After using the iPhone for a few days, I can say it’s the best phone I’ve ever used. Here are some further impressions and some of my experiences with it.
For the first few days the battery didn’t seem to be charging completely. I never saw the plug icon; it continued to display the lightning bolt even after I had it plugged into the outlet all night. Until today, the ‘usage since full charge’ was blank, but today it finally showed the usage after I had it plugged in all last night.
I went to the beach today (I’m on vacation) and took the iPhone with me. As an iPod it’s excellent. I listened to it for several hours and the battery still showed almost a full charge. I also took a few pictures, which I importeinto iPhoto and adjusted the brightness & color, resulting in better pictures than posting to Flickr directly from the iPhone. I also checked my email using an EDGE connection and found it to be acceptable.
Yesterday, the EDGE network was down so I was unable to connect without a WiFi network. CingularAT&T’s signal is pretty bad in my home, so I usually have to go to a room in the back to make a call. It was the same way with every other cell phone I’ve owned. As long as I get at least 2 bars, the sound is loud & clear.
It does have a few user interface quirks. Most annoying is that the Email app doesn’t let you rotate the orientation. Text email is easy to read in the standard orientation, but HTML email can sometimes be ugly and difficult to read without flipping horizontally, depending on the style & layout. Also, it doesn’t let you hit buttons on the menu screen if you’re holding it horizontally. It also lacks the iPod’s “On-the-go” playlist feature, which lets you create a play list on the fly by adding tracks to it. I’m sure Apple will add some of those features with software updates.