Let's talk about the iPhone.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Ok, so the iPhone is out, and the reviews are in.

Apparently the interface is awesome, and it's every bit as sexy as advertised. It works well as an iPod too.

However....and this is a big however.....the call quality isn't that great. I've read this across the board. It's always in the middle of the review. Then they say "the iPhone delivers" or "the iPhone sets a new standard" or "it gets an 8 out of 10".

Um, no.

A phone is supposed to be a phone. Even if it is 10 other gadgets at once. It's called the iPhone, not the iPDA, or the iDigitalCamera. The phone part is not a feature of some other item - the phone part IS the item.

If a phone costs 500 bucks and rides a wave of hype this large, it better be The. Best. Damn. Phone. Ever.

It isn't.

God, how I hate the cellphone market. I thought that by now, all this BS of less than stellar call quality would be segregated to the lower echelons of phone purchases. Not THE phone, THE product, THE amazing apex of gadget consumerism, of which I love being a voyeuristic part.

F U, Apple. I'm disappointed. Not like I'd have bought the damn thing anyway, but I can't even be vicariously excited anymore.

I guess I should be glad. Now, when my current cell contract expires in a few months, I'll be happy with whatever gadget I can afford - because I'll know the call quality will probably be the same as the iPhone's.

[DisneyFan25863]

My Blackberry Pearl 8100 can do EVERYTHING the iPhone can (including Visual Voicemail) and was $400 cheaper.

Normally I'm a big Apple fan, but I'm really not seeing the hype to the iPhone. There is no textile feedback, you can't sync over Bluetooth, no tethering to your laptop for use as a modem, apparently it gets hot as hell when you are using it, no GPS, and you can't use custom ringtones or alarms.

Plus, the plans are wayyy too expensive. 60 bucks for 450 minutes and 200 text messages? No thanks!

[Stan4dSteph]

I've heard of poor call quality with other PDAs as well. That's not jut the iPhone. I would consider the iPhone in the PDA category.

I still think it's cool, but it's too expensive for me at this point and I'm generally not an early adopter of high tech.

[flippyshark]

Apple advocate though I usually am, I knew on first presentation that iphone was something I would (at best) wait a few generations on. The interface is really nifty, but it doesn't fill any particular void in my life. It strikes me as supremely gadgety for gadgetness' sake.

On the other hand, my iPod is like my portable soul. Happy happy.

[mousepod]

I'm just waiting for the inevitable iPhone minus the phone with more storage. I'll bet it'll be out by the holidays. I'll bet it'll be called an iPod.

[~MS~]

Well I didn't buy one Friday but know someone who did and I will say that I'm not sure where the call quality issue is coming from. He didn't buy the recommended blue tooth headset but just paired his 'existing' headset to the phone and the sound quality has been fine. We've carried on conversations everywhere we had before he switched to the iPhone and haven't had any degradation in voice quality that I have been able to detect.

I'm not to thrilled with not being able to have my custom ring tones tho...that is kind of important to me.

[flippyshark]

Ah yes, custom ringtones. I was surprised when I learned that this feature was not available on the iPhone. It seems like such a natural fit. I'd bet that it's forthcoming in future iterations. (That said, I wouldn't use them myself.)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Just for the record, that's CNET's review for nearly every cell phone out there. "It's missing such and such major feature, and this major feature doesn't work so great. We give it an 8/10."

[Alex]

I wouldn't buy one for one simple reason:

It doesn't use the fast digital network for Web use and that'll likely be fixed within the next year as AT&T get's the new network distributed to useful coverages.

However, the new network will require new hardware so it won't be possible to upgrade the existing iPhones. It will be necessary top purchase a new one. For the money involved I wouldn't go near a version 1.0 product with such an obvious short-term hardware upgrade coming.

I also wouldn't buy one because all of the other features don't appeal to me. All I want in a phone is: the ability to make phone calls; the ability to get around the internet reasonably well for specific information missions.

I don't want a photo album.
I don't want a fancy iPod interface (I never use anything other than "shuffle" on my iPod).
I don't particularly want the orientation of the screen to change based on how my hand moves while looking at it.
I definitely don't want it to takes six steps to start a call (as the David Pogue NYT review says it can).

And I don't want to be tied to a single carrier. I had few complaints about AT&T when we had them years ago and they may be great now. But single carrier will keep the prices high and leave you at the whims of a pretty volatile industry.

Finally, I hate the ergonomics of brick cellphones. There is something amusing (to me) about how we spent 130 years ergonomically perfecting the telephone only to come up with such uncomfortable to use cellphone. All cellphones are great when you're using a headset but I make so few calls that a headset is more trouble that it is worth. So I want something that is comfortable in the hand and against my head. That feels like I can both listen to it and talk into it at the same time. I haven't yet seen an iPhone in person so that could be a non-issue but looking at pictures of it I doubt it.

[BarTopDancer]

It's so sexy. And so pretty. And fun to mess around with. As much as I want one because of the above reasons, AT&T shoot Cingular I mean AT&T has horrible coverage. I'm content playing with my roommates iPhone until something new catches my fancy.