iPhone or iCandy!

Ok, so I was planning to wait at-least 3 months before I bought the iPhone, but I yielded to the temptation! Its more down to Khawaja, who displayed his new iPhone like a proud father shows off his newly born baby. Roughly within an hour of that demo, I was down at the Apple store with Venkat to pick up our new iPhones. Well, pick up isn't quite the word for a phone which costs at-least $500 and with a 2 year plan, comes up to almost $1500, assuming we are living in an ideal, tax-free world!

I've been using, or should I say my iPhone is being used, during the last week for music, movies, weather, youtube, browsing, stocks, photos ... and lest I forget to mention, yes, to make and receive calls and view and filter visual voice mail.
So what exactly does make the iPhone so special?

• The fantastic multi-touch interface. Face it, there are a few other touch screen phones available, but the iPhone knocks them all into the dust! The photo flipping (photos horizontally or vertically aligning with the phone) is something which amazes almost everyone I've seen using the phone. It does have its glitch after-all, but thats for a later section to discuss!
• The fact that you could keep in touch with the weather, stocks, traffic information, your email, music and movies on the go is something which helped me decide buy this phone. To tell the truth, I've started using my laptop far less at home than I used to. We all know for a fact that once you login to check your email, you know you gotta check out the news and then catch up with your IM, and before you know it you are there browsing and chatting the rest of the night!
• The browsing experience on the iPhone is phenomenal. Also the fact that you could align your browser across when you slide the phone horizontally gives you a far wider view than when you hold it vertically. Now you are not restricted to a small portion of the web page and there isn't a need to remember or keep tapping the keypad to scroll down or across. Just use the thumb and the index finger and enjoy the unique browsing experience!
• You could view, add, delete or customize cities when you view the weather or clock and also customize the stocks you want to keep track of.
• Music and movies sound just as amazing, whereas movies now have a much wider viewing experience compared to a 5Gen iPod, so you probably would sell your existing ipod if you decide to buy an iPhone! Or would you?!
• Shuffling through album artwork to look for your favorite collection is something I've loved and which comes as close to flipping through your actual music collection!
  
• The speaker volume is independent of the headphone volume. If you don't know what that means, try blasting your iPhone speakers at full volume and then plugging in the headphones.
  
• A feature I totally loved within the Maps is the one where you could search for a business and then call them up. For example, you are driving and need to locate the nearest Chinese restaurant. Just type in and enter "Chinese restaurant" into the Map Search and click any of the little bubbles (or are they balloons??) on screen. If you see an associated tel number, you could just tap it and the iPhone dials it for you! Equally amazing is the integration of the phone with your email. Just tap the number and your call is dialed.
• The Wi-fi and bluetooth capabilities were probably absolute necessities! However I had countless problems discovering the iPhone from my HP Vista PC. Surprisingly, the PC guy did find my Nokia 6201i and one other Nokia in the neighborhood!
• Assigning photos to contacts is another interesting feature, but I'm sure you could do this with a dozen other phones today. You could also attach special ringtones to special people, which means you could now ignore that "important" call from your boss!
• Assigning a password to the phone is good to have as people could otherwise easily access your email or important notes.
• Finally, looks wise the iPhone beats almost any other phone of its kind today. It is sleek, has an intuitive interface and will probably be the Mustang or BMW of cellphones for sometime to come!

Ok, not that I've hyped it so much, lets get down to the cons and suggested improvements for this little gadget.

• I've observed, probably about once in 5 times, that the photos do not flip or align when you rotate the phone. It probably takes a few seconds before the iPhone decides to wake up to the reality of gravity!
• Its expensive! Do I need to say that again?! I'm sure the sales would've been three times more if the phone cost three times less, and probably would've swept the cell phone market if it came in free with the plan! Oh yeah, wishful thinking!
• The screen shuts off after about 15-20 seconds of usage. While this could be effective to save power, it could also get onto your nerves when you are probably typing an email and are not directly taken to that screen. To the credit of the phone, it does not actually cancel or forget the email you were working with! Sames goes for when you are listening to music and need to go back to the controls on screen. If you need to pause or skip a song or two, you'll need to unlock the phone before doing so. I still can't believe they didn't think of that.
• If you have a huge music collection or contact list (although thats debatable given the amount of memory you have on the device) its not possible to scroll directly to the bottom of the list. I so wish that I could also sort my contact list.
• Coughing up more than $500, one surely expects more than the 4Gb of memory. I do hope Apple comes up at-least with more storage for its phone in a future upgrade, although thats something which might not be possible as it could almost completely eat into its Video iPod sales.
• Lack of applications, games - although I'm pretty positive these would be part of the iphone very soon!
• One needs to unlock the phone before making or receiving calls. This could be pretty cumbersome, especially if you are driving.
• Something I'm really peeved about is that music cannot be synced up manually anymore. If you do not wanna sync the entire iTunes Library, you'll need to create a folder and assign it for syncing. The same goes with Movies and Podcasts. I haven't tried it yet, but I sure hope the iPhone does not delete the existing songs when I connect it to a new iTunes Library!
  
• Watch a movie on the iPhone and I'm sure three times out of five, you'll probably bury the speakers beneath your fingers. The fact that movies or videos on the iPhone always have to be watched widescreen and with the "more powerful" speaker located at the bottom right corner, where you normally hold the device, will probably create an impression that the speaker volume hasn't been turned up enough!
• Although I'm sure people are now complaining, not having an integrated chat application is actually good for the battery life of the phone!
  
• I'm not quite sure I could point out problems with the call quality of the iPhone just now, so I'll probably save it for a later review. As of now, the quality is pretty good and it has synced up very well with the bluetooth on my Toyota Camry.

All in all, an amazing phone, and if you are waiting a few months to buy it, I'd advice you to forget the months and go get yourself this remarkable phone before it lands into your grandmother's hands! The iPhone is here to stay!