A first look at the iPhone

I was one of the crazy ones who waited in line for 6 hours to buy an iPhone today, and I found it to be well worth the wait and well worth the price.

I decided to buy my iPhone at a neighborhood AT&T store in Fort Lauderdale. I arrived at the store about noon with 6 people already waiting. The first man in line, who came prepared with a chair and his Dell Laptop, said he got there in the morning. There was wireless networking available from Office Depot next to the AT&T Store.

More people started arriving around 3PM, and by the time they reopened there were about 40 people waiting.

At 4PM they pulled down the shades and locked the door. Finally at 6PM they raised the shades and opened the door. They let in 15 people at a time and the crowd was very orderly.

It took me less than 10 minutes to buy the iPhone, since I'm already a CingularAT&T customer. The salesman just looked up my account and gave me an unopened box. Unlike most other phones, they didn't have to activate it in the store.

The box includes a dock, USB cable, the same USB AC adapter provided with most iPods, and earphones with a built-in microphone. The dock is a little smaller than a standard iPod dock and includes an audio output jack.

When I got it home, I simply connected it to my MacBook Pro and iTunes launched and asked me to activate my iPhone. The iPhone requires iTunes 7.3, which was released earlier today and which I had already installed.

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The phone was activated in less than 5 minutes while it synced my music, videos, contacts, calendars, photos, and bookmarks. The phone was fully charged when I got it, unlike most phones which need to charge for several hours, so I was able to use it right away.

I found the onscreen keyboard fairly easy to use, although I occasionally miss some letters near the edges. The sound quality is very clear, even with a weak signal.

When I opened Safari for the first time, it found my WiFi network and prompted me to connect to it. When I went outside later, it found several other wireless networks and asked to connect, but I cancelled and was able to browse the web at an acceptable speed using the EDGE network.

When I tried to connect it to a device not certified for the iPhone (an inMotion speaker), it put up an alert asking whether it should switch to airline mode to prevent audio interference. I refused and the sound was still OK through the speaker.

I've posted a full gallery of both the waiting and unboxing here.