MattMaroon.com

So the iPhone is out. It sold pretty well opening weekend, with morons lining up overnight like it was the PS3 even though Apple had shipped more than enough units for everyone. No word on anyone getting stabbed at least.

I’ve met a few people who have them and every time I ask how they like it, I get the same “I love it”. The weird thing, though, is that it isn’t the same “I love it” you get when you ask someone how they like their new Lexus. It’s more like the one you’d get if you asked them how they like being a member of the Heaven’s Gate cult, and delivered with the same glazed-over eyes.

I played with one a little. It is a cool phone. It’s thin but surprisingly heavy in your hand (though still lighter than a Treo). The OS is unsurprisingly well designed. The browser is without a doubt the best I’ve ever seen on the phone, largely because of the multi-touch. You can zoom in and out easily. Picture viewing is just as good, and movie viewing is probably great too if you’re one of the eight people who have any movies that will play on it.

It does have its warts. Battery life is decent (but not spectacular) so far, but it is not user-replaceable and in a year that’s going to be a huge problem for a lot of people. And typing is brutal if you’re used to a QWERTY phone. I tried to type in my website, www.thepokerchronicles.com, and it took me at least twice as long to do so as it would have on my Q the first time, and with a few mistypes. It has predictive text, but then so does Windows Mobile, and most WinMo phones have a keypad.

They seem to have fixed whatever bug the early reports mentioned about browsing being slow on Wi-Fi. That or I just didn’t notice it. It definitely seemed reasonable. I’m sure EDGE does not though.

So, the phone is exactly what I expected. A great phone for a really bad price on a really bad carrier. Even though it’s probably near or at 1 million units sold, I’m still more than willing to bet the under on 10 million by the end of 2008. The tradeoff of a keypad for a bigger window is just not one people who can easily afford such an expensive phone will be willing to make.

This entry was posted on July 13, 2007 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Me Thinking So You Don't Have To . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.