I think I'm still in shock. Yesterday, I got a call from my wife. She simply said, "We both have iPhones! I got you the 8Gb model, and I got the 4Gb model..."
Yeah... I'm still in shock.
So, over the next few days, I've decided to blog about my iPhone fun. First, I'll start with some pictures!
So, here we have the iPhone with it's box, and all of the stuff that was include with it. There's the dock, a USB connector, an AC adapter to recharge the iPhone, the new stereo headphones with a mic, the manuals, and the complementary apple stickers.
One thing that I didn't know about was the new headphones. In addition to just being the basic earbud (like those bundled with an iPod), these headphones also include a mic, so they can be used to talk on the phone. The mic includes a "button" that allows you to answer phone calls. (it's not really an extruding button per se, but a "press-able" area surrounding the mic.
Now, it's really difficult to get an idea just how sleek the iPhone is, without holding one yourself. I've photographed my new iPhone next to a US Quarter and next to my old Nokia 6102. I have to admit, for a phone (or any portable device) the screen feels large, but the phone feels very slim. I don't really like to carry much stuff in my pocket, so I'm not sure how it will feel when I'm not using it.
As soon as I unpackaged my iPhone, I turned it on to start playing with it... Unfortunately, there's not much you can do until you activate it. You can, however, unlock the display, and see the keypad, so I assume it could be used to dial 911 without activating it (like most/all cell phones). Before I activated mine, I did punch some numbers on the keypad, just to see how it felt. I didn't really have any problem touching the correct numbers, so I'm happy with how the keypad feels. One other thing I noticed, is that the numbers on the screen decrease in size as you type more of them... this way, you always see the whole number you're dialing (unlike some other cell phones where you may only see 4-5 digits at a time, or where the digits will stack on top of each other)
So, I finally got around to plugging up the dock and connecting my iPhone. At first, I plugged the dock directly into my powered USB hub, but iTunes didn't detect the iPhone! So, I plugged the dock directly into the back of my Mac mini, and iTunes immediately detected it. Time to activate this baby!
As soon as iTunes detects the iPhone, it greets you with a welcome screen, and walks you through the activation process. My wife and I were already Cingular/AT&T customers, and luckily the activation process included options for this possibility. Unfortunately, activating the iPhone through iTunes only allowed us to add a data plan to our existing plan. The lowest-cost data plan is $20/per phone, so our monthly bill has been increased by $40. I read the att wireless website, and it seems that we should've been able to switch to a new plan. I suspect that you'd either have to call AT&T or stop by a store to do this. The other thing that I'm a little disappointed about is the FamilyTalk pricing for the iPhone. For regular phones, FamilyTalk is $9.99/per line. For the iPhone, it's $29.99/per line. So, as of now, our phone bill has increased an extra $20 on top of the $40 for the data access... I'm not exactly happy about that.
All in all, the iTunes registration process was really easy, and for both phones, it only took about 5-10 minutes.
Once my iPhone was registered, it seamlessly sync'd my iCal calendars, my photos from iPhoto, and my music from iTunes. Of course, since I'm a mac user, I expected this seamless integration. My wife, who's using Windows XP was able to pull music from iTunes and photos from her My Pictures folder. The iPhone also has the capability to sync mail and calendar info from Outlook or Outlook Express, but we haven't had a chance to try that out yet.
So, my initial reaction to being an iPhone owner: "COOL!"
And it is... very cool, though a little pricey.
As I explore my iPhone's new features and learn all of its quirks, I'll post my thoughts on this cool new gadget.