I posted this at BH, but it kinda fits here too.
Walt's review was interesting (just read it). Some quotes and responses:
Battery life: Like the iPod, but unlike most cellphones, the iPhone lacks a removable battery. So you can’t carry a spare. But its battery life is excellent. In our tests, it got seven hours and 18 minutes of continuous talk time, while the Wi-Fi was on and email was constantly being fetched in the background. That’s close to Apple’s claim of a maximum of eight hours, and far exceeds the talk time claims of other smart phones, which usually top out at five and a half hours.
For continuous music playback, again with Wi-Fi on and email being fetched, we got over 22 hours, shy of Apple’s claim of up to 24 hours, but still huge. For video playback, under the same conditions, we got just under Apple’s claim of seven hours, enough to watch four average movies. And, for Web browsing and other Internet functions, including sending and receiving emails, viewing Google maps and YouTube videos, we got over nine hours, well above Apple’s claim of up to six hours.
And here I thought the E61i was impressive. This is sick, and very well done by Apple.
A downside — there’s no easy way to transfer phone numbers, via AT&T, directly from an existing phone. The iPhone is meant to sync with an address book (and calendar) on a PC.
Whoops, that will be an issue for some users. Especially those that will forget to sync, lest iTunes does this for them (oh yea iTunes is the iPhone's 'PIM' agent for the desktop).
In general, we found this interface, called “multi-touch,” to be effective, practical and fun. But there’s no overall search on the iPhone (except Web searching), and no quick way to move to the top or bottom of pages (except in the Web browser). The only aid is an alphabetical scale on the right in tiny type.
There’s also no way to cut, copy, or paste text.
And the lack of dedicated hardware buttons for functions like phone, email and contacts means extra taps are needed to start using features. Also, if you are playing music while doing something else, the lack of hardware playback buttons forces you to return to the iPod program to stop the music or change a song.
Another whoops. I am pretty sure this will be 'fixed' for the next version, and tweaked some for this one at some point.
Overall not a bad first attempt. One can see what a few extra $$$ spent in R&D will do though. Not knocking Palm and other smaller companies, but Apple swung for the fences on this one. Tis a shame that other companies hadn't pushed this hard before (Nokia has been threatening, I wonder if they will swing harder now).
Side note: Sony Ericsson has just announced for Q4 this year the W960. Dang near the same hardware as the iPhone, but looks like a phone (number pad, touch sensitive controls). I'd love to compare the two of them, because I think that is the best one yet of being the iPhone's competitor.
In the meantime, the rest of this year should be really interesting with leaks and announcements, don't you think
What I pretty much am sure of, anything that will truely be innovative (gamechanging) won't leak till later this year and come out next year. Even iMate's Ultimate series needs to have done something in the 'pretty gooy (gui)' dept to garner some fuzz outside of techie circles.
Congrats Apple on changing the game (maybe now we all can get some real innovation and not just spec updates).