Because AT&T’s 3G service is spotty at best, from what I understand. Now why didn’t they bundle both into the phone? I dunno.
You better post to this thread from the new phone to tell us how cool it is.
From my office window, I can see the north end of a mall which contains an Apple Store. The line outside the mall has been growing all day. They had to call in Rent-a-Cops about lunchtime. I count roughly 100 people in the section of line visible to me. The line then wraps around the west side of the mall and stretches a comparable distance before it hits the entrance closest to the Apple Store. We’re looking at about 200-250 people waiting outside. I don’t know if they’re allowing line ups inside the mall or not.
Given that I’m perfectly happy with my barebones phone and paying about $100/year (that’s right - year) for my prepaid account and my $80 iPod Shuffle, I doubt I’ll be springing for an iPhone.
On preview: Now I can’t see the end of the line anymore. It’s turned the corner around the east side of the mall and is behind some trees.
I was listening the applephoneshow.com podcast and one of the guy’s came up with a great use for the iPhone! You’re sitting there in the restaurant and you’ve got a cute waitress, so you whip out the phone and show it to her, then you begin telling her how simple it is to use and say, “I bet you could enter in your phone number and address in the phone in less than five seconds!” Or, “What’s your email address? Let me show you how easy it is to send you an email!” Brilliant! 
I was at the local Cingular/AT&T store (they merged a couple years ago, store kept the sign) today at 6 o’clock. There was a small, though orderly, mob outside, and a Sheriff’s deputy watching over.
I wasn’t there for an iPhone. I was there to get a new SIM card. I still had to wait half an hour just to get in the store, then longer to get my stuff activated and go. People were pissed off at me for cutting in line, thinking I was there to get the stupid piece of crap they were after. Luckily I got through OK, and people (4 at a time) were able to get their iPhones.
Jon Stewart had a good quote related to this. On camera phones, “you wind up with a crappy camera and a crappy phone.”
When do you think the first SDMB iPhone post will be?
I went by the AT&T store at about five to 6 tonight, and there were maybe 40 people in a line outside (I don’t know how many inside).
This is in Corvallis, Oregon, a city of 50K people in as close to the middle of nowhere as you can achieve in the US.
Whether we’re buying them or not (and I’ve been burned often enough on rev 1 Apple hardware that I’ll wait for V2…but almost certainly get one then), apparently a lot of people are. I predict that these are going to make a mint for Apple and its shareholders.
here it is! What do i win?
So is it all that and a bag of chips?
So far, so good. The web interface is really cool, but the keyboard is a little awkward. Love the ringtones, love the “pinch” to close-up move, love the small little size, love the horizontal tilt video screen.
I’m happy.
I’m surprised it took this long for someone to invent a phone that does these things in this way. It seems to me most phones are a load of incomprehensible, awkward to use, crap that deperately needed a reboot, and Apple have taken the time to do that.
Having said that, I don’t want a phone at all, and couldn’t use it here in Australia anyway.
Looks cool, though.
Apparently it’s coming out 2008/early 2009 for Aussies. My fiance wants one, so I might stand in line to get one (and then eBay his existing iPod). I love the look of the iPhone but I’m one of those people who only needs the basics on their phone.
Or not. Got a chance to play with one yesterday, and my wife was especially enamored of the “portable Internet pretty much anywhere with cell coverage,” so I’ve got one now. Took forever to get it activated: the “this will take 3 minutes” screen ended with “no, actually it’s going to take longer, we’ll send you an e-mail,” and it was almost an hour later before it was done, with no status updates or estimates. Maybe because of the load: all the Apple stores in my vicinity said they were either out of iPhones or expected to run out this weekend.
The screen picks up fingerprints like mad, and the included cleaning cloth pretty much just moves the finger oil around. But those are all minor complaints: the thing seems to work really well for what it does; it’s fairly intuitive to use (you won’t figure out a bunch of the advanced features by playing with it – in particular how to move the cursor while entering text is highly inobvious), and very powerful after you’ve read the manual for these extras.
All in all, I’m happy with it. I left it on the counter all night and it didn’t do my dishes, but it has a pretty good set of functions for its size. Can’t comment on battery life yet; it’s still on “full” after about fifteen minutes of Wi-Fi internet use and sitting “locked” all night. It’s a good phone, too, with clear sound. The touch screen will make it basically unusable while driving; you can decide for yourself if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Oh, and the web browser is quite cool: it’s small, of course, but easy zooming and scrolling make it pretty painless to use. It has a neat “zoom to this block of text” feature that basically auto-zooms to fit the column size of whatever you’re looking at when you double-tap it. It’s much, much more useful than I thought such a tiny screen browser would be.
No. I don’t use my cell phone for anything except making calls, receiving calls, and using voice mail. I have nothing against Apple; I have an iPod, and it’s great, because I love to listen to my music portably. But I don’t think I’d ever get an iPhone because all the bells and whistles are something I don’t anticipate needing at all.
I don’t need all those bells and whistles either.
But I sure do want them. I want an iPhone!
is there any news about iPhones being available on other carriers? I’m sure they’ll be hacked, but I’d rather use it with TMobile unhacked. I’m afraid all the cool features won’t be usable on a hacked model.
Apple’s got a 5 year exclusive deal with AT&T, so it’ll probably be at least that long before anyone else get’s one. However, I’d be willing to bet that Apple’s got an escape clause so that if they get too many complaints with AT&T’s service they can switch to a different carrier.
Well, maybe you’ll like the iPhone Shuffle when it comes out. 
Question for early adopters:
What is your plan when your iPhone has to be sent back to Apple for battery replacement after 300-400 charges?
Get the next generation iPhone for another $600?
Go celly-free for 2 weeks?
I plan on running around and screaming like my world’s on fire. :dubious:
I think the battery replacement issues are severely overblown. If you get 2-3 days out of a charge, you’re looking at 2.5 - 3 years.
I can’t think of a single piece of high tech equipment I’ve had that long that’s still a primary use device after 3 years.
My iPod Never EVER needs a fill discarge/recharge. It goes from the docking cradle, to the iPod player in my car to the dock at the office. I suspect the iPhone would be similar.
My prediction: somebody will offer an overnight service for $75 to swap out that battery, and someone else will offer a $40 kit to DIY it. (Yes, I know it’s soldered on)
The battery issues have been blown out of proportion…unless you’re talking about the swelling Sony batteries. That’s a whole nother Oprah.