A few days into iPhone ownership at this point and my first take still holds: very cool, very limited. Then again, it’s designed to be way cool even if it isn’t always way functional. And, yes, a lot depends on an individual’s definition of functional.
A few quick observations:
— I’ve had a Cingular 8125 by HTC with WiFi, some touchscreen ability and a landscape/portrait feature for more than 18 months. The iPhone does each of these things more elegantly — complete touchscreen management is a huge jump, for instance, as is the quality of the screen — but it also has limits like the way the landscape/portrait switch only works in certain circumstances.
— It has the highest instant recognition factor among non-geeks of any gadget I’ve had. The few times I’ve pulled it out in public, it’s been picked up on right away. The combo of unpaid publicity and ubiquitous TV ads paid off in that regard.
— On the content side, the Yahoo Finance and Yahooo OneSearch integration is very well done — charts, updated numbers, easy access to news by clicking on a stock symbol. It would be even better if I could copy my current YF portfolio over.
— Photo syncing was a breeze and the screen is gorgeous.
Some of the quirks:
— maps and directions that disappear from view when I lose a good signal.
— no step down (at least none that I’ve seen go into action) to formatted-for-mobile pages when the speed isn’t good enough. Several times, I’ve been able to load a perfectly usable page through the AT&T Edge network on my usual device while the iPhone is stuck in a loading loop.
— a recessed headphone slot that keeps my Shure headphones from fitting for iPod use.
— Bluetooth that doesn’t talk to other Bluetooth devices like my photo printer or, well, any device I’ve tried so far. No, I didn’t buy the iPhone Bluetooth headset.
— The lack of copy and paste or cut and paste. It makes a difference when I want to map an address from email or use a phone number from a note.
— YouTube can be a lot of fun but it also can disappear, like the maps. I was in the middle of a demo over the weekend when the OK Go video refused to go. Then again, Go To My PC wouldn’t go either, surprising my mom, who assumed I’d be able to log right in and fix something with my trusty iPhone.
— Browser pages stay open and I just found out the limit is 8.
— The lack of video and multimedia text messages. A lot of people won’t miss them but I do.
Looking at the iPhone as an alpha, it’s a heck of a feat. Gorgeous. Groundbreaking. Full of promise and a lot of delivery. Unfortunately, we’re paying for a full-release version.
Memo to AT&T: Congrats for opening up the AT&T WiFi network to some of your home DSL subs. Now make life easier for your iPhone subs and open it up for us, too.
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