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Kathy
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None of these "cool" phones are available with any of the pre-paid or "pay as you go" plans.
I got burned on a previous contract and am not interested in having another contract for my cell phone, which kind of leaves people like me out of the loop (and there are a lot of us...we are a huge market share).
I cannot understand why all of the truly functional and advanced phones are only available with contracted plans. All of the month-to-month plans offer very basic phones which leave much to be desired.
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Kathy
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I also meant to add... People don't have contracts for their land line home phones, so why do cell phone companies trap us in contracts?
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OLd tech
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Blah Blah, but does it have a good crystal, this the basis of a good transmitter/ receiver, a good crystal = good sound quality= good value. IF these stupid toys can do its basic functions, like can it transmit/receive signal well, lets say at a stadium or train station, does the phone's reception have more than one bar...blah blah, you pseudo techies are a bunch of amateurs....does AT&T provide a good network..no, never has...I find its funny no one mentions the cost of texting per mega byte...typical Apple uneducated cattle...or the Trib is getting a good buck for a commercial review.
Why are you texting on a Phone? Isnt the point to CALL people?
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American
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Ted Shackleford wrote: This review seems to be focused on ease of use only. My concern is functionality and customization. The iPhone has always lost out to the Sprint Touch (another version of the HTC Touch that the Verizon's XV6900 is based on) on that front. Though this review is fine, it's biased as other reviews are toward the iPhone. Reviewers need to expand their minds beyond ease of use when the iPhone doesn't do much when compared to other phones that are currently available. I agree totally. What matters is that a phone CAN do something, not whether or not it is intuitive to learn the functions or whether they can be executed easily. Engineers would do well to remember that if something is too easy to do, people might do it a lot, and this could be dangerous, for example, if something is too easy, people might try to do it while driving. Usability is a safety issue.
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johnny justice
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The iphone reigns supreme. I feel sorry for those who don't have it.
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American
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The 5th Angel wrote: I concur with MarkRG.
All Apple is good for is "packaging". As far as functionality, Apple trails the pack by a wide margin. The price/performance ratio of ANY Apple product is always whacked. You get what you pay for. If you want cheap, go with a Korean knockoff. Apple does not compromise on its design or its engineering and as for open standards, it is not going to wait for the rest of the slackers to catch up to the marketplace. Also, it is well to remember that iPhone was intended to be an iPod with phone capabilities, not a Blackberry killer, although it certainly could become the latter with a bit more effort.
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Brookfield
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Agreed - iphones are cool. But *THIS* is the lead story for the trib today???
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OLd tech
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actually I paid $600 for mine when it came out, dropped it recently the touch pad died, delicate technology has no place in the real world. Lucky i got a simple samsung with the insurance, durability is also a factor now with anything i buy. I phone is nice and shiny, it might impress the unwashed masses, dont waste your cash, unless you want to be some status symbol kinda thing. I dont feel sorry for anyone who pays a premium to get a basic toy. and stop with the smug Apple BS
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American
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Jeff wrote: "Much like the overwhelming success of the Mac over the PC as an operating system,"
Carolyn, how is 5-8% of the market for Macs "overwhelming success" over the 95-92% of the market that Windows PC manufacturers enjoy over the Mac? I run XP on my MacBook in Parallels. XP was always a whacking load of drama, and Parallels under OSX just made that go away. Never really liked XP until I ran it on a Mac, and I can't help but enjoy the reboots that need only seconds, rather than minutes. I actually have 3 different XP machines that I can launch in various configurations without all the drama I had with VMware on my ThinkPad. In fact, when I reloaded XP on an old ThinkPad I recalled why I hated the PC hardware, as it was scouring the internet for bits and bytes of drivers and upgrades and all these hardware dependent hassles. Ridiculous waste of time.
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homer
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all the features people want that iPhone doesn't already have are coming out in version 2.0 and in the 3g iPhone -- both coming out next month. And I'm also typing this on my iPhone -- imagine that! A cell phone that does more than call people.
By the way, att's network is great. But if you want to use tmobile, just unlock it.
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mark
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Even an iPhone user can point out there are plenty of reasons not to use the current iPhone model (no 3G yet, no GPS yet, no video yet, no high-quality phone yet, no cut/paste, etc). No need for hate. But there's no mistaking that the iPhone version 1 has changed the cell phone industry. Industry experts/leaders, and cell phone mfrs, who are not even iPhone users, would admit that. If someone can't see that, they're just fooling themselves.
There's still a huge market for simple and cheap phones to make calls. But if you're looking for a gadget with additional functionality where ease-of-use is important, then the iPhone is right up there at the top, especially with version 2 coming soon.
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Dan M
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The only way the iPhone has changes the cell phone industry is to spawn a bunch of impersinators, much like the RAZR did. It is a reat interface, but it hasn't added much in terms of technology such that it is changing the industry. A better browser and good softare do not equate to changing the industry. It is a very nice phone, but you people who think its revolutionary are simply off base.
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Hardliner
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I don't have one.
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Mr Pantic - Melbourne Aus
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Spot on! I could not have said it better. Apple has no competition. The iPhone is only a 'touch' of things to come from Apple, nor do I percieve any clear threats from the other tech companies. Apple has the best software and hardware that work together in a harmonious and symbiotic way, and it is this fluidity that the others can't match. I am sick and tired of the industry catagorising the iPhone as one of these 'smart' phones as they aren't that smart, and the iPhone is in a league of its own. With the release of iPhone 2.0 and 3.0, Apple will further solidify its position as the master of everything tech.
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John
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Based on my past experience in industrial design I find the iPhone very impressive. Apple has a great ability to pick just the most used features and to then package them very nicely.
The iPhone has truly changed the cell phone market. The reason this is true is that large numbers of users have changed their behavior based on this phone. Browsing through a phone is off the charts since the iPhone came on the market.
Personally, I love the iPhone. The soft keyboard is great. I can type on it very quickly. I also find it easy to use with one hand. My company gave mea blackberry to use. I find that difficult to type on. I have to use two hands and concentrate hard on it. I still haven't figured out how to type some characters. I mostly leave it turned off in my bag and check it once in a while for messages.
I think that with the momentum they've built up for the past year that Apple stands poised to make great inroads with this phone. It is not just that they have a nice phone but that it ties in with their iPods and with iTunes and with Mac OS X and with other applications on the Mac and with the help available at the Apple stores. No other company has this broad level of support for their phones.
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Chris
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Robert Bruner wrote: Is Apple a company or a religion? It's a company, but the quality of their software, hardware, and customer service is so far above their competitors that the response that inspires from their customers makes it seem like Apple is a religion.
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Chris
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Jeff wrote: "Much like the overwhelming success of the Mac over the PC as an operating system,"
Carolyn, how is 5-8% of the market for Macs "overwhelming success" over the 95-92% of the market that Windows PC manufacturers enjoy over the Mac? Simple: 1) Any significant success against an entrenched monopoly is amazing. 2) Market share is irrelevant. Profit is what counts. Who would you rather be: Dell with its much higher market share and razor thin margins, or Apple with its healthy balance sheet resulting in a market cap FOUR times greater than Dell's?
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Chas
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Jeff wrote: "Much like the overwhelming success of the Mac over the PC as an operating system,"
Carolyn, how is 5-8% of the market for Macs "overwhelming success" over the 95-92% of the market that Windows PC manufacturers enjoy over the Mac? Recent market figures for the US suggest that Apple has a 14% market share and nearly two thirds of all computer sales over $1000. You also make the usual idiotic assumption that sheer numbers equals quality - they do not. Please compare the malware numbers for Windows and Macs - hundreds of thousands of examples on the PC side vs zero in-the-wild exploits for Mac. Then there's the fact that I can run far more software on my Mac than you can on your PC - Mac, Windows (carefully sandboxed in a VM), Linux (any distro) and UNIX. You can park your head in the sand all you like but Apple's extraordinary performance, arguably the greatest comeback in American corporate history, over the last ten years cannot nor should be ignored. Microsoft are going downhill - intelligent analysts have been saying this for the last few years. Vista has been utterly woeful: future historians will mark the release of Vista as the moment when MS lost the plot completely.
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Mark
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Just several comments to clear up some miscommunication posted by others. The iPhoto doesn't really need an extra battery, the one it has is surprisingly long-lasting. If you want an extra battery just add it, they are only about 20 bucks. GPS was added to the iPhone about five months ago, works far better than my dedicated Garmin... shockingly so. It has fast WiFi as well, so most of the time you're going to connect via the faster 802.11g, not the slower 3G protocol anyway.
On June 9th, it will have full access to Microsoft Exchange mail servers, and thousands upon thousands of new programs will come online via iTunes. By this time next year, the iPhone will have more software available than Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian combined which will make things quite interesting. June 9th is going to be an incredible day, so hang on tight. The fact that it has gained 26% share of the US smartphone market in the last year is telling. It has past Windows Mobile and nearly tied with Blackberry, plus it's the number one Internet phone in use today. Pretty impressive.
Other items, you get 200 text messages as part of the plan, unlimited messaging is only $5 more, it has unlimited Internet access and 450 minutes rollover, all for $59 bucks a month which is a fair deal to me, and very similar to all the other smartphones plans. The iPhone, is much more than just a simple phone it's really a full fledged computer in a very highly usable package. It's the first phone with multi-touch, not just cheapo "touch"... a lot of people that don't have an iPhone don't understand how valuable that is until they use it day to day, so if your phone doesn't have multi-touch, you don't want it.
The iPhone has set the bar for other phone makers probably too high for them to even get close in the next few years, it's like the Mac in that you'll have plenty of cheap imitators but none that are as popular or as well-made as the actual Apple product.
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eon
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I don't have an iPhone, I have an iPod and a Mac. I find it incredible that Apple's first humble entry into the cellphone arena has caught everyone (other phone makers) else by storm. It's the old build a better mouse trap idea. If you make it simple and elegant, you are sure to attract buyers. I've had Nokia phones, I've had Razr, My current phone is a Motorola Qh which I got for wanting to see what Windows Mobile was like and the need for tethering internet access on my MacBook. I have the iPhone SDK and believe me, my next phone will be an iPhone. Hopefully it will be up to 32GB of flash by that time. I'm not going to jump out when the 3G version comes out. I like the wait and see approach and I'm sure all of the "faults" that people are talking about will be corrected. For me, the third time at the bat will probably be the clincher!
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