My First Day with Apple's iPhone

Reviews: Electronics

Digital Cameras | PDAs | Communications

Author:
Editor:
Sponsor:
Published:

Anthony Fiti
Kurtis
N/A
Jul. 1, 2007

Specifications

<< Previous

Next >>

Out of the Box

I got home and proceeded to remove the iPhone from its box. I had already downloaded and updated the iTunes software on my Macbook to the new 7.3 version that is required for the iPhone. I go through the activation process, and since I'm an existing AT&T subscriber, I punch in my current phone number and I'm off and running. The entire activation process from start to end took me about 5 minutes, and another two minutes for the phone to receive its activation codes from the cellular networks. It doesn't take long for me to make my first call.

The call quality for the first few phone calls was good, though I was in my empty house with no one else home and nothing going on in the background. I haven't had a chance to use it in a really noisy environment yet. There are no problems with signal strength - it gets the same five bars in my house that my Samsung D807 got.

All the ads you've seen are exactly how the user interface works. Everything is animated and moves around fluidly. It still feels like I'm not using a computer, it is almost organic. I attribute the user experience to Core Animation, one of the foundation technologies for OS X (it will be included in OS X 10.5 Leopard).

There are lots of settings to go through, it was almost overwhelming actually - WiFi (which detected my WPA security and asked for my password), voicemail - you have to setup an entirely new mailbox since the visual voicemail isn't compatible with the traditional cell phone voicemail boxes AT&T provides. Setting up things like weather, mail accounts and contacts can take a while.

<< Previous

Page 2 of 5

Next >>

Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Out of the Box
Page 3: iPod, the Internet, and More...
Page 4: Bugs and Issues
Page 5: Overall Initial Impression

Subscribe to Communications [more info]

Add Comment

3 User Comments

1 - Posted by MichaelHarper on July 2, 2007 - 3:00 pm

So I was totally ragging on this device, and on the fanboys, and on the hype... until this morning, when i held one. The EDGE network speed sucks balls, but the browser itself is awesome, and the pan/zoom functionality of the multi-touch screen is very intuitive and functional. The soft keyboard was more functional than my T9 phone, but less than some real QWERTYs I've tried. I need to play with the keyboard some more, but I'm leaning towards buying one.

2 - Posted by Brian on July 2, 2007 - 3:54 pm

The thing with the keyboard, from what I have read from people who have used an iPhone longer than one day, say that it gets easier with time. Within a couple weeks, it becomes rather easy to use. So you can't really judge it entirely on your first experience like many people are. Personally though, as I hate typing on anything smaller than a full-size keyboard...

3 - Posted by handrail on July 3, 2007 - 9:26 am

meh. all tiny keyboards suck anyway. i'm sure the iPhone one will be no different than learning to graffiti on a PDA.

Add Comment

To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields.