The applications on the iPhone work very well, and are very well-integrated. I appreciate the fact that I can send an email of a picture or a note to someone in my contact list, or that I can touch a URL I have entered for a contact to go to their web site, or that I can instantly see the Google map for the address of a contact. The visual voicemail works quite well. It gives an email-like view of your voicemail. I think the audio quality of voicemail messages could be better though. The built-in email application works with GMail, Yahoo Mail, or any other POP3 mail server. It's fairly basic, but, just simply works! You can set it up to only check mail when you want it, or to check automatically every 15, 30, or 60 minutes (it's not as immediate as a true "push" email, but it's a reasonable approximation).
Web browsing with Safari is not bad. About as good as could be expected from such a small device. Using WiFi, sites load and render at a moderate speed (I wouldn't say it's fast, but, it's definitely usable). I think if they had a slightly faster CPU, the browsing experience would be even better. Using the EDGE cellular data network was not bad either, though definitely slower. Usable but, of course, I wish it were faster. At this time, the iPhone doesn't handle Flash sites (but it's rumored to be an upcoming feature update). Over the course of a week, Safari has crashed a few times, but, I expect they will fix these issues with a software patch.
The built-in Google Maps application works very well. It's a very nicely done portable mapping application with local search built-in. It has the standard street view as well as a satellite image view. And, on top of that, it also can show real-time traffic status.
The iPhone has an video iPod built in. It is beautifully implemented, with CoverFlow, video playback, and of course, audio playback. They do need to fix a few small issues, such as the fact that there's no way to view detailed information about podcasts, and they should scroll podcast titles that are too long. Also, my standard headphones don't seem to work with the built-in headphone jack. The iPhone also has a speaker, making it the first iPod to include one. I find that I use the speakers quite a lot (they are very tiny, and also very tinny, but, very convenient). As a PDA, the iPhone excels.
It has a simple but useful calendaring application with support for periodic events and alerts. It also has a great contact manager application. The Notepad application is really basic- I wish it had some more features. And, I wish they had built in a voice recorder. You can sort-of fake it by leaving yourself voicemails, but, it's not quite as good as a true voice recorder application.
The built-in camera is probably the weakest point. Although it's a 2 megapixel camera, I found the image quality to be fairly poor. It will not replace your existing camera. It's okay for occasional snapshots, but the image quality is not going to win any awards, by a long shot. Sharpness is lacking, and there are no camera controls whatsoever.
One of the controversial aspects of the iPhone is the touch-screen keyboard. How is it to type on? Well, it does take some getting used to. I find it usable for short messages. The auto-correcting feature works fairly well.
I think the iPhone is a ground-breaking product for Apple. It not only puts them on the map in the cell phone world, but also puts them at the top of the heap. It's a product that works well, and integrates so many useful functions into one device. The screen is great, the user interface works very well, it's easy and intuitive to use, and, it's just plain cool. However, it is only the beginning, and you can't help but wish for improvements and extensions. Surely future versions will tempt you to upgrade.
