I had both the curse and the pleasure of being in Hawaii on vacation on the day of the iPhone launch, and did not purchase my iPhone until Saturday, June 30th. The evening of June 29th did not work out for me, but with some phone calls around Oahu to various AT&T stores and to the Apple stores, I was able to find an Apple store with some 8GB units still in stock on the morning of the 30th. Kudos to the folks at the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu for making my purchase such an easy process. I picked up a car charger as my only accessory and was in and out in 5 minutes. 8GB iPhone, here we go!

First Impressions

The iPhone comes well packaged. Apple is renowned for their innovative style and the experience they provide to a user when it comes to the entire purchase and unpackaging experience. I found the iPhone to be no exception. iPhone comes boxed with an AC adapter, the USB charging/synching cable, a USB dock, and a microfiber cloth embossed with the iPhone name. There are a couple of small pamphlets – the Finger Tips guide and a Product Information Guide, and a set of Apple decals. The box is the smallest I have seen for a phone of its size, and it is definitely a work of art in itself.

Opening the box and removing the contents was straightforward with each item either wrapped or covered in plastic. There is a small dark folder that provides a tab under the plastic tray that the iPhone itself is in that contains the pamphlets and the microfiber cloth. Underneath that is a molded plastic tray that contains the cable, the charger, and the dock.

I elected to start charging my iPhone right away. The morning I purchased the iPhone I was boarding a cruise ship, so I had to endure the wait between the purchase time and getting to my cabin aboard the ship to even unbox and start charging the iPhone. Once unboxed, I charged the iPhone for about 4 hours when I saw the “battery full” indicator and then began the process of activating it.

In preparation for this, I had downloaded iTunes 7.3 on the morning of the 29th while in the villa where my family and I had been staying. (It was wonderful to have internet access both there and on the ship!) I had also never owned an iPod before, but my kids all have one and they use my laptop as one of their sync PCs, so I had a pretty good size library to work with of my own music.

iTunes 7.3 didn’t really look any different to me from the previous versions, but that changed as soon as I plugged in the iPhone using the USB cable. The drivers loaded into my Vista Ultimate laptop and then I saw the activation screens. I was a previous Cingular/AT&T customer, so it was really a matter of moving my number and plan to the SIM pre-installed in the iPhone. I simply followed the activation script (the Apple website has wonderful video tutorials of this process, by the way) and was somewhat disappointed that I was going to lose my FAN discount on my 5-line family plan. I went ahead and activated with the unlimited data and 1500 SMS plan and still ended up saving about $10 per month from the plan I was on with my Blackjack. For those who may complain about the cost of the data and text plans, you have no idea how good you have it! My activation took about 3 minutes as the internet connection on the ship wasn’t very fast, but iPhone still managed to come up with the “AT&T has successfully activated your phone” message and I was off to the races.

First Sync

Once the device is activated, iTunes will prompt you to choose what to sync and how often. I moved my contact list and calendar from my Blackjack to Outlook 2007 on my laptop in preparation for the iPhone, and found the sync somewhat easy for contacts, but the calendar didn’t seem to go as well, as repeating appointments didn’t sync correctly from Outlook to the iPhone. I ended up removing the repeating appointments until I could get back to my office to work on them so as to not be bothered by unnecessary alarms during my vacation. My music moved as expected, and photos that had been stored on the laptop (downloaded from various digital cameras during the trip) were formatted for iPhone and transferred. The photo transfer process took a considerable amount of time for the 200 or so pictures in the folders I wanted to move (about 55 minutes.)

Usage

I had been reading and watching about the iPhone for a number of weeks in anticipation of its arrival. Once I took iPhone off of the charger and began to play with it, I immediately went to the Settings widget and started poking around a bit. Naturally, I changed the ringtone and looked at the settings for pretty much everything else without changing them.

The User Interface (UI) is extremely simple and easy to use. One button at the bottom of the main screen (the Home button) will always take a user back to the main widgets screen. Other buttons and switches turn off the screen (top right) and change volume (up/down rocker on the left side) along with a silence switch, similar to Palm Treos, on the top left side. The main screen is simple and all a user has to do is use their finger to select the widget of their choice to go to that application.

Much has been said both for and against Apple’s implementation of the finger gestures. I find them to be intuitive and simple, even for my fat fingers. I found that the system seems to figure out what I am trying to do and then does it. For the SMS and email applications, entering text in the portrait mode can be tricky, but the system does a very good job of correcting mistakes for you, if you let it. It seems easy to want to go back and fix your own typos, but your speed and accuracy improves with use very quickly. The only text entry fields that work in landscape mode are in the Safari browser, which work in both portrait and landscape modes. Scrolling through web pages or music is simple and intuitive and the gestures work much better than you would think. Going through a photo album is incredible, as you can “flick” through pictures and then “pinch” them to zoom in, and double-tap to go back to the normal view. This also works in the browser for navigating around and making sites more readable.

The brilliant 3.5 inch screen is wonderful – bright, auto-adjusting for ambient light, and easily readable in both dim areas such as a movie theater and outdoors in bright sunshine. I did find, as is typical of high-quality displays, that the screen is polarized, and as such can be unviewable at certain angles when wearing polarized sunglasses such as my Maui Jims. Fortunately, those angles don’t coincide with the vertical or horizontal viewing typical of portrait and landscape modes.

Main Applications

The phone application is straightforward and has very little learning curve. There are five main start points – Favorites, Recent, Contacts, Dialpad, and Voicemail. Each of these virtual buttons along the bottom take you to a starting point for using the phone. A Favorites list can be compiled from your Contacts, and makes sense for your top ten frequently dialed numbers (especially when you have over 500 contacts, like me!) Recent is similar to almost all current phones in that it shows the list of recent calls made or received. Contacts can be synchronized from Outlook (or any other PIM that can interface with iTunes) or from calls on the recent list that a user may want to save by adding them. The dialpad is just that – a virtual dialpad to manually enter numbers. The dialpad is accessible from any call in progress as well for times that users may need to enter an extension or any other keypress not stored in a contact or an automated system. The Voicemail button takes the user to the Visual Voicemail display, where a list of voicemails will be displayed. Using a finger to select one of the voicemails will allow it to be played back. Interestingly enough, the audio file is downloaded to the iPhone and stored for non-linear playback. This presents some interesting phenomena – the voicemails cannot be heard over certain Bluetooth audio headsets since they don’t seem to be recognized as a handset audio stream, and there is a delay between the time a caller leaves a voicemail and when it is available to be heard. I would guess this is due to the file being downloaded for off-airtime playback.

E-mail is a simple POP3 and IMAP4 capable tool that will allow a user to set up their email accounts. Some email providers have an automated path – Yahoo, Gmail, .mac, and AOL all have automation built-in to assist users setting up those accounts. There is also a button in the E-mail settings for “Other” that allows the user to manually set up any POP3 or IMAP4 email accounts. Yahoo Mail is the only service that provides "push" email notification as of the first release. As such, Yahoo Mail should be the first mail account to be set up so that the push settings will stick - it seems that if other email ccounts are configured first, Yahoo Mail will conform to those settings and "push" does not work. One major drawback of the email settings are that the settings are universal for the sync time interval - they will apply to ALL email accounts and cannot be tailored to individual accounts. Therefore, all email accounts will check for email based on the one setting that is configured.

(Note: All applications require the use of the Settings widget to change or update customizations, except for adding favorites or bookmarks to Safari.)

Safari is the web browser for the iPhone, and it is a full browser, capable of loading large web pages. One noticeable drawback is the lack of Flash support out of the box, so any front page web sites that use Flash will basically hang while trying to load. However, the browsing experience is way beyond any other mobile browser in that the browser has some intelligence built-in that allows the user to use gestures to zoom to the part of a web page to view. The browser automatically adjusts to portrait or landscape mode and helps make pages even more readable and navigation-friendly. At the bottom of the Safari browser are the controls to allow forward, back, bookmarks, and switching between tabbed pages. The browser is generally fast, and much depends on the site being opened and whether the connection is EDGE or WiFi.

The remainder of the application widgets on the Home screen are SMS, Calendar, Photos, Camera, YouTube, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Clock, Calculator, Notes, and Settings. SMS is nice in that it provides threaded conversations for each contact, but one deficiency is that you cannot send an SMS to multiple contacts at once. The Calendar is simple and it does sync with Outlook (in my tests.) I did note that it seemed to have a problem with recurring appointments being displayed properly. That is somewhat problematic for me, as I have a lot of recurring meetings during my work week, and hopefully this will be fixed in a future iTunes update. Photos is a simple picture viewer for viewing either pictures synched via iTunes or taken with the iPhone. The camera is a 2 megapixel fixed focal length camera that is pretty good in quality (very comparable to my Blackjack) but does not have a mirror for self-portraits or a flash or light.

I honestly don’t use YouTube much, but did play with the widget some just to see how well it works. Performance varies with connection speed, but overall it is pretty useful. The Stocks and Weather widgets are simple – you can select the items to want to be updated, and have multiple items (stocks/cities for weather) in your list. Maps connects to Google Maps and allows some practical use in finding your way around, but is much better for locating places for travelers such as gas stations, restaurants, hotels, landmarks and other places of interest. It is NOT a direction-based system that will guide you by streets to your destination like TomTom or a standalone GPS like a Magellan or Garmin system. Clock is a simple world clock that displays times for various major cities around the world and allows the user to set alarms, be used as a stopwatch or used as a timer. The alarm and timer can be set to use one of the many ringtones that come pre-installed. Calculator is simple, not much to report there. Notes is a basic note-taking app that uses the soft keyboard for data entry in portrait mode only. The notes do NOT sync with Outlook or any other desktop application, which isn’t necessarily good for business users. Compared to Pocket PC/Windows Mobile users or even Palm users (with Documents to Go) this seems to be a huge weak area.

Inside

The heart and soul of what makes the iPhone tick is the OS X derivative operating system and the Settings application that allows user management of the OS and the settings. The iPhone seems to perform amazingly well – it is quick, responsive, and simple. Browsing through the settings options provides a clue as to why – the iPhone only has limited customization available, and only certain applications have customization available. Apple has taken great care to protect the OS from behaving badly due to operator error or abuse. Of course, there are a great many things that users would like to see customizable such as ringtones and it appears that Apple will introduce optional ringtones as a later change to the OS and to iTunes. One of the strengths of the iPhone is in its OS and bulletproof approach to making changes. This point can be debated ad nauseum, but I for one am thrilled to see a system that just does what it does extremely well.

Outside

The iPhone is almost identical in size to the Samsung Blackjack, but is .4mm thinner. Unlike the Blackjack, which sports a keyboard and a smallish 320 x 240 display, the iPhone is almost all display in front, with a speaker for phone conversations at the top and the Home button at the bottom. The 320 x 480 3.5 inch display is touch-sensitive and simply amazing. The multi-layered glass is impact and scratch resistant and seems natural to the touch. Watching videos is simply amazing as this seems to be the best way to show off the display’s capabilities.

The iPhone has a SIM slot at the top (users need to open the slot using a paper clip to access the SIM) next to the power on/off button and on the opposite side there is the port for the audio earbuds. The included earbuds are typical Apple style, and the iPhone earbuds include an in-line microphone that can be used via a quick squeeze to answer a call or hang up the phone, or to pause and start music as an iPod. They have the typical Apple fit (uncomfortable for me, especially during the 8 hour flight from Honolulu to Dallas/Fort Worth) and I expect to see even more accessories available from third parties that will add comfort to the functionality of the earbuds. (Note – I did look at the V-MODA Vibe Duo headset, but opted not to purchase since they didn’t have the on/off/pause capability of the OEM earbuds. I understand that Vibe Duo headsets with the original capability will be available shortly.)

The proprietary Apple iPod port at the bottom accepts the included USB cable and also many other iPod accessories. My son’s 5G 30GB video iPod cable works to recharge the iPhone as well as synchronize it with my laptop, and the universal car charger works with both iPods and the iPhone.

The back of the iPhone is smooth and has the camera opening at the top left, and the bottom quarter of the back is black and is used for authorized access to the internal battery and houses the antenna. During charging, the back of the unit gets pretty warm as the metal surface is probably designed to disseminate the heat radiated during the charging process. The iPhone exterior does seem to be too smooth to keep a good grip on, and that is an area for accessory sales of screen protectors, cases, and other handling/protection products. I have been carrying my iPhone in my pocket, taking care not to put keys or change or other metal objects in my pocket with it. I also happened to have a small Case Logic padded pouch which happens to hold my iPhone, earbuds, and the microfiber cloth easily, and this came in handy during my travels in Hawaii.

What the iPhone CAN do

Simply put, the iPhone is a stellar device. It really is two of the three things that Steve Jobs promised his audience at the MacWorld keynote in January. He announced that it was the best iPod ever, the best handheld internet device ever, and the best cell phone ever. The iPhone really is the best iPod ever made. CoverFlow is cool (it is a method of browsing through albums when in landscape mode) and very useful, and the visual navigation is so much better than the wheel approach of most music players. Video playback is awesome, and movies and TV shows can be downloaded via the online iTunes Store or ripped from DVD through iTunes and synchronized to the iPhone. Using Safari is also very good, so much better than Pocket Internet Explorer or and Palm browser. WAP? Ummm, no… but you sure can use WAP-formatted web sites if you want to. With 802.11b/g WiFi available, browsing is pretty fast and since the display can be zoomed to what you want to view, it is also readable on the larger screen. As a phone, well, this is where the iPhone does not completely meet the promise in my opinion.

The iPhone as a Phone

The iPhone does make and receive cellular phone calls. I’m not going to comment on AT&T’s reception or service, as they aren‘t really part of the review of the device itself. As previously discussed, the phone can do what almost all current cell phones and PDAPhones can do. Visual Voicemail is a nice feature, but is nothing extraordinary. If you expect to get a lot of voicemail and need to manage it, then I can see why it is a benefit. I tend to check my voicemails and then erase them after returning the call, but that is a personal way of doing business. Otherwise, I found the Hold and Conferencing functions to work as advertised, and the on-screen controls work very well. My biggest complaint is with the volume – the phone speaker and ringer volume are just too soft for me. I tend to work in a noisy environment and drive a Jeep Wrangler, so wind and noise is always an issue for me. The iPhone handset volume is too soft, and is way lower than the Blackjack (which was the best I have ever used) or even the Verizon xv6700 or Cingular 8125, which can be made louder by using customized appropriate ringtones. Some functions can also take a lot of touches, such as contact lookup to make a call. This can be annoying for a sales rep who needs to use their phone in the car a lot, since there is no search function for Contacts. For me, not such a big problem. For power users, not as easy to use as other implementations.

To Bluetooth or not to Bluetooth?

Apple touts the iPhone as having Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR (enhanced data rate.) What we aren’t told are the profiles supported. As expected, both hands-free and headset profiles are supported. I connected my laptop to the iPhone via Bluetooth and searched for profiles and found the PIM Exchange and Audio Gateway profiles also available on the iPhone. I found that I was able to pair my Jabra JX10 headset easily and it consistently reconnected after charging the headset. Volume was excellent through the Jabra JX10. Next, I paired the iPhone with my Pioneer DEH-P980BT head unit in my Jeep Wrangler. Volume was good and the Pioneer displayed all of the appropriate signal strength, battery and phone number information, as well as options to download the phone book. However, to my disappointment, the Pioneer failed to reconnect on subsequent attempts and I was forced to manually search for the iPhone using the Pioneer controls. One workaround is to leave the iPhone in the Bluetooth Settings screen and then call or text your iPhone to switch away from the BT Settings screen to keep the “discoverable mode” on during other activities. I expect Apple will include a fix in a future update. My third test was with my Motorola S9 stereo BT headset. Again, it paired easily and phone calls were heard through the S9 headset, but no stereo audio profile is present on the iPhone. The S9 only does phone audio through the left earbud, so they aren’t really a good option for iPhone users until an A2DP profile is available for the iPhone. Even the Apple earbuds route audio to both ears during a call, which provides better audio quality and volume than using the speaker itself.

I think that I will plan to try the V-MODA Vibe Duo headset for a better fit once the new model is available with the phone/iPod control built into the mic. As much as I like the Jabra headset, I also want to be able to hear music and that is not possible wirelessly yet.

WiFi

The iPhone supports both 802.11b and 802.11g for connectivity to wireless LAN access points. I set up my iPhone to connect to the WiFi on board the cruise ship, and then at home, and finally at work. All had different speeds, different security, and different SSIDs and the iPhone handled switching between access points (APs) with ease. One note – at home and at work we use MAC filtering to prevent access from drive-by users, and there is no easy way to obtain the iPhone MAC address without going deep into the General Settings menu (Settings widget -> General -> About -> WiFi address.) Users will use the settings menu to either add a new wireless network manually or allow the iPhone to detect new wireless networks for approval.

Of course, keeping the WiFi on all of the time will cause the battery to last less time than without. It can also open up the iPhone for security vulnerabilities over WiFi, as demonstrated by a security firm recently. As with any similar device, the user must manage their wireless connections so as to minimize the risks and maximize battery life. And the iPhone has the best battery life of any PDAPhone ever, even in its slim form factor.

Who is the iPhone for?

Based on features, I would venture to say that Apple is targeting music aficionados, users who have both an iPod and a cell phone, and perhaps the small business user who doesn’t need full Exchange and Office support.

I found that in daily use, which included phone calls, SMS, email, web browsing, and photo viewing, I was 3 days into my use when during one of our shore excursions while looking through a photo album, the iPhone locked up on me solid. One of the photos was frozen on screen and the display was powered on and stayed on for over 5 hours away from a charger. I had to go back to the ship and then look up the process to reset, since I didn’t have any documentation available. Once I had that information, I was able to do the reset by holding down the power on and Home buttons at the same time for 10 seconds until the Apple logo appeared. Since then, my iPhone has worked wonderfully. But it is definitely in the best interest of every user to go to Apple’s website and download the user manual.

I found that the iPod connector for my Pioneer DEH-P980BT car stereo works, even though my iPhone announces to me that it is incompatible and asks if I want to put the iPhone onto Airplane mode. I simply say no and everything works as it should. I have read of many who have had similar experiences with their Pioneer, Alpine and other car stereos but as always, your mileage may vary.

Additionally, I very recently found an application that manages the creation and loading of ringtones to the iPhone without any “hacking” – iPhoneRingToneMaker – which does an excellent job of editing MP3 or WAV files and then uploading them to the iPhone. It does require a reset of the iPhone to make them usable, but this is not a concern.

The iPhone can synchronize with more than one computer. The caveat is that it will only synchronize one group of items with one computer. For example, if I synchronize music with PC1 and photos with PC2, I can’t synch photos with PC1 without being prompted to overwrite the other photos, and the same applies if I wanted to synch music with PC2. But in my case, it is useful because I synch music, videos, and photos with my home laptop, and synch my calendar with my PC at work.

Pros
- Best screen in the business
- Simple to use, intuitive
- Fast performance
- Full browser support
- Threaded SMS conversations
- Comes with USB cable, dock and AC adapter
- Can use most other iPod accessories (chargers, etc.)
- Includes microfiber cleaning cloth
- Exceptional battery life
- Good built-in camera
- Works with most dash/cup holder mounts

Cons
- Limited Bluetooth profiles
- No custom ringtones (from Apple, 3rd party available)
- No SMS to multiple contacts at the same time
- No MMS
- Repeating appointments don’t sync correctly with Outlook
- Limited e-mail support (No push with Exchange for business users)
- Speaker and speakerphone volume too low
- Apple earbuds large and uncomfortable for long periods of use
- No carrying case
- No MS Office support
- No 3G (debatable point)
- Expensive

Conclusions

The iPhone isn’t for everyone. It is, however, a top-notch music and video player. It does not necessarily meet the business user’s needs, as it has limitations on the e-mail systems supported and does not have “push” e-mail except for Yahoo mail and only has limited Microsoft office document support. In fact, it is definitely NOT intended for the power business user.

However, I find the iPhone is probably the most highly engineered cell phone to date, and the user interface is second to none. I feel like I can finally throw away those dozens of styli that I have accumulated over the years of owning Palms, Treos, and Pocket PCs.

Additionally, there are more and more application developers working to unlock the secrets of the iPhone. There is already a nice utility program for making and loading ringtones to the iPhone that is simple to use and effective (iPhoneRingToneMaker) and I expect that more programs like it will start to appear over the next few months.

So far, after a month of use, it seems that people are either in the “love it or hate it” camps – there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. Yes, it seems that Apple didn’t meet expectations for units activated and that has given Apple stock a black eye. The reports about the non-replaceable battery and the process for return to Apple (and the cost to do so!) also have hurt public as well as investor opinion. However, these reports all seem to be somewhat slanted in the negative bias category, as the iPhone has only been released for one month so very few have had to return an iPhone for the battery to be changed. Instead, users have simply returned the iPhone under warranty and had a whole unit replacement. Apple is well known for their exceptional customer service and knowledgeable technical support, and I expect them to keep that trend with their entry into the cell phone world.

Yes, it has been called a “toy” and “junk” and lots of other names in many an online discussion forum. Once you have used one, you may think otherwise.