Apple iPhone: Why I Bought One

Greetings, everyone! After more than three weeks of not touching a keyboard, I'm finally back from my honeymoon. First things first: yes, Italian food is indeed all that it's cracked up to be. And yep, shortly after I stepped off the plane, I bolted for the nearest Apple store, plunked down $600 and picked up an iPhone.

From the looks of it, I'm not the only one who threw caution to the wind and cracked their piggy banks for the mega-hyped handset. A quick check of Apple's Web site reveals that only a couple of Apple stores still have the iPhone in stock, while the bloggers at Engadget Mobile are guessing that more than a million iPhones have been sold since Friday—a staggering number, considering that the ubiquitous Moto RAZR took months and months to hit that mark.

Fellow Y! Tech Advisor Chris Null has already written an exhaustive, two-part review of the iPhone, in which he sensibly recommended that we wait to cough up our hard-earned cash until iPhone 2.0 arrives. Looking over his review, it's hard to argue with his critiques: no 3G, no GPS, the YouTube app is little more than a gimmick, no instant messaging, you can't edit Office documents, and so on. And then there's that $600 price tag (or $500 for the 4GB model). Clearly, there are more powerful and affordable phones out there (indeed, I'd advise serious road warriors to spring for an old-school smartphone like the Palm Treo 755p rather than an iPhone.)

And yet, here I am (along with several hundred thousand others) with a new iPhone and a $600 charge on my credit card. Why did I do it? Because warts and all, the iPhone is still the most exciting phone I've ever seen. The touch-screen interface is a joy to use, the mobile Safari Web browser puts every other phone browser (including even Nokia's) to shame, my HTML e-mail is properly rendered (at last), mobile videos look brilliant, and placing calls is a pleasure (yes, it takes a few taps to get there, but they're fun taps). Of course, I'd love to see 3G access on future iPhones, but I'm getting decent speeds on EDGE (YouTube videos are loading up within about 10-20 seconds, for example) and the virtual QWERTY keypad is much easier to use than I thought; in fact, I'm banging out messages much faster now that I ever did on my Treo.

Just to be clear: I'm not recommending you buy a $600 (or $500) iPhone in any "Consumer Reports"-kind of way (and I'm not tossing my Treo just yet). Chris is right: if you're a smart shopper, you'll stow your wallet until the next version—complete with 3G, over-the-air music downloads and a killer mobile Office editor—hits the shelves. But if you're a gadget hound (and you've seen the title of this blog, right?), the iPhone makes for one of the coolest—and most satisfying—tech toys since, well, the original iPod. No buyer's regret here.

Related:
Hands-on Review: Apple iPhone [Yahoo! Tech]
iPhone sells out faster than an 80's rock star [Engadget Mobile]