It is finally here. After months of rumors that apple was working on a phone/ipod combo device, the much talked about product is finally on the scene for a mere..... $500 (and that is the cheaper of the two versions). Is it really worth $500 for a phone when you can get a similarly priced Playstation 3?
There are quiet a few things the iphone can do an and annoying small number of very large things it can't. The iphone seamlessly integrated all of its applications into one another. Its safari web browser can browse almost any web page with full functionality. Youtube has its own button from which you can watch all of its videos, although over the edge network the quality is not great. Thats where wifi comes in; you can connect the phone to most any wifi network and Youtube along with all the rest of the internet, will load much faster. By default the phone comes preconfigured to connect to Gmail, Yahoo mail, .Mac mail and Aol(Others can be added manually). My favorite feature is the Google maps integration. Although there is no GPS on the phone you can punch in a street sign along with other tidbits of your location and it will show you your location. From there you can zoom in, zoom out view traffic information and change your view from political to satellite imagery. Once you find where you are, you can click “Get directions from here” and it will route your path to wherever you need to go. It also acts as a yellow pages allowing you to search an area for say 'Chinese takeout' or 'pet psychologists'. Of course you also have all the usual ipod features. You can sync the iphone just like any other ipod, choosing certain playlists and videos but now you can also browse by album artwork.
There are some oddly humorous and yet annoyingly obvious errors in the phone. There is no way to copy and paste, nor can you set songs or parts of songs to be ringtones. There is a hack to put custom ringtones on but damaging your iphone in the process voids your warranty. Another interesting hack is the ability to put a Super Nintendo emulator on the phone to play SNES games using the touchscreen. Also available are web applications or webpages set up or modified to specifically support the iphone format. One such application that I particularly love is the Gas.app. You go to its website punch in your zip code and it will show you the cheapest gas in your area and allow you to get “directions to here”. Among the other web apps (from which there are hundreds on the verge of thousands) is instant messaging capabilities to score tickers for various sports games. Facebook recently added a iphone version of its popular site as well @ iphone.facebook.com. That is right sadly at this point there is no IM applications on the phone, luckily web applications provide an easy workaround.
As you can see simply by the size of the two paragraphs above, the 'dos' of the iphone outweigh its 'don'ts'. Does somebody really need to be able to check their email and get driving directions on the spot at all times, well that is debatable. The real question is: Is it worth $500 for a 3.67gb ipod nano/smartphone? I can personally attest during the first week of school for which I had no internet and was moving from place to place with no real place to stay, it came to my rescue and enabled me to add classes and check my emails when I would have otherwise had to come on campus to use the internet. At time of writing this I still have no internet access at the new house I am living and have been using facebook over the iphone with no frustrations except load times. I even used it to transfer funds in my bank accounts instead of having to find a computer or visit the bank. Now would you punch in your online banking passwords over At&t networks when it has been confirmed by ex-employees that there are rooms setup in corporate designated for NSA watchdog teams? That is a matter of personal choice but if you don't mind the invasion of privacy from At&t/ the government there is a lot you can d o over the iphone that will save some time.
The basic plan is $20 a month for unlimited internet and 200 text messages on top of whatever voice plan you currently have with At&t. A 2 year service agreement will get you an activated iphone for $500. When most smartphones are anywhere from free to $300 with a 2 year service agreement the $500 thorn really starts to poke. I can attest that if you will use every feature the iphone has to offer and travel a lot or are just plain horrible with directions like myself then the iphone is worth it. If not that is a damn expensive “it” phone to be bragging about. (note the iphone has in fact been unlocked opening the phone to alternate carriers, you can check the progress of this new development @ blog.iphoneunlocking.com
**********This is unedited so any AP style messups u see I really don't need to hear about.
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