I Bought An iPhone… Now What?

You're probably sick of hearing about the iPhone already. How can you not be? It's on the Internet, on TV, on the radio-basically taking over mainstream news. But I'm guilty of giving into all the hype. I bought an iPhone on Friday. My excuse to others is that I needed a new phone and I've always wanted an iPod, so the iPhone made sense for me. In reality, it's a really cool gadget that I just had to have.Ironically I've never been one of those people that had to have the latest and the greatest gadget and I consider myself money-conscious. But I figured I'd check out the iPhone commotion at a local AT&T store in Fresh Meadows, Queens, on Friday. The line didn't turn out to be that bad-about 80 people had lined up alongside the AT&T store. I thought it would go pretty quickly once 6 p.m. hit, but I couldn't be more wrong.

I made up my mind and decided to make the purchase. After four tiring hours of waiting in line and seeing the day turn into night, the AT&T store shut down its doors and had a secret meeting with the employees. It was announced that they were out of iPhones and people would either need to fill out an order form to have one shipped to them or come back at a later date. The details were fuzzy. Nobody working at the store seemed to know what they were talking about. People started getting angry, yelling, threatening AT&T store employees and pointing out their poor customer service.

Thankfully I overheard a woman behind me talking on the phone with the Apple store. She had a big smile on her face, so I knew there was hope. Putting on my investigative hat, I managed to find out that the Apple store at the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island had tons of iPhones in stock. And they did! Walking into the Apple store was a much more pleasant experience. There were hundreds of nicely-packaged iPhones everywhere. The staff was eager to help and answer every question, as well as show off all the necessary accessories. I would recommend going directly to an Apple store in the future. AT&T stores don't get my vote for treating potential customers too well.

Having had the chance to activate my iPhone and play with it for a couple of days, I must say I am impressed. The form factor is beautiful and the menus become intuitive once you use them a few times. The touch screen keyboard is not easy to type on at first; typos are common since the letters are thinner than most fingers. But the iPhone does correct grammar as you type and it becomes easier after a while.

One thing I was looking forward to and have been disappointed with is AOL mail on the iPhone. It doesn't display as well as other Web pages, takes a long time to load, and once it has loaded, text shows up as colored boxes that are unreadable. I'm not sure if it's AOL's fault or the way the page shows up on the Safari browser. But I do hope I can resolve the problem soon because without proper e-mail access, the phone has less value to me.

I plan to blog about the iPhone more soon, as I learn the device better. If you've purchased one too, do you have any issues to report? I'd love some feedback.