First iPhone Reviews Arrive, And They're Aglow With Praise

You've gotta be someone special to get an iPhone early. How special? You have to either be Walt Mossberg or David Pogue, of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, respectively. So while the rest of us writers wait like baby birds for mommy to come back to the nest with a little bit of pre-chewed worm in the form of a reviewable iPhone, we get to see what the big guns have to say about the thing, officially and on the record. The verdict: These guys love it. What else did you expect?

Mossberg is the more enthusiastic of the two. He calls it a "beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer" (note: not a phone), "sets a new bar," and has a whole thesaurus full of superlatives for the phone's various features, all of which he says are the best he's ever tested, etc. etc.

Mossberg initially had a lot of trouble, as I expect many people will, with the virtual keyboard. After three days he says he was ready to "throw it out the window," but after five days he had grown to love it. Did Steve Jobs visit on day four, I wonder? His only "real drawback" is that it's an AT&T-only device. It's locked so that you can't even put in your own GSM SIM card. And AT&T's EDGE service, he complains (and as I have pointed out repeatedly), is just too slow for hard-core use.

Pogue is a tiny bit more critical, but has many of the same points as Mossberg, only amplified. The glass screen doesn't scratch as has been feared, and it's fast and beautiful and he wants it to bear his children. He loves the voice mail system, but complains that doing simple things like making a call still require a lot of button presses. Like Mossberg, he adores the web browser, but Pogue complains that battery life isn't as great as Apple has promised, especially with video. He also complains about the lack of voice dialing, instant messaging, and a memory card slot (which is odd, because no Apple product, ever, has had a memory card slot).

Pogue notes, interestingly, that when you buy a 4GB or 8GB iPhone, remember that 700MB of that will be consumed with the iPhone's operating system. Funny, I never thought about that... And like Mossberg, his big complaint is the keyboard, only magnified: "The BlackBerry won't be going away anytime soon," he says. And apparently Pogue absolutely hates the AT&T wireless network.

So there you have it. Oh, and if you want the full review with fewer long words, you can see what USA Today has to say.

No big surprises in any of this, to be honest. Looks like the two big sticking points will be the things that have worried people all along: The pokey AT&T network and that next-gen keyboard. Either you're going to get the hang of it, or you're not. But give it a week before you give up on the thing. The impatient may be better off waiting for iPhone 2.0.

And yes, I'm still waiting for mine to review... stay tuned.