Apple iPhone Review

Look and Feel

Although longer and wider than a conventional phone, it's still slim and feels great in the hand. As you'd expect from Apple, the design and finish is sublime with a brushed stainless steel finish and a shiny black toughened glass fascia. It does attract fingerprints, but it's resistant to nasty scratches, which are far more annoying.

Features

There's no 3G and it's a shame the camera isn't 3.2 megapixels, but there's so much more besides that we'll forgive the phone these shortcomings. Besides, when in range of a hot spot, Wi-fi browsing is very speedy and your photos will always look good on the 3.5 inch widescreen display. The built-in iPod is obviously a huge bonus, as is the ability to view all your thousands of stored photos in all their glory. Plus there's the 8GB storage.

Ease of Use

The touchscreen user interface is ingeniously designed and very intuitive to use. Menu icons are large and the touchscreen control is very responsive. We had no bother at all with the virtual phone keypad, but tapping in texts with the virtual QWERTY is a little fiddlier than it is with a conventional keypad. Having just one key to think about - the home key - to return you to the main menu is a neat touch, as is the side mounted ringtone mute key.

Performance

Call volume without the headset could have been better and we were disappointed that our 3.5mm headphones wouldn't connect. However, in all other areas, the Apple iPhone excelled. It's an unbelievable device for watching videos, photos and viewing web pages.

Battery Life

With no obvious way of removing the rear casing, we hope that there's never a need to replace the battery. As for juice, 480 minutes in not bad, and you can charge it from either the supplied docking station and charger or by attaching it to your computer with the supplied USB.