iphone, you phone... I need advice!

I read some reviews on the iphone when it first came out because I thought they looked cool on their TV ads.

Apparently, they are great ipods.

Like all brands, the web service is *slow*

The quality of the phone is average to sub-standard, depending on who you ask and where they live.

I bought the kids Samsung BlackJacks instead.

They have a full qwerty keyboard which my kids burn up texting all day, and the phone part of them works great. They won't hold as many songs. I think you can get bigger memory cards for them, but I think the iphone still holds more. My kids have 2gb cards in theirs (i think) I bought them as add-ons and bought the biggest the on-line retailer had.

I went strictly on the reviews at the time, and the reviews seemed to agree that they weren't great phones.(the iphone that is) they may be better now idk

Erica, my son has an iphone and he loves it! Of course, he is twenty and in the Air Force. His social life and his job demand that he use his GPS, texting, internet access, email, phone, movie times, myspace, etc, etc, etc, multiple times a day. As for me...no thank you. I am happy with my little cel phone that I use to make phone calls and occasionally take funny pictures of my dog and my kids. I use my little tiny ipod for my walks and it works just fine (I don't even know how to use itunes...my thirteen year old takes care of that for me!) I use a paper map when I am lost, I get my movie times from the newspaper, and I use my laptop or my desktop for internet stuff. I am just not technically savvy enough for all the gadgets that the iphone offers. But, hey...go for it if you want one. They are pretty cool looking, aren't they?

About 6 months ago I bought my first "smartphone" the new Motorola Q. Hated it. Not very intuitive and hard to use.

So I returned it and bought the iphone. It's a great phone, unbelievably easy to use with great features. Yes, it is much more than a phone. It's an ipod, comes with navigation, email, syncs with my laptop too. And it's great for surfing the Internet too.

The only negatives are battery life, ringtone volume and yes the AT&T edge network is a little slow. I wouldn't let any of those stop me from buying again.

One fo the features I really like is that software upgrades are easy to perform - just plug into your computer and run itunes. Same thing with restoring lost data. A backup copy of everything on your iphone is kept on your computer.

All in all the most interesting piece of technology I've bought in a long time. Much more than a phone, but incredibly easy to use.

Erica, Go for it!! Don't consider it $400 for a phone, but rather $400 for the convenience of having all of those machines in one small, easy to carry, and attractive, little machine.

I have a blackberry and it is working just fine, but the day it needs to be replaced, I'm going for iphone.

Many, many thanks for all the responses!

However, after giving it tons and tons of thought, I've decided not to get an iphone. All things considered, I just cannot wrap my mind around spending $400 on a *phone*. I mean, I generally turn off the ringer, so $400 for something I'm just going to lose in the couch seems ridiculous. And since I found my ipod, the urgency to get it NOW is gone.

I did decide to keep my old phone for a while, though, in case I change my mind. But for now I'm going to stumble along, carrying my ipod, Palm, phone (sometimes--when I can find it), work cell, and pager everywhere I go. The only thing that could make that more fabulous is if I got little holsters to carry them on my belt. Now that'd be cool.