So I bought an iPhone. I plan to use it as an iPod (music and video), camera and as a development testing machine. Not as a phone. I’m hoping I can get this to function as a wifi-only device.
I don’t want the AT&T Wireless service - or more accurately, I don’t want the monthly fee of the service. I know I can cancel the service within 30 days without paying the $175 early termination fee, but I don’t know if they will demand their iPhone back or not. Of course the bigger question I haven’t found answered yet - will the iPhone work in wifi mode, etc. once it has been activated but no longer has an active plan.
From their TOS:
30-DAY CANCELLATION PERIOD/TERMINATION
You may terminate this Agreement within thirty (30) days after activating service without paying an Early Termination Fee. You will pay for service fees and charges incurred through the termination date, but AT&T will refund your activation fee, if any, if you terminate within three (3) days of activating the service. Also, you may have to return any handsets and accessories purchased with this Agreement.
Really it would be smart for them to let me keep it - if I decide I love the iPhone and want to use it as a phone I’m this close to being their customer. If they won’t, I’ll have to return the iPhone and perhaps pay a $50 re-stocking fee. Not a huge risk.
My first impressions:
- The Apple Store employees are glowing they are so happy to be selling these.
- They recognized my credit card number and emailed my receipt to me from the Apple Store. I had it on my BlackBerry before I left the store. Slick.
- It’s a little heavier than I expected, especially compared to the Nokia N95.
- The screen is gorgeous.
- It picks up smudges and fingerprints like mad.
- The keyboard is actually worse than I feared. I’d let myself believe they might have actually pulled it off and made it usable.
- There is no way this can replace my BlackBerry, at least not yet.
- I use copy-paste on my mobile device pretty often.
- It’s a pretty great iPod.
- I like being able to play music and video through the speakers.
- The camera predictably sucks in low light.
- There doesn’t seem to be a way to turn off the phone/cell connection and keep wifi on.
- Activation was completely painless and took less than 1 minute.
- More companies should have online activation like this - of course, I bet many of them would screw it up.
- “iTunes” is becoming more inaccurately named every year.
- The scrolling and pinch are indeed pretty cool.
- I can’t believe they thought crunching all of the iCalendars into a single calendar on the iPhone was a good idea. It’s on a small screen like the iPhone where I really want to be able to turn on/off calendars.
- I don’t see why some of these apps don’t have screens that rotate.
- The YouTube widget is pretty well done.
- Tabbed browsing in mobile Safari is excellent.
- I wish I could copy/paste the user agent from the web page content in Safari, but it’s good to know that sniffing on “iPhone” will do the trick.
- It was really smart to keep the dock connector port the same. I simply replaced my old iPod dock with the iPhone dock (plugging it into the same USB cable).
- I have to think about which of my playlists to load on the iPhone.
- The iPhone really makes me appreciate the keyboard on my BlackBerry.
- I hope I can load a “wallpaper” onto this via iPhoto. That has to work. Yep, it does.
- The UI for the timer app is genius.
- I’m already annoyed at the limited configurability1 of it.
- Where is my “auto-upload to Flickr” feature like all the Nokias have? I guess I can send them via e-mail.
- Some of the interface niceties in here are really impressive.
- After a little experimentation, I’m upgrading my rating of the keyboard from “horrible” to just “bad”.
- Seriously, is there no way to set a Signature or remove the “sent from iPhone” on e-mails? Ah there it is. The lack of scroll bar removes a valuable interface hint - I didn’t realize there were more options on the Mail screen. There needs to be some sort of indicator that there is more stuff below the current screen.
Overall, I’m a little underwhelmed. So many of my friends were raving about the iPhone that I expected the experience to exceed what I’d been shown in the videos. It did not. It was nearly exactly what I expected from seeing the videos. Pretty much everything I thought would be great was, and everything I thought would suck did. Actually, perhaps the screen and video quality exceeded my expectations a little.
To be honest, I don’t think I’m the target iPhone user. If you’re a heavy BlackBerry user, you probably aren’t either. RIM can rest easy (for now), this initial iPhone is in no way a BlackBerry competitor. A hardware keyboard and copy/paste in a future version might change this in a hurry, but I’d even be unwilling to send text messages or post to Twitter from iPhone with any regularity. The actual phone upgrade I want is the BlackBerry 8300/Curve, but it seems like that won’t be hitting Sprint for a while.
So I’m glad for all of you who find the iPhone is the perfect phone for you, I think it will be a very nice iPod for me. I guess I’ll find out in the next couple of days if I can cancel the AT&T service and keep the iPod iPhone and if it will continue to work without a service plan.
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Andy adds this Comment:
Honestly I think that an iPhone haves a big fashion, but looking of most of the features, seems not so innovative compared to the actual available devices. Whats really innovative is the GUI, Anyway, writing from Italy, I can only envy you people in the States that can touch these things months and months before us.
=)
Andy
July 1st, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Brian Warren adds this Comment:
I hope you can cancel service and still use it, I’m sure you’re not the only person who’d like to do that.
I find the keyboard to work great for me, and I can enter data pretty dang quickly. I actually had expected to be underwhelmed, finding some killer feature that blows it all for me. What ended up happening for me, is that it lived up to the hype.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have criticisms - I wish it synced my tasks from ical and I’d love to see a copy/paste, too. It will be interesting to see how quickly apple starts sending software updates down the line and what they’ll be like.
July 1st, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
I’m excited to see the software updates too. Obviously a ton of work went into getting this ready to ship, I’m sure lots of features were cut to make the ship date that were almost ready.
July 1st, 2007 at 1:46 pm
pookguy adds this Comment:
Hey,
I was thinking of doing the same thing and cancel within 3 days. I just want the ipod and video.
Please keep me in the loop if this works.
July 1st, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Brian Ferris adds this Comment:
Just out of curiosity, why did you begin your first sentence with “So”? I see this writing pattern a lot but don’t quite understand why people use it.
July 1st, 2007 at 3:34 pm
The iPhone Effect at Ejecutive adds this Pingback:
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July 1st, 2007 at 3:42 pm
jharr adds this Comment:
So can you do this with any other wi-fi capable phone on the market - buy it and cancel the phone service and still use for wi-fi?
July 1st, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Queen of Suburbia adds this Comment:
I think the whole iphone is style over substance. I’m sticking with my blackberry!
July 1st, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
I’ve used Windows Mobile smartphones that did not have a contract and worked fine. Of course you could turn the cell service on/off explicitly with them, like you can with every other phone I’ve ever used.
July 1st, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Jerry adds this Comment:
It is NOT a replacement for blackberry.
It IS about web browsing, which as far as I can tell is far superior in quality (NOT on the HORRIBLY slow ATT system) tahn any other Wifi I’ve expeienced.
Style? yes.
Too expensive. I think so.
But it is a really cool first step in what I think will be a device that ends up as pouplar as the iPod.
If you want a much clearer review, see David Pogue’s review in the New York Times
July 1st, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Jerry adds this Comment:
PS.
In my most humble opinion, a phone is for phone calls.
Apple should have made the world’s coolest PDA instead!
JG
July 1st, 2007 at 8:48 pm
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July 1st, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Folks I know that have switched to an iPhone from a “normal” phone seem to absolutely love it. Folks that have had smartphones before seem to be less blown away, especially if they are heavy e-mail users.
July 1st, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Daniel Pasco adds this Comment:
For an alternative viewpoint, I’ve been using smart phones for about 3 years now, and I am very happy with the iPhone.
I’ve written up a comparison of the iPhone to three of the BlackBerrys that I’ve owned, a Treo 650, and a Sony Ericsson P900. In my opinion the iPhone is superior to all of them, but my priorities differ from Alex’s on a few points.
My biggest gripe so far is the keyboard, and I’ve worked with that by just making a point of using it whenever possible. I’m getting better with it and I’m certainly typing faster than I did with my Pearl.
-Daniel
July 1st, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Avi Flax adds this Comment:
I think that’s right. The UI on standard phones - particularly Motorolas - is so shockingly bad that it created a market for the iPhone.
The cost is a question of how much of the functionality a person will use. The more aspects of the device that’ll be used, the more it’s worth the money for that person. Sure, it’s not worth $500 for just an iPod, or just a phone, or just a mobile web browser, and maybe not even for two of those. But if someone will use all three features, like me, then it’s a reasonable price.
July 2nd, 2007 at 5:59 am
Alex adds this Comment:
I seem to remember iPods that cost $500 a few years back.
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:46 am
The iPhone Works Without AT&T Service | alexking.org adds this Pingback:
[…] canceled the AT&T service for my iPhone as planned and the iPhone seems to work just fine as a wifi-only device. […]
July 2nd, 2007 at 11:05 am
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July 2nd, 2007 at 11:14 am
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July 15th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Jason Poste adds this Comment:
Thank you for the excellent post. I bought an iPhone recently and still figuring out how to grasp the full potential of this marvel.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Thana adds this Comment:
Thank you for good information.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:56 pm