iPhone: My initial report

On Sunday, I caved in and purchaed an iPhone. I have been lusting after this beast since its announcement in January, and especially after seeing it in person after its release in June. Thanks to some kind friends of mine and their Apple gift card birthday present, the iPhone is now in my pocket.

After three days with it, I am very happy. Activation was simple. I plugged it into my MacBook Pro, iTunes came up automatically, and brought me to the activation screen. Since I’m already an AT&T customer, I put in my phone number, and the last 4 of my SSN and it asked me to choose from the $20, $30, or $40 a month data plan. Since I’m not a big txt-er (or however you say it), I did the $20 a month plan.

Once I activated my phone through iTunes, it took about an hour and a half to actually activate. After hearing the error sound come from my old phone, and saw that it was reporting a bad SIM card, I rebooted my iPhone and I received a text message saying it was good to go.

So far, I am very happy with the EDGE data network. It’s not blazingly fast or anything, but it doesn’t drag either. I really like being able to get my email on the go, but realize that this now means that my work email will follow me everywhere.

My only frustrations are pretty much what everyone else is complaining about. First is the lack of being able to use my own ringtones. I don’t really mind paying $.99 for a ringtone, but it bugs me that you can only make ringtones out of certain songs (and none of the ones that I want).

In addition, it sucks that Bluetooth is so disabled. That was always one of the best things about AT&T/Cingular is that they didn’t disable Bluetooth syncing and file transfer. Having no Bluetooth communication between my computer and my phone is crap.

Besides those fairly minor gripes though, I love my iPhone! I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great mobile Internet device. And with the iPhone SDK announced today, things are only going to get better for iPhone owners.