iPhone Experiences and Reviews

[MacRumors]

One day after the iPhone release, and the reviews and impressions are rolling in. Reader reviews are being posted to this thread with other areas for iPhone Accessory and iPhone Application discussion. We've also had regional discussion about buying an iPhone at the Apple Store, with our own Katie's buying experience at https://www.macrumors.com/iphone

Despite with what appears to be a high number of sales, iPhones are still available at most Apple Stores (check availability) -- though we have heard that several AT&T stores sold out last night due to minimal inventory.

John Gruber posted his first impressions of the device:

Overall day one impression: the iPhone is 95 percent amazing, 5 percent maddening. I’m just blown away by how nice it is – very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun.

• I haven’t found a single element of the iPhone UI that doesn’t feel super-snappy.
• Can rotate to landscape in either direction.
• Notes app is lame (photo)
• Calendar is "very nice".
• "When you’re done with an app, you just tap the Home button. What happens to apps when you do this is not exposed; there’s no concept of quitting or closing, just switching. I think this is a great design, I’m just having trouble getting used to it."

Support pages at Apple with tech notes and troubleshooting have appeared. The biggest issue that has plagued people has been activation problems. Users have been discussing the problem, but Tech-Recipes spoke to AT&T support last night who unhelpfully advised: "they were having bugs with validation and that we should retry every 30 minutes or so until it works."

More galleries: Disassembly photos from ThinkSecret, ZDNet Unboxing.

Web developers can take note that Ajaxian.com has compiled some impressions of the Safari browser with respect to web development:
• Safari sets default width as 980px of not width is set.
• Drag / drop elements based on mousemove events don't work since dragging one finger around causes iPhone Safari to scroll
• You do not get “mousedown” when you touch the screen. You get “mousedown” and “mouseup” at the same time when you release your finger. The “mousemove” event does not seem to fire at all.

Perhaps most interesting is that PCWorld has tried its own stress tests on the iPhone (Video). They put the iPhone through Scratch Tests and Drop Tests.

Scratch Test: When the iPhone emerged with its screen just as pristine as when it went in, we then attempted to gouge the screen with one of the keys. We were very impressed that even this deliberate attempt to scratch the screen completely failed.

Drop Test: The iPhone not only continue to work after each drop test, impressively it still looked good as well. The only obvious damage suffered was a few gouges along its metal edge from the concrete drops. But it came out without a scratch on its glass screen, despite our best efforts to mar it in repeated tests of both types.

We'll be compiling ongoing iPhone notes and developments at https://www.macrumors.com/iphone/

 

[i0Nic]

Gruber makes a lot of interesting observations and discusses a lot of the limitations.

He pointed out that the calendar app has no To-Do's, which is a bummer to me as I use it extensively. Since notes are not able to be synced to your mac either, this leaves me in the dark without a good solution.

I hope Apple update this or I'll be waiting for a nice 3rd party 'to-do list' web app that I can update from my mac and on my iphone.

 

[netdoc66]

There needs to be a "tell us why you hate AT&T thread"

AT&T has me at 6000 degrees right now. I can see the blood boiling behind my eye sockets.

 

[psycoswimmer]

The stress tests seem really great for the phone.

i like the idea of switching, and not closing apps. This will make "faux-apps" in Safari much more usable (like One-Trip; being able to keep your list always open until you actually close that tab).

 

[mikeinternet]

I'm loving mine!
Have a few ideas to tweak things. But im hopeful the updates will be sweet and swift.

 

[Frisco]

It hurts me everytime he drops it. I am calling Family Services

 

[tlhash]

My $.02 worth

I picked up my phone last night at local ATT store in Central CA(Visalia). I got to the store at 7:17, and they had 3 phones left, all 8 gig. They were sold out before I left. After talking to 4 employees, it looks like the received 66 phones, but they would not say for sure. Apple's confidentiality rules make it hard to get FACTS. I brought it home, upgraded to 7.3, and activated the phone in about 5 minutes. I'm an existing ATT customer. It took about 15 minutes to load the phone with music, one movie, one tv show, two email accounts, and 1200 pics. All total, 5.7 gigs. The main reason I got the phone was for email on the road. So far it seems to be working better than expected. After 12 hours with the phone, I would give it an 8.5 out of 10.

 

[carltabet]

It hurts me everytime he drops it. I am calling Family Services

I absolutely wanna cry when they torture it like that. The screen is resistant enough to rest in one's pocket with keys and coins but who would want to do that?

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Wow that notes app

notes is the ugliest! I can't believe apple would put something like that on a beautiful iPhone. It looks like something out of a comic book, and it has next to no use.... Oi that is upsetting because I wanted something like text edit to jot things down on. textedit on the iphone would be a dream come true

 

[nickspohn]

that stress test is brutal.

i was wanting him to throw it up in the air.

-nickspohn

 

[elppa]

Looks like they went to a big effort to make sure people can show off their beautiful phones without wrapping a case around them.

Obviously learning from all the complaints about the first generation nano.

Part of it is that glass can be made virtually scratch proof (they do it on watches), it is a much harder trick to pull off with plastic.

 

[CBJammin103]

Wow, they couldn't even damage it when they TRIED to? That's a feat of presently underestimated proportions, I think, seeing as most electronics require deliberate and active care to prevent damage and wear.

I wasn't going to get one, but all you people with your crazy reviews... I was planning on upgrading from Macbook --> Pro, but it may have to be Macbook --> Macbook and iPhone!

 

[CTYankee]

saw one guy had 10 of them for $900 on Craigs list. Sucker...the availability checker has them in stock everywhere. If they do sell out I'm sure there are plenty in the wings.

Great way to create a marketing buzz...make it seem like they would run out and let people freak and generate hype.

 

[shawnce]

Hello from the iPhone. So far I am like this thing and don't find it hard to type on this thing with two thumbs.

Oh it only took about 3 min to activate.

 

[Cybergypsy]

Loving mine and even bought a second for my son...

 

[macjackpro]

Notes

I agree. That notes app is fugly. But guess what. It looks a lot like Leopards notes feature in Mail.app. Did all the designers at apple recently quit or something?

notes is the ugliest! I can't believe apple would put something like that on a beautiful iPhone. It looks like something out of a comic book, and it has next to no use.... Oi that is upsetting because I wanted something like text edit to jot things down on. textedit on the iphone would be a dream come true

 

[nydoofus]

The keys stress test is pretty impressive. I was worrying about scratches with a huge LCD like that.

 

[neonart]

This is really great news. The scratching on the iPod and nano impacted Apple stock alot. The fact that the iPhone is so resistant will be great news.

I'm on my 8gb typing this and it's amazing. It does everything so well! It makes using a mobile device a pleasure.

 

[macnews]

I need to watch the video but from the sounds of it - wow! Glad to hear it seems to resistant to real world stresses. One stress I would LOVE to see done is someone running and then dropping the phone on to concrete and rough asphalt. This has happened to me several times over the years with my phones. The holster case gets weak over time or the phone is in my dress shirt pocket while I run to a meeting and BAM - on the ground goes my phone. All my phones have survived with just scratches luckily but I would like to have the same assurance with an iPhone.

 

[danvdr]

iPhone vs. Zune

Microsoft sold (they say) a million Zunes in it's first 7 months (Nov.- June); wonder how long it will take for the first million iPhones. (Maybe somebody could make a poll of this question--just needs to be done quickly or it'll be too late

 

[nydoofus]

Microsoft sold (they say) a million Zunes in it's first 7 months (Nov.- June); wonder how long it will take for the first million iPhones. (Maybe somebody could make a poll of this question--just needs to be done quickly or it'll be too late

I don't usually take Microsoft's numbers too seriously since they like to engage in channel dumping (basically flooding the retail channels with tons of items). They did a similar thing with the Xbox 360 right before Xmas. They dumped lots of 360's into the distribution channel in order to meet their goal of 10 million sold. Since those are all counted as "sold" they can make their PR numbers. However, since now the retailers have all the 360's they'll need for months, their numbers have hardly moved since then. I am pretty sure they did a similar thing with the Zune.

 

[Manic Mouse]

I actually really like the look of the Notes app. It looks like a very nice notepad, what more could you expect?

I wonder what other applications Apple will be adding in the future...

 

[BevvyB]

TIME - the clincher

Well

Time, what can I say? The success of this baby is certain with these kind of articles coming out...

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1639068,00.html

 

[kemer]

Activation Hell...

Anyone in activation hell? I started at 10 last night. Still nothing.

Talked to an ATT rep and he said up to 24 hours. He also said to leave the iPhone connected to your computer for that time, because it needs to be there ready when ATT's servers come through...

Suppose I shouldn't have taken the sim card out to put in my old phone so I could actually make calls today... hmm...

Another 24 hours?

... this is kind of ridiculous ...

 

[jat543]

hey, i just got the iphone and i want to make the most out of the battery life, how long do you recommend charging it for the first time i charge it. I bought an extended battery for another cell phone some time ago and it said charge that for like 8 hours to make sure i get the most of it even though it was fully charged after about 3 and i was wondering if its the same deal with the iphone