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More iPhone reviews coming in -- Newsweek & USA TODAY

Two more reviews of that loveable scamp of a cellphone are out on the Interwebs, and it's more more more of the same: Steven Levy of Newsweek and Ed Baig of USA TODAY are saying it's time to start believing the hype. Both writers, like Pogue and Mossberg, point out the iPhone's weak spots (EDGE, no one-touch or voice dialing, limited apps, no video capture) while furthering the basic premise: by and large, the iPhone experience lives up to the insane advance billing. Levy's long and thorough review states it plainly early on, as he reports on the reaction to his iPhone use during a visit to Pittsburgh, PA:

"[W]hen I showed the iPhone to people during that trip and in the days afterward-especially people under 25-the most common reaction was, "I have to have this," sometimes followed by a quick, if alarmingly reckless, consideration of what might need to be pawned in order to make the purchase.... And there it is: one of the most hyped consumer products ever comes pretty close to justifying the bombast."

Baig puts it this way: "[W]ith a few exceptions, this expensive, glitzy wunderkind is indeed worth lusting after... That's saying a lot. After months of hype, Apple has delivered a prodigy - a slender fashion phone, a slick iPod and an Internet experience unlike any before it on a mobile handset."

Interesting tidbits from both reviews: Levy got a call from Steve Jobs during his evaluation period, just to check on how he was doing (!), and he noted the new thinking behind Apple's buy-it-and-go-home iTunes activation plan. Baig's article includes a sidebar entitled "The Quest Begins" with the get-an-iPhone strategies of a few would-be buyers, and Baig encountered a feature I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else; when he finished watching A Bug's Life (it would have to be a Pixar film) on his iPhone, the device asked him if he wanted to clear the movie from memory to reclaim the space. Nice.

via Apple 2.0

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iPhone

Two more reviews of that loveable scamp of a cellphone are out on the Interwebs, and it's more more more of the same: Steven Levy of...
 

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BdeRWest

I posted this over at Cult of Mac, but thought everyone here might appreciate it too.

Coolest things I’ve read/seen so far (but not heard widely spread on forums) from my obsessive reading of reviews/watching of review videos:

-The keyboard clicks (presumably if you so choose). See David Pogue’s video.
-Huge movies can be deleted en-phone after watching them. See USA Today’s review (”Movies can eat up a lot of space. When I finished watching A Bug’s Life, iPhone offered to remove it from the device to free up some.”)
-Works with (at least) Bose SoundDock (presumably it then works with iPod Hi-Fi. The reviewer said he couldn’t get his Belkin cassette adapter to work. I have a cigarette-lighter power adapter and an 8mm minijack I use in the car. I think that will work just fine… I hope). See again USA Today’s review (”I was able to play music through my Bose SoundDock speaker system. To combat interference, iPhone offered to switch to “airplane mode.” — it’s awesome it knows to do that)

Other than that most of the other reviews out there (WSJ, NYT, USA Today and Newsweek) were just the same old schlepping of PR info all of us obsessed fans have heard to death. Although Newsweek concentrates a little more on battery life, and offers the jewel that Jobs called him “just to check up on things.” That’s hilarious, and it makes sense. Apple gave them the phones. It’s a perfect way to see if reviewers are having problems.

I found David Pogue’s (NYT) review to be the best all-around, although I suspect he focused mainly on issues garnered from the 300+ comments on his blog when he asked his readers what answers they’d like to see.

Walt Mossberg’s video review (WSJ.com, AllThingsD.com) was useless. He rambles, says “um” a lot, and even splices in speeded-up and semi-soundless versions of the four TV ads instead of filming himself using the phone. Bad form, Mr. Mossberg. Bad form.

June 27 2007 at 8:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
darkjeremiad

I use tMobile right now. and I have a Windows Mobile 5 Smart Phone. I just timed it and the yahoo page (which looks like crap on the IE Browser included) takes 155 seconds to load on IE and 109 seconds to load on Mozilla Mobile (which can actually render the page almost the same way it looks on my computer)

on Cingular (my roommate's provider) Yahoo Mobile (the page designed for tiny cell phones) takes 60 seconds to render on his Motorola Razr. The real boost comes from having access to a wifi hotspot.. thats where smart phones shine. My question is why they dont say anything about including use of AT&T's wifi hotspots (what few there are)

June 27 2007 at 8:49 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
terssi

@Kevin:

iPhone should be a lot faster with real EDGE speeds. At least 4x faster.

June 27 2007 at 7:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin

#12 - Are you an idiot? Pogue, the reviewer, said it took him two minutes to load the Yahoo page. Who cares what your freaking Nokia does?

June 27 2007 at 6:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David McLeod

@radpanic - Yeah! That is exactly what I would like to know! I haven't seen or heard anything about it but not being able to follow links from a homepage would be pretty lame.

So the question again is: How do you 'click' and follow links when browsing teh web on your iPhone?

June 27 2007 at 6:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
basscadet

the point of having all in one devices is that you don't get to carry around many boxes and have everything in one. Problem is, by having extra batteries in external packs (or as user replaceable batteries as everybody but Apple make them) means ppl will ... be carrying 2 separate items again... at a higher price as well

June 27 2007 at 3:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
radpanic

HOW DO YOU SELECT A LINK ON A WEBPAGE? You know, "click" on the link. You can zoom, but how do you "click"? Anybody know. I have watched every video and read every review and I still dont know.

June 27 2007 at 2:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

I am SOOO Sick and tired of everyone complaining about the price of the iPhone. I have been using "cell" phones since 1987. Doesn't anyone remember how things were then. In 1994 I purchased the Motorola Micro Tac Elite. It was the smallest phone on the market. It did only ONE thing... it was strictly an analog mobile phone and it was $600... and of course you HAD to have extra batteries because... they only had about 30 minutes talk time. But it did have a two line dot-matrix display.

I paid $500 for my Sony Ericsson K700i, $700 for the DG version of the Razr. And these were the going prices.

Then you consider phones like the Nokia owned Vertu line. They start at around $4000 (four thousand US dollars) for phones that dont have a camera dont have gps... dont have anything.. they are just really well made hi-quality phones.

I think people need to wake up. If you want something nice.. something new, something revolutionary, then you should not complain that you will need to pay a little extra for it.

June 27 2007 at 12:24 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Anthony

My copy/paste implementation would be a gesture to get into copy/paste mode. Then use multi-touch to "grab" text. Once copied the stored text could be pasted with a touch.

June 26 2007 at 11:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
terssi

@ Fred:

That 2 minutes for Yahoo start page is somewhat bogus. I can fetch same page under 30 seconds with my Nokia and lousy 128bit/s connection. (The page is under 150 kb, so do the math)

June 26 2007 at 11:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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