IPhone Review

Well I finally got my hands on an IPhone at the Apple store in Kahala Mall and I have to say I am very impressed. It kind of lives up to that high-tech, must have, gadget of the century hype that Apple wants to make it out to be.

The Design:
It has that cool chrome-backed look that has the made the IPod famous. The front screen is a nice dark color and there is only one button on the front. I also almost missed the camera because it was so tiny. It is a little pinhole looking thing the upper back part of the phone. The display is nice and bright and the colors are pretty vibrant. The design of the menu is attractive to the eye and is very intuitive.

The Touchscreen:
This was the thing I wanted to check out the most since it would be the make it or break it thing of the phone. Since there was only one button on the phone you will have to use the touchscreen nearly 100% of the time. If it didn't register your touches or didn't respond quickly enough the IPhone would stink IMO.

I was surprised that this was not the case. The Touchscreen was a gem and even typing with my fat fingers was possible. In fact I found it a bit easier to type then the Blackberry for some reason. Everything that I touched came up quickly and without any problems. There was a Stocks option on the main screen and I typed in the stock price for VRSN quickly and easily.

Ease of Use:
This thing is a snap to use and you don't have to make a ton of different button presses to get something like the calculator to come up. It is just one press and you are figuring out the tip. The Motorola KRZR that I have takes 4 presses to get to the calculator and it takes 23 different button pushes (and several minutes of time) to make my stocks come up. The IPhone just needs one push and you can check what your Yahoo portfolio (it seems linked to Yahoo so I'm not sure if you could link it to Etrade or something) is doing. There is even a little chart below the stock (which is a novelty since when you study the chart you want it pretty big.)

The camera came up pretty quickly by again hitting one button in the menu. The pictures that it took were very clear and can be checked easily on the touch screen. The KRZR just shows about 4 grainy photos when you check them out. They are sometimes hard to see clearly until you enlarge them. On IPhone it was very easy to make out all the doofs who took pictures of themselves at the Apple Store.

The map feature (which uses Google maps) came up after only a little wait. I figure it would be a very handy thing to have when you are out walking and looking for some place to eat or something. I didn't use it too much so I can't give a really good rundown of its ease of use.

This was just a preliminary walkthrough so I don't know how easy it would be to add contacts or make phone calls. But if it is as easy as getting the other stuff to work then this device will be a real winner. Too bad it costs so damn much or I would seriously think about switching to AT&T to get my hands on this thing.