3. First iPhone Reviews In

Wed, June 27th 9:34 AM

We'll be publishing a comprehensive review of the iPhone over the weekend. But to help relieve all that pent up energy that waiting over six months for anything from one who has actually touched the iPhone, I'll be looking at some iPhone reviews from the cream of the cream of elite reviewers who got their iPhones from Apple well in advance of the rest of us.

David Pogue, New York Times

David Pogue of the New York Times loves his iPhone and at 8:15 AM PDT June 27th if the slowness of access to the article is any indicator, everyone wants to know.

Pogue, who writes the best of the reviews offered today, finds the iPhone both "revolutionary" and "flawed". He tells us that neither the glass over the screen nor the body of the phone scratches and that the screen is easy to wipe clean. Pogue was impressed with the ease of use and speed of the phone's software.

He notes that buyers of the phone will be able to choose a plan and activate the phone via iTunes. I'm surprised that they're not requiring you to choose a plan before leaving the store and then activating the iPhone in the store. There could be a lot of hacking of the phones to use them without official AT&T accounts, though I would guess Apple and AT&T have done their best to prevent that inside the phone. I just found out that the iPhone is pretty much locked up so you can't access the SIM card (if there indeed is a SIM card in there). Also I heard that you won't be able to use any of the iPhone features unless you've chosen a plan and the phone has been properly activated.

The $60 a month plan gives you 450 minutes of talk time, 200 text messages and unlimited Internet access. Pogue says that's about half what Blackberry and Treo owners pay. I pay nearly $100 for my Blackberry Pearl with the same AT&T plan, but that includes all the little costs like taxes and other charges not included in the basic plan. So, I'm sure the iPhone plans will come closer to $70 or more, which is somewhat more than half what I pay. Let's hope the competition drives down the cost of plans for other smartphones.

Of course, it's possible that the hefty up-front cost of the iPhone is being used to subsidize some of the lower plan costs. Maybe costs will rise after a couple of years. But by then we'll have a whole new generation of wowie, zowie phones and who know where plan prices will be?

Pogue notes that making a call can take up to six steps, which is more than I need to make a call on my Pearl: (1) hit the escape key if I'm in email, (2) roll of the trackball to the phone icon and (3) a press of the trackball. He's not overjoyed with the quality of calls. I'm pretty happy with the call quality of my Blackberry, but I can't wait to test it against the iPhone.

Pogue also found Internet speed on AT&T's Edge network to be slow. I haven't experienced that with my Pearl here in Los Angeles. I do have to admit that, to get greater Internet speed, I dumped an Edge-based PC card for my laptops in favor of a Verizon EvDo card.

Pogue is likes the fact that email message are shown fully formatted. There are no endless strings of HTML to wade through as with my Pearl. Here again, I hope that competitive pressure from the iPhone will lead other phone vendors to go for formatted email messages.

The New York Times technology editor tells us that battery life was not too bad in his less than scientific tests. He loved the finger flicking to go through lists, see the back of album covers and zoom in on text. However, he found entering text on the iPhone's virtual keyboard more difficult that with his Blackberry noting "The Blackberry won't be going away anytime soon."