Well – I finally got a chance to play with the iPhone in person. It’s a slick piece of equipment – but is it worth the $600 (not including the two year commitment with AT&T)?
I did like the interface – it’s intuitive and flashy. It’s especially nice when looking at pictures and surfing the Internet. On the other hand, the iPhone I was playing with had trouble sensing when I turned the phone from vertical to horizontal. But shaking the phone when I rotated it seemed to do the trick.
As for browsing, I was disappointed. It was slow and crashed at least three times in the 10 minutes I was using it. I’m not sure if it was using Wi-Fi or the AT&T network, but I hope it was the AT&T network, otherwise the iPhone is REALLY slow. That said, why Apple didn’t have the phones using Wi-Fi remains a mystery.
Finally, as many people have already commented, the touch screen keyboard takes some getting used to. My thumbs are used to the Treo 650, and so I found that I was making more typos than usual.
I came to the conclusion by asking: “what does the iPhone do that my phone doesn’t?” And other than a cooler interface and some nice voicemail management, my answer is “not much.” I think I’ll wait until iPhone 2.0 (or 3.0)
