My Day with the iPhone

Played with the iPhone today. It's beautiful. The photos and iPod are particularly well done, of course, and the phone is pretty nice, too. I haven't spent all that much time with it, but no surprises:

• EDGE is painfully slow, rendering the browser nearly useless
• The phone is smaller than I thought it was. Bigger than a perl, but maybe thinner
  
• The screen smudges, a lot
• It requires iTunes to activate
  
• It wasn't immediately obvious to me how to add contacts beyond typing all the info, which is tough
• The keyboard was tricky, but not actually as tricky as I thought it would be. I believe reports that you get used to it after a few days
• It's fun to use because Apple just nails design--they offer you exactly the option you need when you need it--it's amazing to me that no phone manufacturer has ever offered the "merge calls" button that the iPhone has--which I've needed on many occasions (and I've never been able to figure out how to do a conf call on any mobile phone i've owned)
• The visual treatment throughout is fantastic.
• There were actually a number of situations in which I got a little lost--I wasn't clear how to get out, move on, etc. However, these were always recoverable (hitting the power button returns you to the home screen) and i'm sure that, with a little learning, these will be non-issues.
• The iPhone itself got warm to the touch after just a bit of use; also, i did manage to hang it once, requiring a reboot... I was configuring a setting on Yahoo Mail and the entire thing froze
  

Overall, it lived up to expectations (impressive because they were high) and now I'm back to wondering if this thing could really be huge after all. I still say that the price, the slow network, and the requirement that you sign a two year contract with AT&T (and break any existing contract) will prevent them from hitting 15M units by the end of next year (unless they either go global, offer a lower price point, a new model, etc).

One other thing, just for kicks--the friends who bought this iPhone happened to decide to go to an AT&T store in a mall that also had an Apple store (we had heard that AT&T stores limited them to 1 phone per person, so figured the odds were better there). The shopping experience at the two stores could not have been more different:

Apple Store

• Employees applaud you on the way out
• T-shirts, festivities, streamlined process
• One employee told them (the day before) that they couldn't believe that they got to be part of the launch

AT&T

• Delays, slow process, constant reminder that you had to call Apple for support
• Gave you your one phone in a heat-sealed AT&T bag. If you opened that bag and returned the phone, even if it was still sealed and unopened, you faced a 10% restocking fee
• One employee told them (the day before) that staffing at 6 pm on launch day would be a total nightmare and they'd try to get out of it (switch shifts), except that they were afraid they'd be fired for that

Kudos to Jobs and Apple. Both national treasures in my book.