I walked into my local ATT store today and was able to try an iPhone unmolested by large crowds or salespeople for about 20 minutes today. It sure is a nice little device, but I walked away feeling really good about my Treo. The biggest reason would be the soft keyboard. It just isn't for me in it's current tuning and iteration, maybe if it were adjustable to a degree (I could have missed if it is). Maybe it's my fingers or the device I tested, but it seems to pull to the sides. For instance, I would constantly get an r when I was looking for a T or a P when trying to type an O. I wasn't trying to be speedy by any means either and swear I was accurate in being over the right letter.. Pecking with one finger was better but I still saw this issue though not as much. With the iPhone in the wild though, I'm sure they will be able to fine tune it and add on functionality over time. The lack of actual tactile 'feel' though makes me think I would be happier overall with a smaller screen if I could still have a thumboard. I also really felt like I wanted a 5 way nav button, in Safari it feels a bit too 'loose' flipping down through pages, and I found it moving left or right when doing so occasionally. But I could live with that. The keyboard is a bigger issue for me.
Of course, I knew there were no 3rd party apps, and lo and behold I found the included apps insufficient.
The calendar app, while being limited, also felt cumbersome to add new appointments, I liked how the UI looked but functionally it seems to waste lots of space. I use smaller than normal fonts on my Treo also so it really seemed excessive to me. I would need repeats and I also have need to set up multi-day weekly meeting say every Yue and Thu but you can't do that from what I saw. I did like the two alarms per meeting though, you can set one alarm for the day before to be reminded it is upcoming and one for the day of. That's nice. I didn't notice if there is a way to invite attendees, and I didn't see any kind of tie-in with Mail.
The stocks app is great, I liked that even though I'm not an investor (makes me want to buy some AAPL stock of course), I like the historical graph, that's a nice addition that makes it really useful to keep what you are seeing in some perspective.
The weather app is pretty but weak. It would have been nice if it linked to full weather forecasts and animated maps in a Safari page, for instance. Though not as pretty, 4cast kills it. I think TreoWeather also is better and more customizable. Probably the biggest issue is that you don't get the weather as part of turning on the device. The iPhone needs a 'Today' screen.
Notes sucks primarily because it is a dead end. It seems to me a Stickies app would have been better, with some sort of a gesture to bring up ontop of any other app. Of course copy/paste would be great for this.
Mail wasn't set up with a real account so I couldn't see real rich content emails, but I'm sure it works fine. I didn't see how you can attach a picture to a new message though.
Safari was great other than scrolling, but again that's just something to adapt to. It sure would be nice to copy and paste though, how would you send a snippet to a friend or post a long quote in a forum, for example? Especially with the limitations of any mobile entry system it seems copy/paste is a huge omission.
The camera seemed great, especially compared to the only-for-mugshots camera on my 680. The pictures I snapped of the iPhone display counter were lovely Too bad it doesn't have video. My dream device would be an iPhone with a nice mini iMovie app. Maybe next gen. My SE w680i had it. Why can't the iPhone?
Google Maps is Google Maps , but the phone wasn't on a wifi network (it looked like someone else screwed up the WEP key before I saw the phone) and it was a little pokey, but generally about as fast as my 680. Safari seemed really slow, but then it was trying to load full sites over EDGE. I only load mobile sites if I can help it on my Treo so I can't really compare the experiences. My Treo of course is faster and I use content that is fine to get over EDGE, so EDGE is fine on a Treo with Blazer. Hopefully for iPhone users there will be content that is optimized for mobiles that doesn't cause it issues. That would likely help us all since I doubt a Treo would have troubles loading those sorts of pages either.
Photos was great, I didn't spend enough time with it to discover if there is any editing capabilities but for viewing photos it's great. I'd hope you can change brightness, contrast, do some cropping. Can it do that? My SE phone had pretty extensive photo capabilities, though the iPhone camera is a better overall camera. I didn't try a slideshow or anything.
I didn't try SMS but no IM blows I use chat but not SMS. Hopefully the web apps work well enough until a native version comes along. The keyboard would be a huge problem for me though, I'm not too speedy a typist on a full size keyboard but I'm nearly as fast on a Treo. I don't see being anywhere as fast with the iPhone. Again, maybe the device needed to be tweaked.
iPod: what iPod? The freaks at ATT didn't include ANY media on the demo device so I couldn't look at any of that, no music, no videos, nothing.
Bottom line is it is a beautiful device that doesn't do it for me. Like I said, I walked away feeling my trusty Treo 680 was a good investment (just got it within the last two months) and that the iPhone couldn't do what I needed on a daily basis. Not by a long, long shot. Yet. I didn't drink the cool aide and know it is actually not 5 years ahead of any other phone (behind in many areas, actually). I\The Palm platform is just way more mature. If Apple makes a few changes (3rd party apps is the real biggie), and if Palm acts like Palm for the next year or so (can't imagine how that will change), I'll probably be walking out of the store with a new iPhone when my 680 needs to be retired.
Of course, I knew there were no 3rd party apps, and lo and behold I found the included apps insufficient.
The calendar app, while being limited, also felt cumbersome to add new appointments, I liked how the UI looked but functionally it seems to waste lots of space. I use smaller than normal fonts on my Treo also so it really seemed excessive to me. I would need repeats and I also have need to set up multi-day weekly meeting say every Yue and Thu but you can't do that from what I saw. I did like the two alarms per meeting though, you can set one alarm for the day before to be reminded it is upcoming and one for the day of. That's nice. I didn't notice if there is a way to invite attendees, and I didn't see any kind of tie-in with Mail.
The stocks app is great, I liked that even though I'm not an investor (makes me want to buy some AAPL stock of course), I like the historical graph, that's a nice addition that makes it really useful to keep what you are seeing in some perspective.
The weather app is pretty but weak. It would have been nice if it linked to full weather forecasts and animated maps in a Safari page, for instance. Though not as pretty, 4cast kills it. I think TreoWeather also is better and more customizable. Probably the biggest issue is that you don't get the weather as part of turning on the device. The iPhone needs a 'Today' screen.
Notes sucks primarily because it is a dead end. It seems to me a Stickies app would have been better, with some sort of a gesture to bring up ontop of any other app. Of course copy/paste would be great for this.
Mail wasn't set up with a real account so I couldn't see real rich content emails, but I'm sure it works fine. I didn't see how you can attach a picture to a new message though.
Safari was great other than scrolling, but again that's just something to adapt to. It sure would be nice to copy and paste though, how would you send a snippet to a friend or post a long quote in a forum, for example? Especially with the limitations of any mobile entry system it seems copy/paste is a huge omission.
The camera seemed great, especially compared to the only-for-mugshots camera on my 680. The pictures I snapped of the iPhone display counter were lovely Too bad it doesn't have video. My dream device would be an iPhone with a nice mini iMovie app. Maybe next gen. My SE w680i had it. Why can't the iPhone?
Google Maps is Google Maps , but the phone wasn't on a wifi network (it looked like someone else screwed up the WEP key before I saw the phone) and it was a little pokey, but generally about as fast as my 680. Safari seemed really slow, but then it was trying to load full sites over EDGE. I only load mobile sites if I can help it on my Treo so I can't really compare the experiences. My Treo of course is faster and I use content that is fine to get over EDGE, so EDGE is fine on a Treo with Blazer. Hopefully for iPhone users there will be content that is optimized for mobiles that doesn't cause it issues. That would likely help us all since I doubt a Treo would have troubles loading those sorts of pages either.
Photos was great, I didn't spend enough time with it to discover if there is any editing capabilities but for viewing photos it's great. I'd hope you can change brightness, contrast, do some cropping. Can it do that? My SE phone had pretty extensive photo capabilities, though the iPhone camera is a better overall camera. I didn't try a slideshow or anything.
I didn't try SMS but no IM blows I use chat but not SMS. Hopefully the web apps work well enough until a native version comes along. The keyboard would be a huge problem for me though, I'm not too speedy a typist on a full size keyboard but I'm nearly as fast on a Treo. I don't see being anywhere as fast with the iPhone. Again, maybe the device needed to be tweaked.
iPod: what iPod? The freaks at ATT didn't include ANY media on the demo device so I couldn't look at any of that, no music, no videos, nothing.
Bottom line is it is a beautiful device that doesn't do it for me. Like I said, I walked away feeling my trusty Treo 680 was a good investment (just got it within the last two months) and that the iPhone couldn't do what I needed on a daily basis. Not by a long, long shot. Yet. I didn't drink the cool aide and know it is actually not 5 years ahead of any other phone (behind in many areas, actually). I\The Palm platform is just way more mature. If Apple makes a few changes (3rd party apps is the real biggie), and if Palm acts like Palm for the next year or so (can't imagine how that will change), I'll probably be walking out of the store with a new iPhone when my 680 needs to be retired.