At Last, the iPhone.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Pittsburgh for what I thought would be a day trip.  Since I was headed back that evening, I didn't take my laptop, but because of thunderstorms across the Eastern Seaboard, my sojourn turned into an overnight stay.  So I had an opportunity to give a good workout to something I had received the previous day:  a review unit of Apple's eagerly awaited (boy, that's an understatement) iPhone.

During my travels and airport delays, I was able to keep up with my e-mail, negotiate my way around the downtown, get tips on the city from an old friend whose number I don't normally have handy, check the weather conditions in New York and D.C., monitor baseball scores and blogs, listen to an early Neil Young concert and amuse myself with silly YouTube videos and an episode of "Weeds," all on a single charge before the battery ran down. Now, just about all those things could have been done by devices that are already out on the market. But considering I'd had the iPhone for just a day, and never taken a glance at a manual, it was an impressive introduction.  In contrast, I've had a Motorola handset for two years and am still baffled at its weird approach to Web browsing and messaging.   What's more, with the exception of learning to type on the iPhone, which requires some concentration, doing all those things on that five-ounce device was fun, in the same way that switching from an old command-line interface to the Macintosh graphical user interface in the mid-1980s was a kick.  And when I showed the iPhone to people during that trip and in the days afterward—especially people under 25—the most common reaction was, "I have to have this," sometimes followed by a quick, if alarmingly reckless,  consideration of what might need to be pawned in order to make the purchase.

And there it is: one of the most hyped consumer products ever comes pretty close to justifying the bombast.  Apple has a history of using cutting-edge technology, slick design and friendly software to break the common logjam in which our machines have the capability to perform certain tasks, but developers haven't figured out how to make the experience easy, even pleasurable, for users. That's one reason why people, especially the tens of millions who love iPods, have been so eagerly awaiting the iPhone. "Everyone we talk to hates their phones—it's universal," Steve Jobs told me on a call to my iPhone a couple of days ago.  (The control-freaky Apple CEO was just checking up to see how I was doing.) If you're looking for quibbles, flaws and omissions, you'll certainly find them in this first version of the iPhone.  (I'll get to these below.) But the bottom line is that the iPhone is a significant leap. It's a superbly engineered, cleverly designed and imaginatively implemented approach to a problem that no one has cracked to date: merging a phone handset, an Internet navigator and a media player in a package where every component shines, and the features are welcoming rather than foreboding.  The iPhone is the rare convergence device where things actually converge.

Well before you turn on the iPhone it's clear that this is a phone apart.  The first difference takes place at the store (you can buy these only at Apple stores or retail outlets of network carrier AT&T, for the wallet-busting sum of $500 or $600, depending on whether you get 4 or 8 gigabytes worth of flash memory).  Instead of going through the usual complicated contract signing and credit-vetting ceremony with a fast-talking and slow-processing salesperson, Apple has come up with a startling idea: you simply buy the thing and go home.  Then you open up the snugly fit black box—the design blitz at Apple begins with the packaging— and take out the handset.  It's a classic example of the Apple look: slim, shiny and elegant.   As it did with MP3 players, Apple has made even its most stylish competitors look like Soviet-issue contraptions. The iPhone has but a single button on the front—its sole function is to return you to the menu.  The only other controls are a small sleep-wake switch on the top and a volume meter and ring/vibration switch on the side; they protrude so slightly that you can hardly see them.

Setup is a snap. As with the iPod, the device is a satellite of Apple's free iTunes software. Plug the iPhone into a computer with your iTunes library (Mac or Windows) and the automatic sync function not only carries over your songs, videos and movies on iTunes library, but also photos, your contacts and calendar items.  It also copies your e-mail address book and information onto your phone. This is one of the few phones that easily imports your information from your PC; because this is usually such a painful process, the vast majority of people with mobile phones never get around to moving over all their contact and calendar items.  Signing up for phone service is easily handled in a straightforward process through the iTunes store. The only scary part comes when you have to provide a Social Security number to establish your credit, but Apple assures me that the data isn't retained. Prices are those of the standard AT&T plans, $60, $80 or $100 a month, depending on how many minutes.  All the plans include unlimited data for e-mail and Internet. When I went through it I was unable to move my current mobile phone number to the device, but Apple tells me that this will be implemented by the time the phone launches on Friday.

Hit the wake button on top, use your finger to swipe an unlock (the iPhone is otherwise dormant so it won't accidentally turn on in your pocket and wind up calling the boss or playing a Jay-Z song). When the menu screen appears, you get a first indication of how Apple has cleverly managed to compress tasks best done on a large screen or a full-featured laptop into that tiny piece of silicon real estate. Apple does this in part by implementing a tactile vocabulary full of swipes, pinches, stretches and taps on its vaunted "multi-touch" screen. One of the greatest strengths of the iPhone is its stunning 3.5-inch display, which takes up almost the entire surface of the front, ringed by a halo of chrome.   Using sensors, the iPhone can automatically switch from vertical "portrait" orientation to horizontal "landscape" mode, allowing better access to Web pages and the proper orientation to movies.   Those tools are utilized in four keynote applications and (so far) 11 other programs included in this launch version.  Here's a partial rundown: