Gotta have it.
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The phone is so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese.
The glass gets smudgy—a sleeve wipes it clean—but it doesn’t scratch easily. I’ve walked around with an iPhone in my pocket for two weeks, naked and unprotected (
the iPhone, that is, not me), and there’s not a mark on it.
But
the bigger achievement is
the software. It’s fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate. You can’t get lost, because
the solitary physical button below
the screen always opens
the Home page, arrayed with icons for
the iPhone’s 16 functions.
You’ve probably seen Apple’s ads, showing how things on
the screen have a physics all their own. Lists scroll with a flick of your finger, CD covers flip over as you flick them, e-mail messages collapse down into a trash can. Sure, it’s eye candy. But it makes
the phone fun to use, which is not something you can say about most cellphones.
Apple has chosen AT&T (formerly Cingular) to be
the iPhone’s exclusive carrier for
the next few years, in part because
the company gave Apple carte blanche to revise everything people hate about cellphones.
For example, you don’t sign up for service in a phone store, under pressure from
the sales staff. You peruse and choose a plan at your leisure, in
the iTunes software on your computer.
Better yet, unlimited Internet service adds only $20 a month to AT&T’s voice-plan prices, about half what BlackBerry and Treo owners pay. For example, $60 gets you 450 talk minutes, 200 text messages and unlimited Internet; $80 doubles that talk time.
The iPhone requires one of these voice-and-Internet plans and a two-year commitment.
On
the iPhone, you don’t check your voice mail; it checks you. One button press reveals your waiting messages, listed like e-mail. There’s no dialing in, no password — and no sleepy robot intoning, “You...have...twenty...one...messages.”
To answer a call, you can tap Answer on
the screen, or pinch
the microscopic microphone bulge on
the white earbud cord. Either way, music or video playback pauses until you hang up. (When you’re listening to music, that pinch pauses
the song. A double-pinch advances to
the next song.)
Making a call, though, can take as many as six steps: wake
the phone, unlock its buttons, summon
the Home screen, open
the Phone program, view
the Recent Calls or speed-dial list, and select a name. Call quality is only average, and depends on
the strength of your AT&T signal.
E-mail is fantastic. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with graphics; you can even open (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF documents.
The Web browser, though, is
the real dazzler. This isn’t some stripped-down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit
the screen. You scroll with a fingertip —much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate
the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies
the image to fill
the wider view.
Finally, you can enlarge a Web page—or an e-mail message, or a photo—by spreading your thumb and forefinger on
the glass.
The image grows as though it’s on a sheet of latex.
The iPhone is also an iPod. When in its U.S.B. charging cradle,
the iPhone slurps in music, videos and photos from your Mac or Windows PC. Photos, movies and even YouTube videos look spectacular on
the bright 3.5-inch very-high-resolution screen.
The Google Maps module lets you view street maps or aerial photos for any address. It can provide driving directions, too. It’s not real G.P.S. —
the iPhone doesn’t actually know where you are — so you tap
the screen when you’re ready for
the next driving instruction.
But how’s this for a consolation prize? Free live traffic reporting, indicated by color-coded roads on
the map.
Apple says one battery charge is enough for 8 hours of calls, 7 hours of video or 24 hours of audio. My results weren’t quite as impressive: I got 5 hours of video and 23 hours of audio, probably because I didn’t turn off
the phone, Wi-Fi and other features, as Apple did in its tests. In practice, you’ll probably wind up recharging about every other day.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/te...hp&oref=slogin
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