iPhone morning … in my apartment

So you know how last week I was saying how I didn’t buy an iPhone the night it came out? Well I also didn’t buy one that weekend … but in the end I did buy one yesterday (yes, that’s the distraction I was talking about in my July 7th entry!)

So what made me change my mind? A few things:

  • When I tried using EDGE again on one of my colleagues’ iPhones it wasn’t as slow as I remembered – I’m thinking maybe the local cell was a little swamped on the launch night
  • Actually, the thing about there being no rebate on the plan isn’t entirely true. Getting the same plan on a Blackberry or Samsung Blackjack is going to set you back an extra 20 bucks or so
  • Really the biggest thing though is that it’s just so wonderful to use.

So after my existing phone really did stop working properly this week I decided to give in finally to the hype and lay down some greenbacks. My initial impressions are:

  • The whole process of buying the phone and getting it working was exceptionally impressive. I was in the Apple store about 2 minutes, and then about 60 seconds worth of using iTunes (which fronts the iPhone activation process) once I got home was all I needed to do. About 15 minutes later my old phone stopped receiving calls and I was up and running.
  • All the ‘wow’ impressions of when you first use it still hold true. It’s so easy and fast to do so many things with the device that it’s a wonder something even half this good hasn’t been done before.
  • Certain things do feel a bit ‘version 1’ like the lack of cut & paste, the fact that iTunes went a bit weird for a while when I had read-only calendars it was trying to sync, and other small things here and there make me look forward to the first software update
  • Call quality I would say is poor (or maybe my last phone was just good) – I hope this is something they can fix up on a software update otherwise it’s going to annoy me

Only one thing worries me – I’m off to the UK on Friday for a week and as yet I haven’t found a way of turning off EDGE – I really don’t want a $200 roaming data charge when I get back to the US. I’m going to call up AT&T tomorrow and see what they have to say.

So yes, in the end, Steve’s reality distortion field had it’s day. I bet he’s laughing all the way to the turtle neck store…