widescreen iPod:

Awesome..... Yes a wide screen iPod that you can view movies, podcast, or whatever song you want anywhere you are is what most iPod users have been dieing for. It is super simple to use, even easier than a traditional iPod for the fact that it is a touch screen, no more using a scroll wheel to try to find an artist, song etc. Now you just click on the picture and next thing you are watching or listening whatever you feel like. To watch videos it requires you to turn it sideways to view them and when you are playing a song while it is sideways you see your songs in cover flow which basically shows your album covers. One thing to note is the screen is glass and it won't scratch from a stick of Chapstick in your pocket like what happen to my Nano after a 2 mile walk 2 months after getting it (that made me very upset). The included headphones are cool in concept with the mic and push button that allows you to answer while you are listening to the iPod, but like all other iPods headphones, they must have someone with huge ears when designing it. I never can fit them into my ears. They didn't come with the traditional pads that wrap around the ear buds, so I stole them off my old pair and that makes them work for me.

Internet in your pocket:

WOW, I can bring up any web page that I want, I look up what time the movie is going to start, what restaurants are nearby, or reviews of any product like when I went to Fry's and saw a Blu-ray movie on sale. Yes some of you may have a cell phone with mobile web, but we are talking full sites with all pictures and text. You type in yahoo.com and you can click on any link you want. You just double tap the screen to have it zoom, or you can use you fingers to zoom in or out. You can even turn the iPhone sideways to get a wider view. You can view your email, it starts ups asking what kind of email you want to set up, Yahoo mail, Gmail, .mac, AOL, or any other email i.e. IMAP, POP, Exchange. You can even set up more than one account and check your email from anywhere, which is really cool.

The Negative:

(1) One bad thing I can say is that the iPhone does not support Java or Flash. This affects some web browsing, but so far I really haven't any issues with it. Rumor has it that they will release a update to the phone that would support one or the other in the next couple of months and I wouldn't be surprised to tell you about that when I tell you what I think of the phone in 6 months.

(2) I suppose I could also say that you can't use the phone's bluetooth to connect to a wireless printer to print a photo or transfer a file and that this could be taken as a negative point, but most times when I showed this feature to someone I was just showing off what my printer with bluetooth could do, so I don't really know if I could call this a negative point because when I sync my phone with my computer iPhoto opens and downloads all of the pictures I took and then I could do anything I want with them. I could even email that photo from my phone to anybody and have them print it if a computer is handy using wireless internet.

(3) That leads to my last negative point, the wireless network for At&t Edge. It is on the slow side, but in time I hope it will get faster. I just usually look for a free Wi-Fi spot or use the wireless in my house/work and I am amazed by how many business I find out there that offer free Wi-Fi.

Final thoughts:

You can do SMS text, view your calendar, view your photos, take 2MP pictures (very good quality I will add a picture of this cool Audi TT that I took with my iPhone for you to see), view YouTube videos (fun), check your stocks (see how Apple Inc. went from $40 in January to $130 in 6 months), use google maps (see street names or satellite view, awesome), check the weather, have multiple clocks with alarms, timers, etc., calculator, and a notepad that you can write anything and all of this running on a slimmed down version of OS X. What more could you ask for.

People say the price is a little too high, but when you add an 8GB Nano ($249), an amazingly nice functional phone ($300+), a 2-megapixel camera ($99), and a person computer (running Mac OS X) ($999+) to view the internet, check your email, look up addresses and then fit all of those devices in a small package that fits in your pocket. Priceless....

iPhone 2.0 might be better, but I simply couldn't be happier with At&t and my iPhone 1.0. Battery life has been good so far, I just charge it every night, 1 day I even went 2 days without charging, but I didn't use it much as it was in standby most of the day. Some may call me a Apple Fanboy, but how could you not be after a week of using the most amazing, fastest selling electronic device ever.

If you lucky enough and got one too, I would like hear your opinion in the comments.

As I pomised, the picture of a cool Audi TT