iPhone: the late review

After the unfortunate situation of being in England when the iPhone hit stores and having to order it online, it did finally arrive a couple of weeks ago. Is it worth the $499 for a 4GB MP3 player, camera-phone and sort-of-PDA? Probably not. But is it worth the $499 for the awe and envy it inspires in friends and coworkers? Perhaps. It’s actually a joy to use; every feature has come in handy (except the YouTube widget, which is merely entertaining). My usage hasn’t overwhelmed the battery power yet, and I’m growing adept at the on-screen keyboard. The inability to natively change ring tones or browse the internal disk is a bit annoying, and the sound quality is rather poor using the built-in speaker. I was fortunately able to add on the $20/month data plan to my inexpensive 300 minutes/month voice plan as I was already a Cingular/AT&T customer. I’ve been able to stretch 2 years out of all of my cell phones so far. Will the iPhone be as resilient?