Why I recommend the iPhone--and don't.

The iPhone's value proposition is a bit of sleight of hand.

(Credit: CNET, Inc.)

Since issuing my verdict on buying the iPhone (no), I've been repeatedly asked to explain the discrepancy between CNET rating it a robust 8.0, yet my personal advice being to eschew it for now.

The answer in a word is value. For the average (read non-early adopter) consumer, it just doesn't make sense. There's the usual list of negatives (as a phone it's terrible, EDGE works slower than you'd like, mail is a mess, and it has no live TV availability) but more importantly, there's the hurdle of a two-year contract.

The next version of the iPhone will be much better, sleeker and--most likely--cheaper. And if sales indeed shape up to be less than expected, we may get a break with either additional carriers or perhaps just a one-year commitment.

So why an 8.0? It's innovative, its picture quality is unreal, and its PDA functionality is great. There are lots of incredible features. But unless having the newest and finest without concern for the cost is your priority, pass on this one. It's almost ready. You're gonna *love* iPhone 2.0!

[glen engelmann]

no need to wait for version 2...

what everybody who says to wait fails to realize is that you can be enjoying
using your iphone every single day between now and version 2....

they are also assuming that EVERYbody interested in the iphone already has a
cellphone....what are you supposed to do between now and version 2 if you
don't have a cell phone already?

if version 2 is super wonderful.... then just sell your current iphone on ebay
and get the new one...you won't make money, but you will have had a
significant amount of time enjoying the version 1 iphone... and time is
money....

If buying the iphone is not going to put a financial strain on you then i say
"go for it!!!" you will love it (provided att has good coverage in your area, of
course)....

enjoy!

[m.usm]

Iphone sucks

I bought iphone 3 weeks ago and on 17th day the touch screen stopped responding. i went to At&t store and they gave me cold shoulder and said after 15 days it is between you and apple while there i saw a guy who had the same problem with his iphone and i have heard from some friends that 20% of the iphones are having this problems so be careful. Do you want to spend $600 and get a phone that does not even work and never forget that you are stuck with the 2 year contract.

[prama1234]

Stop spreading the lies

What a bunch of lies. Just picked up the 20% figure out of thin air. You never even owned an iPhone to begin with.

[cardfan1212]

LOL...i think the writer is a bit mixed up

It's funny to see CNET try to backpedal on its silly rating they gave the Iphone. "Umm..yeah we gave it an 8.0 but I..uh..think you should wait til the next version."

[quality4me]

Cnet techs must be locked in verizon slaves

The writer of this article should be shot by a tech obscessed firing squad! This article and about 70% of the other articles in the last year really make me question Cnet's motive's. There's a lot of advertisments on this web site now? But Im not posting a comment to talk about that. I am really stunned that the iphone got an 8.0 in the first place? Didnt the new razr get a 8.0 as well? How about the Motorola Q when that came out? Whether you as a consumer have the money to buy a iphone or you do and just wish not to purchase it, there is no way you cannot give it the credit it deserves in the marketplace. Wait for version 2? Come on and I was getting a lot of my tech info from you? Are you budgeting my money for me or are you telling me about kick butt products? I want unbiased reviews, or Im going somewhere else.. and your advertisers will follow!

[darkhelm]

apple freaks

oh oh the apple lovers are getting a little frisky!!

[jabberwolf]

2.0 3.0 Sorry its fundamentally flawed

Anyone that has had one and used the keypad knows that you have to give the thing you absolute full attention when typing.

Its a close OS, thus only little hacks here and there are made to get the simplest of things to work on it.

Compared to the value of other PDA/Phones, the iphone comes in dead last. As a Media player, it comes in first.
But if your looking for more then a media player, the iphone simply is not for you and probably will never amount to the functionality of WM6 on numerous other phones.

I agree CNET is backpedaling too!
Maybe they can specify they gave it a 10 for a media player, and a 5 as a PDA/Phone.

[prama1234]

What is flawed is your argument

It has the best Phone interface. All the functions for managing calls (speaker, mute, merging calls, hold) are all right in front of you. On other cell phones you have remeber the key combination to achieve all this.

iPod and YouTube functions are simply fantastic. No other phone offer anything equivalent.

Browsing experience is absolutely fantastic. It has cut down browsing on my desktop/laptop by more than 50%.

The UI is revolutionary, extremely user friendly and very addictive. Even my 3 year old daughter can use the Photo/iPod features with ease.

For a 1st generation phone it is absolutely fantastic.

[hal1999]

It's not a good phone or email device??????

What is wrong with the phone. I think that it works really well and in addition has unique features such as visual voice mail.

The email capability of the iphone is also excellent. Since I bought my iphone I have used is almost exclusively to answer my emails.

To make comments in the article as you did without documentation is irresponsible and does a disservice to CNET.

[b_baggins]

What a joke this is

Two year contract is one of your fatal stumbling blocks?!? Name me a single smartphone that DOESN'T come with a two-year contract requirement.

This is nothing more than "I hate Apple because they make me look like a dork with my geeky phone that I thought made me cool" psychosis at work.

[IMSandman]

Wait for version 2.0?!?

Yes, let's wait for version 2.0. In fact, let's wait for 3.0. No one better go out and buy anything electronic because the next version will probably be better. If you like that new shiny Lexus you see on the lot, you might not as well buy it because the next version will be better. As you can see, that line of logic is fallacious.

As far as "value" goes, it comes with an iPod built in. That's over $200 of "value" right there. Never to mind the intrinsic "value" of people at work knowing that you are on the cutting edge of modern technology.

The term "iPhone" is actually a poor name for it. The name "iGadget" is much more apropos. Is it the best phone on the market? No. Does it have the best camera on the market? No. Does it have the best e-mail on the planet? No. Does it have the best websurfing on the planet? No. Does it do all of these things well? Yes. If you are looking for a device that is the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, then the iPhone is a great choice for you. If you are looking for the best in class phone only, then the iPhone is not for you. If you need a camera on your phone with 5 megapixels, the iPhone is not for you. And so on and so on.

For me, if I am traveling to the top of Mt. Everest, I'm not going to bring any sort of camera phone, but rather my high quality digital camera. If I'm going to spend all day surfing the net, I'll use my laptop and not my phone. Etc, etc, etc. For me, taking occasional pictures is nice. Checking email on occasion is nice. Surfing the web on occasion is nice. Going to the gym and having my mp3's and phone combined is great. The iPhone meets those needs and exceeds them.

My two complaints with the iPhone are the ringer volume is low (partially due to the ringtones it comes with) and the SMS texting should have been MMS instead.

The point being, you can't keep waiting for the next great thing in technology... otherwise you'd never have a cell phone in the first place and would still be using your rotary phone at home.

Cheers.

[jaspoon187]

Alright already we get it!

I think we all get the point Ronn, you don't recommend the iPhone for reasons X, Y, and Z. You said it here, in your blog titled "Bottom line on the iPhone: No." and lets not forget "iPhone video is great, Wi-Fi is a mixed bag" and "iPhone e-mail starting to annoy me".

Give me a break, how many different ways can you say "Don't get an iPhone" it suprises me that someone who bought into the hype and helped perpetuate it now has nothing better to say than "Wait for the next version" In the tech world that is what we call a cliché.

I can say that about any number of products and sound like I'm giving valid expert advice, here's an example "The Zune is a great first try to Microsoft, but Zune 2.0 will be better, you should wait until next year". How's that for a fist try? Can I have a blog on Cnet now where I bash said product while simultaneously recommending one buy it's next iteration?

For those of you who really want "expert" advice, here's my recommendation as an iPhone owner: Buy it if you want one, or don't if you don't want one. I love mine, it's not perfect, but you show me one single product on this website where the reviewer says "this product is perfect" and I will show you an editor that no longer has a job or any credibility.

[dbeisen]

Author really is crazy

Anyone who has used other PDA type devices and then this could not possibly fail to give this the best rating ever. This should be 9.5 just based on the multitouch technology alone. It's crazy expensive, but come on it's the best thing on the market. The screen is phenomenal and the typing way better than my palm treo 650. The people complaining about the keyboard haven't learned to trust it, yet. 90% of the time when you mess up it corrects your mistyped words for you and you keep moving at a really amazing pace for something of this size. Clearly there's room for improvement(3G, better notes app that lets you edit and see what you've written on the computer, and of course the lack of a to do list is almost unforgiveable), but at the present time it's a quantum leap ahead of everything else. If you need a new phone, and have the cash do not hesitate. If you can hold out, then obviously 2.0 is always better than 1.0.

[bornlikethis38]

They try their best

Lets try to look at some raw information. The Apple iphone is an innovative beautiful and clever product, but it is really expensive for a phone. Someone said that the mp3 player is a $200 value. Well I've heard good things about the audio player it still stands that all of Apples ipods are low end non advanced devices. I'll put in a good word for them since they do a lot of product testing to make sure they work (unlike some unmentionable companies). The ipods are very simple for their higher prices, well its true with many others players as well its especially true with Apple. The hefty price of the PDA phone from the quality I've seen in the device should be about that of the AT&T 8525. The music player on the other hand with only four to eight gigs of storage is just not worth the extra $300. When the 2ndgen clix is only $160 for 4 gigs and is really cute, simple and more advance than the nano. The touch sceen worked quite well but so does the Cowon D2's. When it all comes down to it. Its over priced and there are better things to buy. Like lets say the blackjack and a that new clix, cheaper and you don't have to switch carriers. Oh and the two year plan, thats what the majority of the plans come with, and if you do want to cancel the contract, if you could buy the iphone then you probably can afford to cancel.

[benjaminkessler]

Is this a joke?

Are you serious? "Two year contract" is a con? It's a cell phone and we're in America! When was the last time you purchased a cell phone without a two year contract?

I am truly confused by your comment that the iPhone is a "terrible phone". In my subjective experience this phone has been as good or better than other cell phones I've used in terms of call quality. It's certainly heads and tails above a Treo or a Blackjack with battery life. So in what way is the iPhone, as a phone, terrible?

I'm not a huge Apple fan, but the iPhone is far and away the best cellular device and best ipod I've ever owned. Sure it doesn't have 3G, email could be better bla bla bla, but the pros far outweight the cons. I've used my fair share of smartphones, and the interface and usability of the iPhone are truly revolutionary.

But I guess all you wanted to do was pique people's interest with your inanity. And I suppose my comment has proven you successful. Touche.

[make_or_break]

One-year contract? For me, 2 1/2 years ago...

...when I signed up for a BlackBerry 7100t on T-Mobile. One year contracts are still out there, and not just from T-Mobile...you can force the issue with most if not all service providers with most phones (except the iPhone, of course), but it usually comes with the proviso that you may not get all or any of the discounting available to the price of the phone itself.

As for the iPhone, since I don't own one I can't really comment on many aspects of it. But I CAN comment on EDGE, since I do have a phone tied to that technology. I truly dislike surfing in EDGE which, with my current BlackBerry 8700g, is a slothlike user experience that's only made passably bearable due to the BB's ability to really dumb down scripting (at the cost of site usability, of course). I've actually played with a friend's iPhone running on EDGE, and frankly with Safari it was even more painful, despite AT&T's upgrades to their EDGE network. Safari seems to load up EVERYTHING (I'm not versed enough with an iPhone to be able to tell it not to, if indeed that's possible), and for how I've used the internet while hamstrung by EDGE, that's simply too much info to deal with. As for email...now that I've grown accustomed to (i.e., dependent upon) push email on my BB, there's simply no going back, at least for me.

Don't get me wrong...I think the iPhone is still the [i]coolest[/i] communications device conceived so far. The overall UI is terrific, except for that foul, recessed headphone jack. But it's not just about the phone; the service counts for something as well. Actually, for me the quality of the service has always counted for MORE than any phone I've ever owned.

AT&T is finally getting serious about getting their 3G act together, so perhaps there's hope for them yet. Since I'm already a suffering EDGE user and care about the service at least as much as the hardware (plus my wife's Verizon service is oh-so-sweet 3G...envy is truly a BAD thing, especially while waiting for one's current service commitment to end), I [i]passionately hate[/i] the limitations of EDGE so much that I'd naturally take a pass on the 1G iPhone, no matter how great the device itself is. But since AT&T is supposedly getting closer with their high-speed service, it seems to me the [i]next[/i] iPhone is perhaps going to be the one for me.

Besides, with reports now of the touchscreen failing on quite a few 1G phones, I rather all you early iPhone adopters be the beta testers so I can get a dependable unit with 3G speed down the road (hopefully with a user-accessible battery compartment as well...well, I can always hope).

[cardfan1212]

iphone is definitely about marketing..not function

but at the present time it's a quantum leap ahead of everything else. >>>>

Umm..no, it's not. It's not even up to par with a Treo 700p which of course is a year older. The treo can do so much more that it's not even funny.

With the iphone, you got a great screen, good eye candy, and a unique multitouch interface.

After that, it's not even close. The treo is much easier for one handed use, has boatloads of apps, high resolution screen that is closest to iphone's, can be used to tether to net, evdo, ability to watch tv or via slingbox, real email programs, better office apps, notes, calendar, voice recorder, video recorder, record conversations, external sd card, removable battery, real voice quality with sprint & others, much cheaper plans, IM's, external keyboard, real games, no web 2.0 garbage, etc etc..i could go on awhile..

Yes, the treo crashes sometimes, so does the iphone. Yes, the treo has problems sometimes, so does the iphone.

Point is, the iphone isn't 5 years ahead of anyone. It's got a cute face is all..and appeals to all the nontechies who never saw what a real smartphone can do. Or it appeals to ex smartphone users who never had much clue.

The iphone is designed for the simple masses. The new AOL. It's a symbol. Wear it proudly...

[prama1234]

Give me a break.....

Treo 700p - give me a break. It's not even a GSM phone. Look at the crappy browser of the Treo. Makes me wanna puke on it.

[PorscheTwinTurbo]

Works great for me....

As a phone, it is the best I have used yet, this includes the current 700p, i860, and Razr that I have. The call quality is EXCELLENT as long as AT&T has service. When AT&T does not, the 700p works good and vice versa. For email, it is outstanding when used with a .mac account, which is what I have. Mac mail is hands down the best email program along side of Thunderbird, at least in my opinion, so I could care less about gmail, yahoo, crapOL or any others. If I using it for business, I could see the advantages my 700p has over it, but really, any MS Office documents are near impossible to read on the 700p, the browser sucks at best, and the memory is less than steller. It does do a great job as a tethered modem, which is a plus. The iPhone, right now, has it's place--it is a great addition/replacement to an iPod and the multimedia features are fantastic. Bottom line, as an exclusive smartphone for business, yes, until the new version, I would look elsewhere. But as a phone for personal use it can't be beat. Is it expensive? Sure it is, but so is a Ferrari. Bottom line is those who can seem to like it and those who can't seem to find all of its flaws.

[boopiejones]

per cnet's rating page...

"Our editors review thousands of products each year, rating them from 1 (worst) to 10 (best). Through testing and hands-on use, editors determine the products' quality, features, AND VALUE." (emphasis added) yet you contend that the reason you don't recommend it is because of the lack of value. if the iphone's overall value sucks, shouldn't that be reflected in the rating? i have never even touched an iphone, but i think that a phone with reported so-so call quality and a $600 price tag should score no higher than a 5 or 6. for a $600 phone to score an 8, it better be 100% perfect in all other arenas to create "value" at $600 and earn the high score...

[drole.homme]

iphone rocks

i don't know what everybody is talking about, this phone is awesome. Yeah
the phone is not the best but EDGE us fine except with youtube. I had a
problem with the phone getting uber warm so I called Apple and they sent
me a new one. It's the service that you pay extra for. I love my iPhone.

[erodriguex]

Yeah lets wait

First I gues your right about waiiting. Let's see If I would have 20 years I could
now purchase the atari 2600 with all the games built in for about 40 bucks.
Geez thats not a bad deal when you think about. Does anyone want to play?
Nope. I love my iphone and again as another stated before if you dont like it
dont buy it its that simple. Dont wait for tomorrow for what you want today time
will pass you by. Oh and I did this on my Iphone good luck doing this on a Trea
I know I had one.

[cdtphilpot]

I would recommend the iPhone

Well I have to disagree with Cnet here. I've had my iPhone for a month now
and I love it. Yes it does have quirks here and there but overall it's great.
Like others have said, no product is perfect especially the first go round. I
would like to be able to put my own ringtones on the phone and the not
being able to delete all my messages is a little tedious. Given all that I
wouldn't trade my phone for any other device. I also have the bluetooth
headset for the iPhone and the way they work together is amazing. Anyone
who says that the iPhone is not "Revolutionary" obviously has just held one at
the Apple store and not actually owned one, trust me the iPhone is truly
spectacular, and you don't have to carry a brick like the Treo models!!!

[alainde]

amen brotha!

i mean come on...would you rather be dating star jones (e.g. treo, etc.) or giselle
bundchen (iphone)? no brainer...and i'm gay!