My brief hands on an iPhone

Ran some errands and happened to stop by the Union Sq. AT&T store, you know, just because I was in the neighborhood. They were sold out (I think most AT&T’s were) - had about 100 in stock (typical for AT&T’s) and not everyone in line got one. Two groups were there with their iPhones, I think with questions about how to use it or problems or something, and a few more people came in after I did looking for iPhones. Fortunately, I was the first one in and asked to see the demo iPhone which they keep behind the desk and have one guy who’s job seems to be to make sure no one takes it and runs.

I didn’t get much time to play - there were two other guys interested in it so I passed it on after a little playing around. The main thing I was interested in was the keyboard. It’s a non-issue, I was instantly two thumb typing and after a little I tried it with one thumb and it was fine. The accuracy from complete inexperience with the keyboard was very high and the speed was about 70% of my treo. The main thing I found odd was the lag when you wanted to hit the same letter twice - since it’s software there’s an irritating pause before you can hit it again.

My guess is that after some real use I’d probably get up to just as accurate and maybe 80-90% of the speed of a hardware keyboard, which is perfectly fine for me.

Another concern of mine was with the contacts and having to scroll through everyone. But the A-Z shortcut along the right hand side was totally easy to use, just hit the letter which jumps you close to where you want to be and then flick to the one you want. I don’t think it’s as wonderful as the Treo’s which lets you start typing names and intelligently searches in a few ways (first initial last name, business, etc..) but it’s definitely good enough and really easy to with one hand.

If they guy at the store said, “Oh, and they just released this SSH app” I would already own one. For realz. The phone was really great to use - it’s genuinely a qualitatively better user experience.

Turns out Ben got an iPhone! Now hurry up and head into the city so I can chigggggity check it out. Post-haste, Ben, post-haste.

Jun 30th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: iphone