14 DAY TRIAL // Like a dam bursting, the iPhone reviews have started to pour in, with no less than four of them giving the gadget a thorough look over. Although they all come from different sources, the reviews all agree that the device is quite amazing and works wonderfully, down to the on-screen keyboard that many were worried about.
"For starters, iPhone is a breeze to set up and fun to use, evident from the moment you slide your finger across the screen to unlock it. It's a wonderful widescreen iPod and fabulous picture viewer... The iPhone is striking to look at. The revelation is that it's also comfortable to hold and touch," Edward C. Baig reports for USA Today.
"The Web browser, though, is the real dazzler. This isn't some stripped-down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all... Apple says one battery charge is enough for 8 hours of calls, 7 hours of video or 24 hours of audio. My results weren't quite as impressive: I got 5 hours of video and 23 hours of audio, probably because I didn't turn off the phone, Wi-Fi and other features, as Apple did in its tests. In practice, you'll probably wind up recharging about every other day," David Pogue reports for The New York Times.
Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret report for The Wall Street Journal, "The iPhone's most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt - who did most of the testing for this review - was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly."
"The bottom line is that the iPhone is a significant leap. It's a superbly engineered, cleverly designed and imaginatively implemented approach to a problem that no one has cracked to date: merging a phone handset, an Internet navigator and a media player in a package where every component shines, and the features are welcoming rather than foreboding. The iPhone is the rare convergence device where things actually converge," Steven Levy reports for Newsweek.
None can deny the hype surrounding the device, but judging from the four independent reviews, that hype is well deserved and this device is going to be everything that Jobs promised. As with any such radically new technology, there were doubts, but it looks like the iPhone works like a charm. The only thing that can be said about it is the lack of some features such as GPS, but that is something that can be added in future versions, through accessories.