Early iPhone Impressions
So I had to sneak into the GayGamer castle, run to my room and bolt the door this evening. If the other boys knew I'd brought home an iPhone they would be trying to break down the door. Even though it is sure to feel like sleeping on a bed of rocks, I'll have to hide it under a stack of ninety nine mattresses when I go to sleep tonight. Alright then, enough about the castle drama and on with the story.
After running an errand today, I found myself in the vicinity of an Apple store. I figured it might be a long shot, but I decided to stop by and at least look at how long the line was. I got there around 3:00 PM with three hours until the launch, and I was number 113 in line. They were giving away free bottles of water, free ice cream, free pizza, and free coffee. As you might imagine, it was a jovial atmosphere. Unlike waiting in line for my Wii, this crowd spanned all ages and demographics. Make the jump for the rest of the review.
6:00 PM rolled around fairly quickly which was nice since I had failed to bring my DS. Oh, the shame. Amazingly, I didn't see anyone playing DS or PSP. When the doors opened there was applause and yelling from the front of the store. The line moved remarkably fast and within 5 mins or so, I found myself inside the store. There were piles of iPhones. It was nothing like the Wii or PS3 launches. The best I could tell, everyone who wanted an iPhone and was there by 6:00 PM got one. I briefly stopped to play with one of the demo units before leaving to catch the magical coach back the the castle.
The iPhone is sleek and sexy. It fits my hand nicely and is thinner than a closed MOTORAZR which is great for my pocket. The display is beautiful, and the touchscreen works really well. I will need a day or two to become really proficient with the keyboard, but I'm already typing as well as I did on my old Treo.
Here are some things I discovered that I haven't seen talked about in other reviews:
- iPod can play over speakerphone speakers.
- Works with any existing Bluetooth headset.
- Camera takes nice pictures even with indoor lighting.
- There is clearly room on the home page for a whole other row of application icons.
- Although iChat is not yet supported, SMS forwarding of AIM messages does work like on any other cellphone.
When I heard the announcement that YouTube would be included with the iPhone, I yawned. However, I must say that over a WiFi connection, it is rather impressive. Overall it really is an incredible platform with so much potential. I can hardly wait to see what Apple has in store for updates. One really exciting possibility is the rumor that Apple and Nintendo are in partnership talks. This article over at NoHeat claims we may see Nintendo games on the iPhone. Never mind that this would seem in contrast to their DS strategy. I for one would love it. 
Mikey
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany on 29 June 2007
· Comments (11)
Congrats, you big gadget nerd!! LOL!
How's AT&T's connection? Is it as lousy as I've read and heard? I have absolutely no plans to get one any time soon. Too expensive and too much shit to go through. I'll wait til at least next year when my 2 year plan with Verizon dies, and hopefully other carriers will host iPhone, not just just AT&T.
I got one, I love it. I haven't yet had a chance to try the Edge, they dont seem to cover my house (which is a bad sign, but I have wifi at home so it works out). I'll try the edge support when I'm in town but from what I heard on Gizmodo it worked well enough to download that youtube clip of the dog on the skateboard without much wait.
My logic is since I will only be checking email when im on the road, edge should be more than enough. There are enough hotspots around if I need to do some bandwidth intensive stuff THAT badly (which is rare in my life)
The Nintendo thing is probably a rumor, nothing more. I'm not sure the touch screen would be a very good interface for most games anyway (New Super Mario Bros. being a good example since it mostly uses the D pad). Some original Iphone only games would be cool though, but for now all Jobs is allowing is silly Ajax apps (but there are a few rumors that they will open up the iphone in a few months, here's hoping).
I hope that there will be some sort of connectivity between iPhone-DS-Wii.
so 600 dollars for a phone is ok...but not for a console. ok.
Never was much into a phone - hated all the extras as I never use them and never found a phone small enough that was just a phone.
Anyway, this sounds like it might be going in the right direction. We just need worldwide wireless connectivity and we can be online anywhere anytime on a nice touchscreen.
One thing I *really* want to know is battery life. PSP battery life sucks. I don't want to recharge everyday (or every other day) to use my phone. :)
How on Earth would you play Mario without any buttons? I guess you could use a stylus or your finger, but you'd be covering most of the screen.
I tend to agree with Davem.
People bitch, moan, trash-talk, and complain about the PS3 being so expensive, but $600 for a f**king phone sounds reasonable???
This makes no sense whatsoever to me...
I'd have both a PS3 and an iPhone right now if I had the cash.
Mmm, Apple-y goodness...sounds awesome, if someone drops $600 into my lap I'll have a tough decision to make...
Hey, I'd have a PS3 if there were games on it that I really wanted to play. Eventually there will be.
Davem: people who buy apple KNOW that it don't come cheap. these are the folks that pay $200 for a wireless router so they can hook their printer into it and share it with other computers.
(I did tech support for apple for close to two years. Apple customers shell out a lot, but let me tell you, they tend to be very happy with their computer.)
Davem is absolutely right, though maybe not in the way he intended. Like the PS3, the iPhone is pretty, incredibly technically advanced.... and absurdly expensive while being mediocre at best when it comes to its intended task.
OK, so the UI looks pretty nice, but I look forward to the knockoffs that:
1. work with my choice of provider
2. have actual buttons so I don't have to look at or listen to the phone to operate it
3. let me just copy my mp3's, ebooks, videos, etc. to the microSD card rather than having to find a computer running something other than Linux to run their dumb program on (that's right, I've never once used iTunes in my life)
4. oh yeah, has a microSD slot in the first place.... or even a regular SD slot....
5. lets me set my own ringtones by just copying files over to it
6. costs 200 or less with a 2-year activation (wasn't the 2-year activation thing supposed to subsidize these phones? what will an unlocked iPhone cost whenever they come out, a grand?!)
I'll be the first to admit that I've outgrown my free-with-activation Sprint camera phone, with its miserable little 120x144 web browser that crashes on any page with more than 2 graphics, and QVGA camera with tiny LED "flash".
But even this lousy phone lets me do my web banking, use Google Maps and set my own (MIDI) ringtones without buying them from Sprint. (Yes, I use Sprint, because my parents are on my family share plan and I can't subject them to phones that look or work significantly different at their age. It took them two years just to learn how to check their voice mail. Seriously.)
I look forward to getting a Treo or Linux-based or even (shudder) Windows Mobile phone that does most of what the iPhone does for half the price, while also letting me use VOIP over wifi to save my minutes, and meets most or all of the criteria at the top of this post. And just like now, I'll be able to dial the phone or even text message someone without ever looking at it. You have no idea how useful that is until you've become proficient at it and been stuck in a meeting where you can't be seen TM'ing constantly. It's good for driving, too, though I suppose the iPhone must have some "call Fluffy" voice recognition thing that might actually work.
But I guess I have no idea how useful it is to, um.... scroll through my pictures by flicking my phone's screen with my finger, or zoom out by crushing someone's head. (Crush! Crush!)
So, yeah, the iPhone is basically the PS3. All the glowing reviews of the iPhone have told me breathlessly how wonderfully it does everything.... while glossing over the actual phone. And most of the PS3 apologists have waxed masturbatory about how awesome it was as a high-def movie player and all that other junk.... but when it comes to games, "just wait."
I didn't buy a PS3, and I won't buy an iPhone either. But I'll buy something half the price of an iPhone that's actually a phone, just as I bought something half the price of the PS3 that's actually a game console. Unlike most of the people going nuts over this gadget, my phone is my business and my life. And it has to be a phone first, and the camera and mp3 player stuff are nice too... AFTER they make the best PHONE ever made.