Box Contents

Like most Apple products the iPhone arrives in an uber stylish box, which is smart on the outside and even more so on the inside - everything is neatly presented and easy to get to.

Apart from the IPhone itself, you will find a couple of apple stickers - no doubt for protection of the devices finish, a USB docking station for iTunes, headphones, a separate USB cable, mains adaptor, cleaning cloth and a small quick start manual. Note the USB cable can also be used to charge the iPhone.

In order to use the iPhone for the first time you need to download iTunes and then the device will become active.

Specification

• Capacity: 8GB or 16GB flash drive
• Display: 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display, 480-by-320-pixel resolution
• Operating system: OS X
• GSM: Quad-band (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
• Wireless data: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), EDGE, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• Camera: 2.0 megapixels
• Headphone Port: 3.5mm
• Power and battery: Talk time: Up to 8 hours, Standby time: Up to 250 hours, Internet use: Up to 6 hours, Video playback: Up to 7 hours, Audio playback: Up to 24 hours

Design

The actual physical design of the iPhone is kept relatively simple but at the same time oozes quality.

At the top you will find a sleep/wake button to silence rings or to push voice calls straight to voice mail. A 3.5mm headphone socket for the supplied headphones, which are the standard white ones you get with all the iPod products.

At the back you have the apple logo etched at the top part of the phone. The rest of the back is coated in a brush metal steel like finish.

The stereo speakers are located at the base of the iPhone (which allows you to place the iPhone on a desk without the speakers being muffled) and can produce some pretty good quality when playing back music.

To the front you simply have the 3.5" screen with the home button at the base, to the left you have your volume controls and mute button (for the ringer) and that's about it.

The iPhone itself is quite large to hold for those with small hands and its metal style coating does make it harder to grip, but it does feel perfectly weighted in the palm of your hand.

As for the 3.5" screen, this makes watching videos a dream, with colours being vibrant and blacks are black (not grey). But you will need to wipe the screen every other day as it attracts fingerprints like the plague.

Interface

Of course all the fuss has been made about the interface and for once the hype is justified. Primarily it’s so easy to pick up that your parents could use it - regardless of their IT abilities.

A quick press of the home button opens up the front page which can contain your customised wallpaper and then with a swipe of your finger you gain access to the devices software.

From left to right you have shortcuts to your SMS text message creation software, calendar, photos, camera, YouTube, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Clock, Calculator, Notes, Settings, iTunes, Phone, Mail, Safari web browser and iPod control - phew.

A quick press and hold of any of the above icons will force them to shake, you can then move the icons to your preferred position.

Accessing the Photos option will give you your first taste of the custom interface. With a series of photos in place you can select an album and then scroll through the images with a swipe of your finger - it’s effortless.

For typing you have an on-screen virtual keyboard which is actually really easy to use and each time a key is pressed it flags up the letter you just typed. We could get some decent speeds when texting or creating emails and even if you make a mistake when typing the iPhone can correct most common spelling or grammar errors.

The cream of the crop however is the excellent Safari web browser, this can scale full webpages in their entirety and then with a pinch like manoeuvre of your fingers you can bring them closer together or further apart to zoom in or out of the page.

Moving your finger around the screen will then allow the page to shift seamlessly to the exact point you want to view - again the motion is effortless.

Multiple webpage’s can be viewed at once in a thumbnail view and then scrolled though in a similar way to the photos.

Further still, turning your iPhone to either a horizontal or vertical position will automatically rotate the screen to match.

ITunes

The iPod controls also have similar functionality to the photo mode, which we will come back to in a second.

The main element of the iPod software lies with its integration with iTunes, so you can sync your library of songs, videos and audio books/podcasts.

For those who have not used iTunes it is a piece of software that allows your rip music off CD's or to hold your direct digital downloads in a virtual library and of course you have access to Apples iTunes store to download additional content such as videos and Podcasts.

If you start to listen to a Podcast (for example) on your PC and then stop and playback the same Podcast on your IPhone a bit later, you can continue listening to it from where you left off.

Touches like these are what make the iPhone so useful as a multimedia platform. Oh and we also forgot to mention that you can also sync your Outlook account settings and emails to the device.

The only downside is you can’t sync your iPhone to more than one computer at the same time, the other disadvantage of the ITunes store is that it is too easy to buy loads of cool stuff.

Back to the iPod software for a second, the interface has a couple of modes to utilise when browsing for music.

You have your usual playlists or you can browse for music via artist/songs and then with a swipe of your finger scroll through all of your tracks.

when listening to music you get basic controls (with an Equaliser option available via the settings button found on the home screen), but what is cool is if you rotate the screen to landscape mode you can scroll through a slideshow of all your album art.