The Smartphone For The Rest of Us - and it may save your job!

Not for "CrackBerry" addicts or techno-geeks, but for everyone else who wants the ultimate all-around smart phone. We've had his-and-her 8 GB iPhones for two months now, and we're still delighting in all the amazing features. It's been said that "the internet changes everything", and this device, which lets you take the internet with you wherever you go, will have you completely re-thinking how you use your cell phone. There's so much to say about this phone that we can't cover it all here. Ideally, visit your local Apple Store to get the most information, or visit Apple.com and go through several of their tutorials.

Could this phone save your job?

This device will allow you to navigate the web and access your personal email account at work WITHOUT having to use your company's computer. A recent Reader's Digest article on the subject of people getting fired for sending OR RECEIVING seemingly innocuous personal email messages or surfing inappropriate web sites is enough to strike terror into the heart of every office worker. Even checking your web-based email can be monitored on your office computer, desktop OR laptop. Company-installed-spyware is VERY LIKELY to reside therein, and it's 100% LEGAL. If you're fired for inappropriate use of company computers as determined by your management, THAT'S ALSO 100% LEGAL - and you won't have ANY chance to appeal on legal grounds. The iPhone lets you keep your web and email business to yourself, away from your boss's prying eyes. So for those of you holding back because of the price, it's VERY SMALL indeed as compared to the worth of your job.

Could this phone save your laptop too?

Speaking from personal experience, it's not a good idea to take your laptop to bed with you if you have a home wireless system. One night I drifted off to sleep and the the computer fell from the bedspread to the floor, causing several hundred dollars in repairs. I'm now exclusively using the iPhone as my bedtime computer, and with a leather case there's absolutely no harm if it's dropped from that distance. As a bonus, the iPhone's alarm feature allows you to set several wake-up alarms, each one with a "snooze" feature.

The Most Amazing Feature

. . .is the way you can access the web from any location, and then manipulate the screen image so that the print is actually easier to read than a newspaper. This is a RADICAL departure from how other cell phones present the web. For example, we recently observed a (techno-geeky appearing) fellow in a Starbucks peering into his cell phone screen with a magnifying glass in one hand and a stylus in the other, as he clumsily attempted to surf the web. It was hilarious to watch, especially after having the experience of using an iPhone. For example, say you want to read the New York Times online. You go to your bookmarks, select it, and the screen is loaded with a miniature version of the home page. The AT&T EDGE network is slow, and it will take about a minute to load if you're not on WiFi (the latter about 10 seconds) -- but that's a small inconvenience for what you're getting. You scan the miniature page, touch your finger twice quickly on the article you want, and it expands to occupy the entire screen. To get even more amplification, you rotate the screen sideways and it's even easier to read. The space that the screen occupies 18 inches from my eyes is roughly equivalent to that of our 50 inch plasma TV screen viewed from a distance of 12 feet. You scroll through the article by making upward sweeps on the screen with your fingers. The screen resolution is amazing, with beautiful color news photos that can be further expanded by pushing outward with your thumb and forefinger on the screen.

Waiting for your wife while she's shopping?

No problem -- just get out your iPhone, insert the headphones, pick your favorite tunes, and go to the web browser to check out the latest headlines while you're listening. If she calls to ask you to come check out the great dress she's found, the ring tone mutes the music, and with a switch on the headphone wire you can answer. If someone else calls while you're talking, you can easily put that person on too for a conference call. If you want to disregard the second call, it goes to voicemail which you can check later on your phone WITHOUT having to call a special phone number. Message call-back is easy; simply press a green button and it dials for you.

Not for "CrackBerry" Users

If you're adept at using the multi-button BlackBerry smartphones, the no-keyboard-buttons iPhone likely isn't for you. This is mainly due to the current poor screen presentation of the email keyboard. For some inexplicable reason Apple decided to orient the screen vertically, which compresses the keys too close together for easy use. A software fix creating a horizontal screen orientation would eliminate this problem, and such is rumored to be on the way.

Email beautifully presented

Your email messages are easy to read and delete, and you can configure mailboxes easily from the computer with which you sync the iPhone. To save the battery it checks the mail every 15 minutes, which may not be fast enough for hardcore Blackberry users but works fine for us.

SMS text messaging

Is very visual, with balloons to easily distinguish your messages from your correspondent's, and you can have multiple message threads going and can easily go from one to another. This is a great way to inexpensively communicate, and you get 200 free messages per month.

Voicemail

is a dream to use, as mentioned earlier. NO CALLING to a separate number, and callback is easy -- both there were problems with our old Verizon account. You can save multiple messages for playback whenever you want, and messages are marked as played or unplayed. Also helpful is a screen identifying recent calls.

Contact List

Can be synced from your computer's contact list, using several available formats. You can list multiple phone numbers and email addresses for each contact, as well as have a picture -- which will be displayed when that person calls -- cool! There's an alphabet bar on the right of the contact screen, letting you easily touch-navigate your way to the person you're looking for. When you touch the contact's email address, a mail message with that address is immediately generated. When you touch the contact's phone number it's immediately dialed.

Music

If you're familiar with the iPod, you'll have no problem navigating and using this feature. A big bonus is that now the albums and songs can be scrolled through with the touch screen. Another new feature is that each playlist has a "shuffle" option which allows the iPhone to randomly go through that playlist.

Photos and Videos

We have several thousand photos stored in our 8GB model, along with about a thousand songs, and still have about 1 GB left. The touch screen makes scrolling and enlarging photos a breeze, and we've easily categorized the photos through the Apple iPhoto program for importing into the phone. If memory ever becomes an issue, it's easy to tell the iPhone what to sync in or out in the iTunes program, so your list can always change as you wish. Videos are extremely pleasant to watch -- again, see the comparison above with our 50 inch plasma TV.

Google Maps

This is all the navigation system that you'll ever need! Well, we confess that we also have a Garmin 340 car navigation system, and it will talk to you and tell you exactly where you are. Which of course is better than the iPhone, which neither chatters nor has a built-in GPS. But we've used the Google feature several times when we didn't have the Garmin with us, and it worked perfectly. It tells you when to turn, and you simply touch the screen to let it know that you've made the turn. And it's much easier than the Garmin to carry when you're walking the streets instead of driving.

Weather

We've set this up to tell us the six-day weather forecasts for eleven different cities near us in California. What's really also wonderful about this feature is that, in the lower left corner for each city, you can touch an icon that takes you to the Yahoo-based internet page for that city, giving you current events happening there as well as places to stay, restaurants, etc. Amazing! This has saved us from going up to either the beach or San Francisco on several occasions when the weather was bad in those locations.

Calendar

This is very well thought-out, and syncs via several protocols to your computer's calendar. There are three views: list, day and month; and you can set alarms for each scheduled event.

Camera

This will not satisfy a techno-geek's requirements for a flash, stability control and high resolution, having neither the former two nor more than 2 megapixels. However, the pictures are perfectly suited for us, and emailing the pictures to each other is a breeze using the iPhone's interface. We'll continue to use our Canon digital SLR for all serious pics, but the iPhone is so much more easy and convenient to use.

Notes

There is a notepad function, and you can take and save multiple notes. However, it would be better to have a fully functional word processor with the ability to download documents from your computer. Currently the only way to do this is to email yourself documents in Adobe PDF format, and then view these in your email program -- without being able to edit them. I hope a word processor feature will be added in the future, as well as a spreadsheet program.

Carrying it

We bought Encase black-leather belt phone holders, and these have protected both phones very well as provided easy use. The phone fits easily in my pocket, and the very robust hardened-glass screen isn't harmed at all by loose change or keys.

Other Goodies

These include an alarm function that allows you to set multiple alarms; a timer function; a stopwatch/lap timer function; and a calculator function. Each of these has a beautiful matte-black screen presentation, and each is highly usable.

AT&T Cost

We're paying about $30 more per month for our two iPhones than we were paying with our Verizon non-smartphone cell phones. The plan includes all-you-can-eat email and web browsing, and our plan also includes 200 free text messages. Unlike Verizon, our unused minutes roll over from month to month, so our long term costs could be lower than with Verizon. Also, calls are free to other AT&T customers, including land line numbers.

Network

Verizon has a better performing network, with fewer dropped or missed calls per our experience. However, we're happy with the current performance, which is MUCH BETTER than what we had when we briefly tried the old Cingular several years ago (before it became "the new AT&T"). You can read our reviews on both these networks.

Damage Insurance

Doesn't exist for the iPhone! So if you lose or drop your phone a lot, this is not the device for you. AT&T refers you to Apple, and Apple only offers their "AppleCare" program, which extends the warranty beyond the first year but doesn't insure against theft or damage. Think of your purchase as an iPod or camera, and it's easier to rationalize. And really protect your device carefully (see above note re leather case). A stolen iPhone will be totally useless to the thief, but that's still unlikely to stop them. Although we haven't dropped our phones without the case, a YouTube video doing this at different heights indicates that it's built very solidly -- glass cracking didn't occur until a height of several feet over the tester's head, on concrete -- and it still worked even then. Per the "Will it Blend?" website, you shouldn't expect it to survive a session in your VitaMix. (we have a review on that too!)

Bluetooth Headset

We bought Apple's headset, and don't use it a lot, but it's worked well for us, unlike for some other reviewers. It's definitely the best looking/smallest profile headset on the market, and doesn't make you look quite as geeky as models by Jawbone, etc. It hasn't given us any reception problems when the iPhone worn from our belts - we don't use our pockets to carry it. One of the unique things about this headset is that it "pairs" automatically with your iPhone when you put it in the (also-supplied) charging cradle -- no tweaks or screwing around with settings. Also, the headset is simplicity itself, with only one button (on/off) and one light (ditto). Folks who like to jog with their headsets on may be disappointed, as there's no ear-wire to guarantee that it will stay on in rough circumstances. It fits well in our ears without falling out, but some reviewers on the Apple web site have complained about it popping out at inopportune times. One reviewer found a solution to this, with a commercially available sheath surrounding the earbud that holds it in tightly.

In Summary

As its operating system is what makes the iPhone tick, all of the functional shortcomings cited above should be fixed in future software updates. Further, many new functions are possible given the unique features, such as the ability to send information between iPhones using the WiFi feature, and wireless syncing. All considered, this is an INSANELY GREAT phone, one that continues to delight us on a daily basis and yes, is well worth the additional $100 extra per phone (including the $100 rebate) that we spent because we got ours early. That's not bad, though, considering that the Motorola Razr originally cost over $500 and is now being given away. But if you're waiting for the latter to happen with the iPhone, I surmise that that's at least two years away - if indeed it ever happens - and in the interim you'll be missing much more than the current price in terms of value and pleasure.

Last - but not least - to consider re price is the cost of the iPhone vis a vis the value of your job (see second paragraph above). Think of it as a very cheap insurance policy.

October 13, 2007 update on Web Apps

Wow! Apple just added a feature (actually, over 200 of such features) that exponentially increases the usefullness of this phone! Web apps are web sites that are tailor-made to the iPhone's screen size and attributes, making the browsing experience much easier and more pleasurable. For example, I can now play chess, sudoku, tetris, etc, with my phone, create shopping lists, network to my home computer, take voice notes to myself that are transcribed and emailed to me, use a language translater, use conversion formulas, etc, etc, etc. People have been whining that Apple won't let developers add widget-like applications that reside directly in the iPhone, but this solution is much better in several ways. First, it won't eat up your memory, as the applications reside on the web. And second, the applications will be updated on the web and not on your computer. It would be nice to also have widgets too, but I can wait until the iPhone grows more memory in the future.