This is T3's hands on review. soory if this is too long to post
http://blog.t3.co.uk/page/t3?entry=world_s_first_hands_on
World's first hands-on with iPhone
Wednesday January 10, 2007 Comments [15]
Security was rock solid as we were ushered into a darkened room. Once inside we were greeted by Greg "Woz" Jozwiak, vice president of worldwide product marketing for iPod and iPhone. On the desk in front of him was iPhone. Shaking with excitement, I was minutes away from having it in my hand.
Yesterday I was convinced, today convinced isn't a strong enough word. It's better than Steve Jobs said it was. It works just like he showed us. It feels like you don't want to put it down.
The model we were playing with still wasn't finished. It's nearly there, said Woz, but there's still some work to be done. Getting it ready for the UK too would take time and although he wouldn't be moved when asked, I reckon it'll be HSDPA, not EDGE when it lands in blighty.
Picking it up I was surprised by how black the thing is. Flicking the button on the top brings the super bright screen to life. My first touch was a tentative one. How would it cope with my podgy digits? Would I break it? It's hard not to have sweaty palms at times like this but I needn't have worried. It coped with all perfectly. Paw marks on the screen seemed to disappear magically. It didn't matter what angle I held it at, the screen still shone clear and bright.
First button I pushed was iPod. Lets go for something familiar. No instruction was given beforehand, and memories of what to do from seeing it yesterday were sketchy. What do I press? **** it, lets try that one. And that one, and that one. Every step was obvious and natural. I didn't need to flinch. I selected a video of the US Office and it fired up in no time. Wanting to watch it in full widescreen glory I flicked the device onto its side and the screen followed so smoothly I had to do it again. Footage looked good and very watchable and even the sound from the speakers wasn't too bad. Better than I expected.
Enough of that (I had four minutes with the device, need to check more features). The button below the screen takes you straight out of whatever app you're using and back to the main menu. No quitting, no saving and it takes milliseconds.
Fired up Safari and typed in T3.co.uk. I made a few mistakes on the soft kjeyboard and I didn't find it as intelligent as they suggested. When I hit "p" instead of "o" for .co.uk it didn't self correct as I would have expected it to. Still almost as soon as I hit GO T3's homepage was staring back at me.
Assuming your connection is decent, load times are pretty quick. But another conundrum. The "read more" link on the main story appears tiny on the screen, even after a quick double tap to magnify the story. How will it cope with sausage fingers now? As my main digit hovered over most of the intro paragraph of the story I gave a quick tap in the general vicinity of the link - surely I've just smudged the screen. No, it figured out what I was trying to do and instantly bounced me onto the turn page. Brilliant. It's cleverer than me!
It's getting close to hand-over now so only enough time to see what pictures look like, as this isn't the place to be making phone calls. The accelerometer which works out when you're viewing the device in landscape or portrait mode was faultless. Flicking from portrait to landscape delivers such a pleasing transition you just want to do it again and again.
I don't believe I've ever used a device that's as intuitive, and pleasing, as the iPhone. Everything is obvious, in the way Apple products generally are. Everything is beautiful, as we've come to expect and it is frighteningly clever. Yesterday Steve Jobs said Apple has launched a phone that is five years ahead of everything else. He wasn't ********ting.
The iPhone changes everything. Apple has moved the goal posts so far it's going to take other companies years just to find them, even before they can think about scoring a goal.
