Pet Shop Boys Community

For pals in Europe : be prepared for folks to show it off when it comes. These people will all be trendy homosexuals at first. Don't panic. In SF we're already over it, every bitch has one. lol.

With your superior 3G networks, it ought to be even more superb. Here is my list of gripes with it:

1. The earphone jack is only compatible with the supplied earbuds, not my cushy Sony headphones. I hate this. I'm sure there's some expensive option..

B. AT&T's Edge network is not the worst, but still sucks. Voice quality when using it as a phone here is tinny and frequent drop-outs. Never happened with Sprint.

HOWever, the freaking marvels never cease with this device. I thought the dedicated YouTube button was a nice perk. But after trying it, you realize the enormity- any video on YouTube is available anywhere at anytime. I watched a PSB appearance of them promoting "Rent" I had never seen before. Waiting for the bus. Pretty much every PSB video, available on demand. Or any other artist, ever. This is huge.

The Safari web browser works as well as a laptop. The pinching, swiping gestures to expand/contract web pages/images is utterly brilliant. Graphically flipping through "album" covers is fun but it's not the 70's, I don't care about cover art anymore.

Ever astonishing is how precisely the touchscreen works. Even if you have elephant fingers, it's delightfully precise. Typing is a breeze, even without physical touchkeys.
It retrieves my email with less fuss than my laptop. Syncs everythng auto.

Not to be boring too much, but you guys are in for a treat, esp. with your faster 3G.
Hugely recommend it- if the worst i can bitch about is headphone capabilities, well..
it does everything as advertised and then some. So pleased with this gadget.

kthxbai

Thanks for the review Des.

BBC said yesterday it will be in UK in November.

But not taking standard headphones is a disaster.
(Senheiser PXC-300 owner).

Not expected here until 2009.

(less portly) Greg.

November 9th in the UK - but only on O2. I'm very tempted - £269 worth of temptation to be precise!

Well from what I hear the iPhone won't be on the new 3g network. I thought it was still going on the slower network Edge type network.

Here's some pros and cons that I've found with mine.

Pros:
I got it after the price drop. You can now download from the itunes store onto your phone and if you're on wifi it doesn't take long, a 7 or 8 minute song only took about 2 1/2 minutes to 3. The email pushing is great for Yahoo. Youtube is cool to use. The touch-keyboard actually works pretty well. Takes a bit to get used to but it learns the words you type too. It is pretty thin and light compared to my Treo. The safari pinch and zoom features do work well as turning the phone sideways. I've not had any problems with calls and I like the fact that if you're using the ipod and the phone rings the headphones have a mic in them so you can take the call without having to grab the phone and all that. Visual voicemail is AWSOMWE. It's nice to see all the VM's you have stored on the phone. WiFi is great, it compensates from the crappy edge network and you'll be surprised at how many wifi hot spots there are that you can get on.

Cons.
The iPod will only snyc up with play lists. You can't manually manage your music like the regular ipod so that means any music that's on your phone MUST ALSO be on your computer. That sucks if you're like me and imported CDs over into the phone but deleted them from your computer after wards. Also the iPod portion resets itself a lot if you start using other functions. So if you paused in the middle of a song and then go use Safari and email and all that and go back to your iPod later it just brings up the main menu. It looses where you were in play lists or songs. The edge network is slow but I had an old treo on Sprint beforehand so I'm finding it slightly better than what I had. Youtube also doesn't give you access to everything. You get more precise results off the website than you do from iphone. Some stuff won't even show up on the iphone but will come up right away on the website using the exact same search terms.

Over all I really like the phone. I'm hoping the iPod part of manually managing is fixed with a software update.

I hear you about the pain in the ass - you have songs on yr old iPod you erased from your laptop- but y'know, iPods have always been designed that way- without a hack, you never could transfer stuff back, always been. Not necessarily Apple's fault.

Okay West 4, I am sure you will appreciate this HUGE gripe- we like music right?
Not compatible with our fat comfy headphones!!
I HATE the earbuds - but get this, aside from a fugly huge adapter from Belkin, all the other adpaters are sold out for 3 months! At which time there will alegedly be an array of headphones, hi-end, etc..
the choices are nil to horrible!

So amazed the headphone /audio people are so behind on this.. Appple recessed the jack for stability- so it won't screw up when it's in yr pocket after a while- you know how audio jacks are-

STILL in love with the iPhone, just astonished at the lack of headphone options for proper audio. And yes, forgetting the one popular brand Apple adverts and sells- read the comments and every other person says one or the other earphone shorts out within 2 weeks.

Stephen Fry apparently did a very good review of it last week on his blog .....

http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/?p=3

I don't mind the earbuds that much since they're small and easy to carry around in your pocket. The recessed jack I never realized was a problem until I tried to plus my iphone into my stereo. The one nice factor is they have the mic on the so if your using the ipod and the phone rings you can just sqeeze the mic button and it clicks over to the phone. That part I like.

i want one

but heard it'll get to india only by the end of 2008 maybe! :'(

Plus i'll have to unlock it for use here, so that'll mean right now i need the older 1.1.1v as the 1.1.2 cant be unlocked yet..

and cant find any good deals on ebay either

right now trying to find someone returning from the US

The sick thing about Stephen Fry- who's a genius, just an amazing guy- is that because he HAD to have the iPhone, he got one in LA and spent months paying EXORBITANT roaming charges- and he didn't care. (Before its UK debut).

I'm still damned happy with mine- I've got the full Internet in my pocket, it still amazes me in its subtle, intelligent touches, 4 months later. I'm posting here on it now. Still highly recommended, four months later- it does everything it said it would, and more.

My nephew calls it the "magic phone", because i can conjure anything on YouTube in seconds to entertain him, wherever we are. His Superman cartoons, or the video for "Young Folks"- bam, it's there. It'll improve, but I'm still amazed. Best $ I ever spent for something I use so much (the Internet).

^^ good for you

right now wifi isnt predominant in india, so we'll have to make do with slower gprs conenctions

oh and i got myself the HTC P3400 coz i couldnt get the iPhone now..

OKay, the new software update fixed a lot of the complaints I had. You can now manage the music on in the same way you can with an iPod. You don't have to sync up your play lists which means I could delete all the stuff from my laptop that I only wanted on my iPod.

You can also send texts to multiple people at the same time now and you can rearrange the buttons and add bookmark web browser buttons that will even remember where you were on the page and where you had zoomed too.

I'm even happier now!

The wiggling icons are freaking cute, I must admit! I've only added Google to the homescreen as a one-push button so far. I'm in awe of my friends who've hacked their iPhone for some freaking COOL apps, but I'm too puss to do that just yet.

Reading some horror stories about bringing iPhone abroad though. Even with an AT&T International plan, sounds like rape, serious. 4 digit phone bills, wtf.

That said, I'm damned pleased with the thing lo these many months. EDGE sucks in the US, duh. But with Wifi, the browser interface is pretty damned good. Watching a movie, I whip it out (don't be scared, ladies!) and my question of "who's that actor again?" is answered in seconds.

Sounds trite, but there is no mobile that gives you the web like the iPhone. I'm typing , and viewing PSB Community, on it now.

Deschanel wrote:
Reading some horror stories about bringing iPhone abroad though. Even with an AT&T International plan, sounds like rape, serious. 4 digit phone bills, wtf.

Ffffftttt ! That's nothing .........

http://news.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,390296 ... 861,00.htm

Ahhch! That is SO criminally gangsterish, just unbelievable!

How is it that the corporations who love globalism by say, shipping jobs like at call-centres to India,
HATE it when you cross a country border and GOUGE consumers like the mafia for the crime of "roaming"?
Because they CAN, I guess! Bastids.


And while i'm on a rant- please forgive me- why is it that I have unlimited Internet but "texting" is such a precious commodity it's rationed to 200 a month? (AT&T/iPhone US).

Because texting is a cash cow for youngsters whose parents pay the bill, i suspect. But the telco's treat text as if it's something special and mysteriously expensive to transmit.

If I watch a full-length music video on my iPhone, there's at least a half-million lines of "text" flowing into the phone. It's called code! Software of any sort IS text. We're talking millions of 1s and 0s here.
So queer that full audio/video is limitless, and hours of phonecalls too. But a text of
"How r u? kthxbai" is greedily rationed and hoarded. Utterly artificial, fake gouging.