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Well, I had to do it. I just had to run out and buy an iPhone. I know I have said some pretty negative things about them in the past, but with the price drop and encouragement from some friends I had to try it. So this is a review from someone that did not want to get an iPhone and someone who thought it was a mistake for Apple to release it the way they did.

To start with lets talk about AT&T. I have never been a fan of Cingular or AT&T. I thought there customer service sucked and they where way to expensive. So when Apple made the iPhone AT&T only I was down hearted. Well so far I can tell you it has not been that bad, but I have only had the iPhone a few days so the jury is still out on this one.

The next issue I had was with the network speeds. They decided to go with EDGE instead of one of the W-CDMA bands such as HSDPA or UTMS. I felt this was a really bad idea for any new phone that was released and wanted to call itself a web phone. This was further compounded by the fact there where no 3rd party apps. So that meant you would be using a slow connection for web based apps. I have to tell you that I was surprised at how well this works. The web apps do tend to load slow on the first visit, but after that they seem snappy. I can only guess that this is due to some cache tricks.

I am an old time blackberry user. This means I can touch type pretty fast with the keyboards on most smart phones today. So when Apple said they where not going to have a tactile feedback keyboard I was very upset. I did not feel I would be able to type as fast and I knew I would not be able to type without looking. I have to say that my speeds have increased, but there is no way I will ever be able to type with out looking. This will be something I will just have to live with.

Push email has also been a big deal for me. Right now the iPhone only offers IMAP IDLE as a “push” type email solution. If you have ever used a system like this you will know that it is not all it is cracked up to be. It does kind of do push, but it falls short. This is due to some technical issues with the IMAP IDLE that better be explained by Daniel’s study piece on IMAP IDLE.

After all of this you might be asking yourself “Why is he keeping the phone?” Well there is not an easy answer to that. The best one I can give is that I think some of the biggest issues will be fixed with software updates. I even think that Apple will unlock the phone from AT&T in the near future. There is some speculation that they will release a 3g iPhone in November, but Apple would not do something that stupid. Instead they will fix bugs and release a new phone next year which will be when I am ready to buy again. So all in all I almost happy with my new gadget and am very hopeful they will fix the minor issues.