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Walt Mossberg Reviews the iPhone
WSJdpatton writes "Walt Mossberg tested the iPhone for two weeks, in multiple usage scenarios, in cities across the US. His verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is on balance a beautiful and breakthrough hand-held computer. Its software especially sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though the lack of physical buttons can be a hindrance." Digital Daily has a roundup of early iPhone reviews.
E911 has dependencies on the technology used. For GSM operators (like ATT) there are two scenarios. 1. 2G Handsets do not need GPS (or in actuality A-GPS or assisted GPS) since a network based solution can use triangulation using cell signal strength to get an accurate enough position to meet FCC rules for E911. 2. Cell-based triangulation does not work on the 3G (UMTS/WCDMA) network, so the requirement to handset makers is that you need to include a GPS chip for A-GPS (GPS position data is assisted with some network signaling from the cell tower). Unfortunately due to cost / economies of scale you do not see A-GPS in all 3G/UMTS phones yet. The network operators work around this with a temporary 'hack' where you do a handover from 3G to 2G for emergency calls. Within the next year or so you should see just about all 3G phones in US with A-GPS. GPS for location-based services (and not just E911) is another matter and is a function of the device feature set & price point.
Start with the overlap:
Yes and all MP3 players play music. Yet there are differences in operation, that have made the iPod a great success while other models languish.
But of the things you mention, very few are problems with the iPhone many people cannot realistically get 3G, but in many places they get get WiFi. I don't need to be able to record video with it (heck, I didn't even really want a camera!). And saying an SD card slot offers "essentially infinite storage" means you have to buy 8GB worth of SD storage to get the inifinte amount of storage to come close to the iPhone, much less the issue of managing cards. I'll bet your "global find" doesn't tell you which of the swapped out cards something is on...
As for the keyboard, all the doubters say they would miss it. Yet all of the reviewers say they do not, even those that started with doubts. So what are we to think might be more correct?
To go along with your admission of being a happy Apple fan, let me say that I was a rabid Palm fan. I convinced many people to buy Palm pilots. I even recently bought a Palm Zier for someone, because it was perfect for what they wanted to do - and indeed they are delighted with it.
But years ago, ater my Palm V gave up the good fight and stopped listening to the stylus, I waited for a phone/PDA from Palm and got... the treo. I don't know what forces drive men to crave tiny keyboards, but they do not find a hold of me. It is not that I have large hands, I can thread needles with great dexterity and have excellent finger accuracy. I hated the space the keyboards took, and across many devices (not just the Treo) I hated typing on said small keyboards... and so i waited for Palm, who I still consider to once have been a company of innovators as great as Apple has ever been, to deliver to me a "real" phone PDA that was worthy of the legacy.
Apple has delivered the phone I have waited for so long for Palm to build.
Over time, we will see expandability (in applications anyway), growth of features, and a browser that makes actually using AJAX based applications thinkable instead of madness. One thing common to the Apple experience is that feature sets and usability improve with time - it was true of the iPod and there's no reason to think it will be any less so for the iPhone.
How do I think it's worth the expense? Because I have used he other devices, even the Treo, and the iPhone appears to suck about $1000 less than those, never mind $600.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley