Joe succumbs to the hype...
Bought one this afternoon.
Haven't got it going yet as I've got some other stuff I have to do. Will probably set it up tomorrow. Have some saved voice messages I have to figure out how to save on my treo before I cut it off.
Couple of thoughts.
The good: Interface is fantastic. It's a quantum leap forward in how well the touch screen works. Super responsive. And cool touches in how they give you the "real" feel of flipping through a wheel and thing turns just a tiny bit past where you want to go and comes back. No real value at all. But kind of cool.
It's pretty small. This was one of the bigger things for me. I refuse to carry a phone on a belt holster. So the treo in my pocket is kind of bulky. The iphone is much slimmer. The other thing you worry about with it in your pocket is scratching. We'll see how it fares after a few months but initial testing looks like it's pretty tough video of PC Mag guys scratching and dropping
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czCCavcnNd8
The photo organizer is super cool. I have that now in my treo under documents to go but it's cumbersome compared to iphone.
ipod features are obviously cool. I won't be able to ditch my normal ipod as I need more than 8 gig. But I can for see just keeping the "best of" stuff in music and that will be nice.
Internet is great. I'm a little pissed with the misleading ads about how you get the full non watered down internet and then in reality you don't get any flash content but it's light years better than my treo. You can actually read the FFA and it looks pretty much like the FFA. The zoom features and moving around work pretty much as advertised. Again, this goes back to the interface. Extremely good.
Small things. Things like the countdown timer are kind of handy. I'm sure there will be plenty of little things like this that are useful.
The bad:
Calendar looks weak. Compared to my treo which let me have tons of options with color coding appointments based on type and the ability to have lots of detail. iphone looks extremely basic on the calendar. My treo synchs perfectly to outlook calendar. Let's hope iphone does.
Contacts look weak. Looks like an after thought as you have to open the phone section to get to the contacts. I cannot believe they don't have a search contact feature. I'm still not certain it's not possible to find somehow. I have 1,500

listings in my contacts. I am worried I'm going to hate finding some of them with this. I hate the click wheel on the ipod. I think every artist I listen to starts with an R on down. Although the letter bar on the right is sort of handy so that you can get to a letter instantly. I would think this is something they will add soon. I'm interested to see how well contacts import from outlook.
No voice recorder. This is no issue for lots of people but I use the voice recorder in my treo daily. I'm going to have to figure out something here.
No tasks (to do) list. I found myself using my tasks feature in the treo less and less. I'm wondering how much I'll miss this.
We'll see how it goes once I get into it.
J
Oh yeah: :lookatmeIhavealotofcontacts: and :lookatmeIboughtaniphone: