I touched an iPhone

It was my turn to run the slides in church today.  When I went into the sound booth, the sound guy was already there and he had an iPhone.

My first impression – it is smaller than I thought it would be.  For some reason I expected the whole thing it be bigger… smooth, like an iPod, but bigger.  It’s probably just the advertising that Apple has done, making it appear larger than life.

Once I touched it I was impressed.  In the 60 seconds I messed with it, everything worked as easily as it was advertised.  I flipped through some pictures.  Did the two-finger zoom.  I then used a browser to open a page and do the zoom thing there.  The connection was slow, but I have heard that from other people… a feature of EDGE.

I didn’t make a call, so I don’t know how the device handles the task I would use it most to do.  That’s the thing.  The iPhone is a phone.  It does a lot of cool things, but it’s a phone.  I wouldn’t want to carry something as big as an iPhone around with me all the time.  I have a RAZR.  It cost me $10.  It’s compact and it has great sound/voice quality when I use it to make calls.  It has a lot of other features that I barely use… because I use it as a phone.

If you travel all the time and need to get on the web, the iPhone may be worth the expense.  $600 is a lot to pay for a phone when you can buy a much more powerful laptop for the same amount and get a 14 inch display to boot.