Well it has been a little over a week since I purchased my iPhone, or should I say the iPhone my wife purchased for me.  Either way I have been trying to use all the features and find any issues or problems that are worth noting.  In this review you are are not going to get any scientific numbers or data, but you are going to get an honest review from someone who tested the iPhone with real use everyday. 

I picked up the iPhone on it's release day, and only had to wait in line for 2-3 minutes before I was able to get in.  The Apple Store in Orlando that I went to seemed to have more than enough on hand, even though there were over 100 people waiting in line since the early morning.  Upon getting home I was very excited to get it activated, and to activate you need to use the latest version of iTunes which after having to deal with countless phone sales reps in the past, seemed like a great idea.  No hassles, no sales pressure, just enter my info, select my plan and options, and be on my way.

It couldn't be that easy, well not for me it wasn't.  There was a wide variety of reports of people having trouble activating their phones which probably had something to do with hundreds of thousands of people trying to activate their phones.  I could not get my phone activated on Friday night and I actually had to make a trip to the AT&T store the next day.  I'm still not sure what exactly happened, but I was happy to get it finally activated and working.

My first impressions is that is was much smaller and lighter than I first predicted.  The only buttons are the volume controls, silence button, and the "lock button" all which are around the edges of the iPhone.  There is also a headphone port, mic, speakers, and data/charging port.  The black face of the iPhone has just one button which is the "home" button which allows you return to the home screen no matter what screen you are currently in.

This will be part 1 of a 2 part review.

Interface:  The touch screen interface lives up to the hype.  It's very clear and responsive, and I haven't had any trouble with the screen itself.  The home screen is where you find access to just about everything on the iPhone including Safari, e-mail, weather, camera, phone, and more.  I was very nervous about the screen getting dirty or scratched, so this past weekend I made another trip to pick up some screen protectors.  Simply tapping the icon will take you to your selection and all the applications are very intuitive and didn't require much thinking to figure out how to use and configure them.

Camera/Photos:  The iPhone includes a 2 megapixel camera.  I would have expected at least 3 megapixel or more, but that's the way it is.  You also cannot record video and there aren't any type of adjustments or settings for taking pictures.  The camera really isn't a big issue for me, as I only use it to take quick photos, and the quality isn't bad at all for what it is.  Clicking the Photos icon will take you to your photo albums on the iPhone which lists all your albums and give you basic information like how many pictures are in the albums, and a preview picture. 

Clicking any of the photo albums will take you to the pictures where you can view them individually or as a slideshow.  Turning the iPhone to the side will give you a landscape view and you can quickly scroll through pictures by swiping your finger to either side.  Selecting an individual picture will give you options to delete, or you can e-mail the photo, assign it to a contact, or use it as wallpaper.  All these functions worked without problem and I even setup my Flickr account so I can e-mail photos directly to my Flickr account and blog.

SMS:  I was never a big user of text messaging, probably because I never had it as an included option on my plans, but the AT&T plan includes 200 messages, so I intend on using them.  The times I did use them they were just basic text messages, but the iPhone goes about this just a little different.  The iPhone uses text "bubbles" to list your messages into conversations, so you can easily view past text messages without having to search through an inbox.  Being somewhat new to text messaging, this definitely is an advantage over typical text messages.

 
Calendar:  A calendar on my phone is something I use very often, and I have been very disappointed with this feature with other phones, especially with Windows Mobile 5.  The iPhone calendar has a simple interface that will display your calendar and appointments in either list, day, or month view.  Clicking your appointment will give you the detailed view of times, notes, and any other relevant information.  You can also set alerts for your appointments and create new ones which will sync with your PC or Mac calendar.  I have been very impressed with the calendar feature, and it's definitely the best out of the phones I have used in the past.

YouTube:  I have been getting more and more into YouTube lately, and I was curious of how this application would work and so far I have been pleased.  YouTube is still in the process of converting video over for use on the iPhone, but during my searches I found most of the popular videos were available.  You can search for videos, view a featured and most viewed list, and add any videos you have viewed to a bookmarks list.  Videos load up fairly quickly and the audio/video quality is excellent, I'm just now waiting for more videos to view.

Widgets:  The iPhone includes several widgets including stocks, weather, clock, and calculator.  The weather is probably my favorite as with one tap I can see the current and upcoming forecast not, and it supports multiple locations, so I can move my finger across the screen and view the other locations I have set.  I'm not a big user of the stocks widget, but it does what it does in an easy to read manner.  The same goes for the calculator. 

Notes:  The notes feature has gotten some flack lately becuase it doesn't sync, which is a valid issue to raise, but I didn't expect much from notes in the first place.  Notes lets me simply add a quick list to the my iPhone which is great when making a trip to the store.  For example I was at the store this weekend and found an item I needed to remember the size of, so I simply created a new note, and e-mailed it to myself to view on my PC at home. 

iPod:  I guess it wouldn't be an iPhone without an iPod, so how does it stack up?  For all purposes the iPod in the iPhone isn't much different than what a stand-alone iPod does.  The interface is very similar only improved for use with the touch screen, but something it does have over a regular iPod is the Cover Flow feature.  Cover flow allows you to browse your music gallery by the album artwork, much in the same way it's displayed in iTunes.  Moving your finger across the screen moves through the album covers and you just tap to select the songs you want to hear. 

I don't have a video iPod so I can't really compare it, but watching music videos was done without problems and once again the audio/video was just about perfect.  Listening to both my iPod and iPhone I didn't detect any noticeable difference in sound quality, although the volume on the iPhone is just a bit lower than my iPod.