I took the afternoon off of work to stand in line and purchase an iPhone.
You want to know more about what it is like to use an iPhone than it is to stand in line for 3+ hours to get one, right? Of course you do.
Worth.every.penny.
Now, I have very little to compare it to. I don't have a SmartPhone. My old phone was next to stupid, to be honest. It was nearly 3 years old. I planned on upgrading last year when Mark told me to wait until January with the keynote. Rumors were heavy there would be an iPhone. There there was the Keynote at MacWorld. Yup. I'm getting an iPhone. No doubt about it. Must own one. The Precious.........
After 6 months of waiting and hype, I couldn't take it anymore! I left work early to go to Green Hills Mall and wait. The guy next to me was someone I had been chatting with on the MacRumors forum that morning. So, I finally get in the store and purchase my iPhone. I get home around 7:15. After unloading some Plumgood groceries, I was ready to activate my iPhone by 8pm... that is after I finally got iTunes 7.3 to work.
In all, activation only took me abut 20 minutes once iTunes was working properly. They couldn't port my T-mobile number at the time. The guy at the AT&T store today said that I should call them on Sunday morning. In the meantime, the idiot turned off the phone part of my iPhone. It still works as an iPod, "revolutionary internet device" or whatever His Jobsness called it.. but no texting or making phone calls. I'm going to call them when I finish with this blog post to see if they can't fix that. Stupid.
Anyway, so, it does everything they say it will do. I was playing some music through the iPod last night and a phone call came it. The music quieted down and I could take the call. When I was finished, the music picked right back up. GoogleMaps was easy to set up with my home and work addresses stored in favorites. It automatically syncs my calendar and address book every time I dock it to my.
It doesn't allow me to add only one song to the iPhone. I can only work in playlists (btw - if you don't do this with your iPod - apparently I am the only person I know doing it this way - you can set a preference to manually manage the must on your iPod in iTunes.) So, that's annoying to me but everyone who works in playlists won't care.
The keyboard. I've never used like a BlackBerry keyboard so I have nothing to compare it to. It does take some getting use to. It's alot easier to use in landscape than in portrait. Right now, I make alot of typos. It's difficult to get used to exactly where to press to get a particular letter, but I think as I use it more, typing will become much easier.
The internet works great when you are in a wifi hotspot (oh - like my house). We tested it at Cracker Barrel this morning and EDGE is slow.
It switches between applications. There's no closing. When in Safari, it pops up to the last window you visited. It is super easy to switch between web pages. I had as many as 6 open last night.
Cover Flow in iPod is soooooooo cool. I love that.
*UPDATE* I called AT&T tech support to find out why I couldn't make or receive phone calls with my iPhone. He said that it was trying to reach a tower no longer in range. All I needed to do was shut it completely off and wait a few seconds. It works just fine now. The customer service was actually pretty good. I didn't wait long at all for a representative initially but took less than 5 minutes to get to actual tech support (I didn't call tech support first - I called the general customer care line.)
The screen can get kind of smudgy after it has been pressed against your face but that's why they've given you headphones with a mic. Der. It also comes with a suede like cleaning cloth. The belt clip I bought at the Apple Store today from Griffin (who gave us iSqueez and California Roll products for our iPods) also came with a cleaning cloth. FYI - Griffin is based here in Nashville.
So, in short, I am very, very, very happy with my iPhone. It was worth the wait. Have any other questions? Shoot them my in the comments!
All of the pictures can be found on flickr.
