Hands-On iPhone Impressions

I was in Providence, RI on the fourth visiting my daughter and we ended up heading over to the Mall downtown for some lunch. There's an Apple store in the mall and - of course - we just had to get some hands-on time with the iPhone. They had a bunch of them out for people to play with and the four of us (12 year old, 15 year old, my wife and I) each ended up with one for about an hour. Here's our impressions:

Overall User Interface - Excellent. Extremely intuitive.I enjoyed the pinch zoom ans stretch features and I love the way the screen re-orients itself as it is rotated back and forth between portrait and landscape. I also love flicking the pages around - much easier than my Mobile PC device scroll bars.

Size - Perfect. Small enough to fit in a pocket and big enough so I can see everything on the screen.

Display - WOW - Incredible. Fingerprints - not an issue.

Multitouch Keyboard - Excellent interface. I've heard some negatives about it but, in our opinion, it is easier to use than a Blackberry keyboard.

Voice Quality - Incredible. You could actually make voice calls right from the demos on the floor. Both ends crystal clear.

Comfort - when held to the ear like a regular phone - excellent. And.... it was cool to the touch on my ear (the heat of my current phone drives me crazy)!

Email - Very Good basic email features and functions. You cannot BCC right now. The intelligent keyboard using predictive techniques is excellent. SSL and encrypted authentication are also supported.

Safari - Very good. I'm a Firefox fan - can't give it an excellent! Seriously, I was very impressed. On the down side - at this time Safari does not support Flash, Java, or QuickTime plug-ins.

iPod - this is a new interface, it is different than the iPod! In portrait orientation there are four buttons at the bottom of the screen that you can "shortcut" with your favorite functions. When you rient the device into landscape you get a "Cover Flow" view showing album covers that you flick as you move through them.

Speed - it starts and shuts down fast. I could not test the AT&T EDGE network because we were on a Wi-Fi connection in the store.

Widgets - these are what Apple calls the applications currently on the iPhone. The 2 Megapixel camera is a step up from any phone I have ever had. Mike has a pic he took with his posted here. There is a weather widget, a stock widget and - as you all konw - a uTube widget. All very easy to use.

It was very interesting to watch people come up and pick out up for the first time. Amazing to watch the looks on their faces and see them focus on figuring out how to use it. It is incredible intuitive - no instructions, nobody showing people how to start using it. Old timers, kids - doesn't matter - everyone I watched picked it up and immediately started using it. It was even more interesting to watch people try and put it down and, once they did, have them come back for more in 5 or 10 minutes.

One father with a couple of young children (I'm guessing around 10 years old) was dragged in by his kids. The kids each picked up one of the demos with him rolling his eyes. Within two minutes he had one in his hands and all I kept hearing was "Wow!" and "Look at this!".

After I put it down for the last time I pulled out my Razor and I could feel myself technologically taking a massive leap backwards...... as I called Cingular in an attempt to break my current phone contract......