I won an iPhone in a design competition and I finally got my hands on it last Friday after fighting with retarded AT&T and, holy crap, it's awesome. Originally I wasn't going to get one because I typically hate hate HATE phones that do anything other than make calls. Leave it to Apple, of course, to do a cell phone properly.
Physically, it feels like a slab of solid metal--indestructible. It's a bit slippery, but I'll get a case for that and to protect it. It resists scratching like no other. It fell out of my pants onto a concrete floor at the gym while I was changing and I can't find a single nick or scratch on it. The screen is ridiculously bright and crisp. Text is very readable on it.
The regular phone functions are solid and flawless. Visual voicemail is great for skipping the endless messages from family members or skipping things I can get to later. The calendar, weather app, and other built-in apps are great. Mail is nice, too. Unfortunately, I don't think it does any spam-filtering, so a lot of what I get is spam. I think I can fix that on my e-mail account servers though -- auto-delete anything with high spam scores.
The built in map is crazy good, too. With GPS, you can find your location automatically and then get easy directions to anywhere.
Most of the websites I use a lot have fantastic mobile versions -- Google Reader's version is one standout. It works great.
The real benefit, though, is the apps you can buy or get for free from the app store. Holy crap! Here's what I've got so far:
Box Office: I can see what movies are playing and where and what Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic thinks of them. It took me maybe 15 seconds to schedule a Dark Knight viewing with my friend. It was so easy. You can also buy tix from Fandango right there. One cool feature, too, is that it can use GPS to automatically find theaters close to you. So if I visit a city and want to catch a show, it'd take ten seconds to find.
Yelp!: It's like the website, but with frickin' GPS and laser beams. Anyplace I go, I can find local stuff and see reviews for those places easily.
New York Times: I could just visit the website, but their app makes it a lot easier to read and navigate. Very slick. If I had a commute, I'd read the news this way.
Enigmo: The first game I bought -- tons of fun. The controls can be a bit difficult, but I got used to it rather quickly. More info:
http://www.pangeasoft.net/enigmo/Labyrinth LE: Remember that marble maze thing where you tilted the surface to navigate a maze with a marble? This is the same but with different levels and such. The accelerometer on this iPhone is ridiculously accurate -- it really feels like I'm controlling a marble in this game. It's accurate enough, actually, that you can download apps that make your iPhone act as a level.
Pandora: Easily the coolest app I've got right now. It's like XM Radio, but everywhere. I'm listening to my Soul Coughing station right now! Oh, it's nice. Nice, indeed.
The next step for me is to get my software developer kit so I can write some programs for this thing. I may actually turn one of my ideas into my senior project.
This phone is great. If you've been thinking about getting one, stop thinking and start doing. Get one.
