Cool, thanks for the info. And since this is with AT&T/Cingular, those minutes can benefit from “Rollover” right?
LilShieste
The internet feature sounds intriguing to me, but does it really work anywhere and does it cost extra or is this part of the phone plan? Could you get just the internet service without the phone plan? I would do that, since that’s all I’m really interested in.
What’s this about a non-replaceable battery?
That doesn’t make sense.
-FrL-
Enter Apple. It’s one of my biggest gripes; it’s a cheap way to force more money out of consumers down the line, either by having Apple replace the battery, or having the owner upgrade to a newer unit.
Whatever happened to cell phones that could:
dial out
receive calls
store 10 phone numbers
have voicemail
Package those four and only those four features into a phone and I’d buy it. Doesn’t need more stuff to muck it up with.
Although I do like the looks of the thing. I’m with ArizonaTeach on this one. I’d be neat if it wasn’t also a phone.
If only it had a radio.
Though I suppose I could try internet radio - does is support streaming media?
In the decade or so I’ve owned mobile phones, I’ve never replaced a battery because it started to fail. The first couple of phones I bought I also got spare batteries + desktop chargers for, but since I never ever had a spare charged battery with me when I needed one, I gave up wasting money on them. Personally I don’t understand why people make such a big hoo-hah about replaceable batteries. ISTM that the battery that comes in the package is generally the highest performance one you can fit into that form factor, and by the time it’s worn out, so is the phone. It would be interesting to know what %age of people never touch the battery other than to fit a sim card underneath it - my guess is it would be 95% plus nowadays.
Red Barchetta - how often do you replace the batteries in your phone? And are you a very heavy user?
I have a Nokia E62 also!
Seriously, the iPhone seems like a really expensive toy that marketing has convinced a lot of people they need to drop a lot of money on. The Safari browser on the iPhone is, from the reviewer that I heard talking about it, having more compatibility issues with websites than Safari on a Mac does, it doesn’t do Java or Flash, the few hundred YouTube videos that work with the iPhone work because YouTube had reformatted them for the iPhone, it doesn’t have a battery that the user can change, no IM client, and that the touch screens have the common problem of losing their sensitivity to touch.
Beyond that, it’s still a first release. The first release of any electronic item from the iPhone to the PS3 is going to have bugs and issues.
I can’t believe so many people are willing to pay so much for this thing.
To answer some of the questions, all plans come with unlimited internet, email, and visual voicemail. You only have to pick the minutes.
And, yes, rollover minutes apply. As well as free nights & weekends.
–Posted on an iPhone. 
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I think this illustrates the generation gap better than anything.
As a 53 year old, I can’t see what the excitement is about!
I do have a mobile phone for emergencies or unexpected delays. It cost £25 ($50) when I bought it about 7 years ago. The phone bill is around £5 ($10) a year and I haven’t changed the batteries yet. I keep it switched off so as not to disturb people.
I have a computer network at home (with large monitors) for surfing the Internet, e-mailing and playing games. I have a landline with an answerphone.
At work, because I’m Head of Department, I can surf the Internet, send e-mails and play games. I have a landline with an answerphone. 
I live 3 minutes walk from work, so don’t need a phone for the journey.
I posted this on my home computer wireless network, with a window open to my Internet games and one of my other computers playing music through really good speakers.
That bowl of sour grapes is going fast!
Would I want something new that’s pretty and shiney and easier to use and gives me easy access to the Dope? Hell no! Not if you gave a six pack of 'em away!
Give me those grapes!
(What I think is great is that you waited in line for only an hour…)
Have fun!
Leaffan, if it makes you feel better, I’m 36 and feel exactly the same way. Maybe I don’t watch enough TV or something, but there seems to be a direct line linking Steve Jobs to most people’s animal desire and I’m just not getting it. It’s a $500 Blackberry+MP3 player with a ridiculously elaborate interface that’s just a repair bill waiting to happen. Apple can take its elegance and cram it – a machine that devotes that much of its power to aesthetics should be hurled off the nearest bridge. And iPhone enthusiasts, you do realize that the communication infrastructure is in a phase of rapid evolution, right? Is this really the best time to be placing a $500 bet with AT&T?
Sorry, normally my annoyance with Apple is much less intense, but the adoration and the wanton lust exhibited toward this stupid device is driving me up the wall. This Cult of Jobs is seriously frightening, particularly how it seems to preferentially affect the intelligentsia. And I think Leaffan’s question about how its consumers are going to use it to do good is valid – maybe, just maybe, there’s something more productive you could do with that $500?
I’d like to add that I am pleased that many are getting pleasure out of this. 
I remember how I felt when colour television, non-floppy disks and wireless networks came in.
I think there is a vast difference between an intelligent Doper using this device smoothly within society and how the average teenager will interact with it:
“I wanna iPhone! All my friends have got one!”
“Hey Ditzy - can’t talk long because I’m in the cinema. I found a fantastic ringtone site and I’m e-mailing it to you!”
“I’ll do my homework once I’ve sent this text.”
Sure, you could donate it to starving people in the third world who are dying for the lack of $2 medication/vaccines, you could pay it into your savings account, you could enroll in some training/education, buy some nice clothes, you could do almost anything.
Or you could take your own money and spend it on something that you like, as a treat for yourself. Like some Paris Hilton style glasses, or a tattoo, or a new graphics card for your PC. Or an iPhone. It seems a bit OTT to me, given that I haven’t used a third of the features on my N73 yet, but most people who have bought one seem to feel that they have got a great gadget for their money, so more power to their elbow.
I need a cellphone to: a) make phone calls; and b) receive phone calls. If I want to look at something on the Internet or do e-mail, I can do that at home or at the office. In between, I’m driving, so operating a complex electronic gizmo at the same time is out of the question because I’m not a suicidal idiot.
When I go out for pleasure, I’m probably hiking (in which case I want to be alone with my thoughts), or some other kind of activity that’s too involving to be playing with a $500 toy at the same time, or going to the movies —
Oh, God damn it. It’s been years since I’ve been to a movie without seeing the bright blue screens of some idiot’s cellphone as they were checking messages or something. Now, and I’ll bet any amount of money on this, we’re going to start seeing the movie theatre lit up by fucking iPhones as people are surfing the web while they’re at the movie. “Hey, what’s that actor’s name? I’ll just look it up at imdb.com! What was that other movie he was in I liked? Maybe I’ll watch that movie on my iPhone while this other movie is going on! And I can call my friends while I’m at it!”
That’s when somebody might happen to sneak up behind him, quietly drill a hole in the back of his seat, and insert a fine but very stiff alloy wire through the seat cushion, through his back muscle, and right into the peritaneum, causing a death that will look like congestive heart failure. Not that I would advocate such a thing.
I’ve been looking at the and reports fairly closely since the iPhone was announced in January, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing that the iPhone does that my Treo can’t do. MP3’s? Check. Email? Check. Movies? Check. Photos? Check. Web browsing? Check.
However, there was nothing the iPod did that literally dozens of MP3 players had done for years before the iPod’s release. And they hit it out of the park. Not because of the things it could do, but because of how easy they made them to use. And from every indication, they’ve done the same thing here.
As an example: To watch a movie on my Treo, I had to buy an SD card for storage. Then locate, download, and install TCMP on my Treo to watch the movies. And install the right video codecs. Then I needed to download and install VisualHub on my Mac to format the video file to the right format. Then transfer it to the card. Then, to watch the movie, I open TCMP, navigate to the right folder on the SD card, and open the file. To watch a movie on the iPhone, all the software is installed and preconfigured, with Apple’s notorious attention to user interface. They provide an easy way to acquire content from their store, or, if you want to use your own content, they provide the conversion software (Quicktime) to import the video.
And they made it pretty. Never underestimate pretty.
Add to the list;
Has keys big enough to touch individually.
Fits in my shirt pocket withoug looking like I a shoebox.
Has a screen that can be read in sunlight.
Other than that, I have to agree, Apple does market quality stuff.
Does it support streaming media? Of course! I was watching YouTube videos on one in the Apple store last night. Looked gorgeous.
Now if only I had a spare $500.
Y’know, I like the iPhone. It’s pretty (and I like pretty), it seems to operate smoothly (I don’t have one but all reports thus far say the Apple demos are really what it’s like) and it’s got some nice features. And they replaced the scratch-if-you-sneeze-near-it plastic cover with glass that won’t (easily) scratch. This does worry me if it’s dropped, though. Glass breaks easier than plastic because it’s far more brittle.
However, there are four things that make it a deal breaker for me:
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No user-swappable SIM card. I like GSM phones because you can buy a new phone whenever the hell you like and just swap the SIM. A GSM phone without a swappable SIM card is … CDMA.
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AT&T only. Sure, visual voicemail is a nice idea, but having to work with one phone company to modify their system to support it and then be completely tied to that phone company, thus shutting yourself out of every other market seems a bit of a dumb move.
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No memory card slots. Sorry, that’s step backwards here. You could have at least offered a MicroSD slot. MicroSD HC would have been even better. Expandability is the name of the game these days.
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No third party software support except via Java. MIDlets may be fine for ordinary mobile phones, but for an iPhone supposedly running OS X? Sorry. Java is slow and limited. I understand Steve’s need to control what’s running on it in order to maintain system stability (or really, just maintain control period) but that’s a lame excuse. You’ve got a powerful OS in there. Let programmers use the damn thing to its potential!
All things considered, even if I lived somewhere that it was avaialble to me, I don’t think I’d get one. I have a 60 gig iPod. I have a Treo. I have a high end PocketPC. There’s really not enough that the iPhone offers that I can’t already do, even if I can’t do it with such a pretty UI. And I can run tens of thousands of third party apps, swap my SIM and use memory cards.
I’m not trying to evangelize the phone or anything, but lemme try explain where most people who are interested in this device have actual reasons. Believe it or not, most people don’t just want a phone that holds 10 phone numbers and just carry it around in case we have to call 911 because we broke our hip. We have lives, businesses, to operate that require us to work on computers, in the office, or on the road. This isn’t for you? Get a Jitterbug
Observe:
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I’m self-employed. Unlike most of the lamenters around here, I need a “device”… not just a phone, that does what the iPhone does. It’s not perfect, but it’s so far beyond what’s out there, it’ll be the new path to the future of these types of handhelds.
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It’s not the features that are remarkable, it’s the implementation. Repeat that one till it sinks in. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, this is the very thing that makes the iPhone so remarkable. Implementaion, not features… Implementaion, not features… Implementaion, not features… Implementaion, not features…
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Because of the type of work I do, I have 6 Macs. All Apple hardware. This thing integrates seamlessly into everything, including my email account. NICE!
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I can take it into the shitter and surf the Dope. Worth every penny right there.
This device is an about-face from those shitty Blackberrys, Treos, Palms… what have you. Finally someone took the time and energy and reinvented a device that is… well… human.
For those who say it’s too delicate, take better care of your equipment.