“The Apple iPhone has a stunning display, a sleek design, and an innovative multitouch user interface. Its Safari browser makes for a superb Web surfing experience, and it offers easy to use apps. As an iPod, it shines,” Kent German and Donald Bell report for CNET Reviews, giving the device an “Excellent” rating and a score of 8.0 out of 10.
German and Bell report, “The Apple iPhone has variable call quality and lacks some basic features found in many cell phones, including stereo Bluetooth support and 3G compatibility. Integrated memory is stingy for an iPod, and you have to sync the iPhone to manage music content.”
“Despite some important missing features, a slow data network, and call quality that doesn’t always deliver, the Apple iPhone sets a new benchmark for an integrated cell phone and MP3 player,” German and Bell report.
Full review here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Anthony” for the heads up.]
“Integrated memory is stingy for an iPod…”
But for a phone?
What? Only 8.0 out of 10? WTF?
Integrated memory is stingy… WTF?
In the Nokia N95 there is only stinking 200 MB memory so you have to buy more. That´s why it has the slot for. In the iPhone you already have 4G or 8G memory and no need to buy more.
These writers won’t let the 3G thing die without offering up a reason as to why that is the case. Nor do they seem to mention that AT&T has upgraded its EDGE network and that the Blackberry uses the same network as the iPhone. Nonetheless, the phone rocks. Plain and simple.
Damning with faint praise?
A lot of folks are also missing the point, most of the features that they say are missing are software base, things that i’m sure Apple will be fixing in the future with updates.
From what Steve said back in January that is my understanding anyway.
Remember this is Cnet we are talking about. I for one don’t give their reviews much weight.
Talk about a left-handed compliment !!
Sure, there were reports of some long wait-times for activation .. (apparantly bungled by AT&T) .. but all in all, the iPhone is on its way to change the cell phone industry forever !
Word to Verizon (et.al) … The train has left the station !
I admit I was one of the critics of “lack of 3G”, but I have changed my tune on this for now. I know AT&T will improve it’s service and EDGE will be very useable for everyday users; of which, I am one. However, I am going to wait for the fist hardware update to the iPhone and buy one when the 8GB capacity double to 16 or even better yet 32GB. It’s true that 8GB is a lot for a phone, but when you start adding software and movies and music; that 8GB will get used up really really fast. After all this is the best iPod Apple has ever produced, according to Steve Jobs and I want to be able to use mine as a replacement to my 5th Generation iPod.
Nor do they seem to mention that AT&T has upgraded its EDGE network
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Well I got my iPhone last night and have mostly been using wifi at home, but in my tests with edge, it was PAINFULLY SLOW. A MacDailyNews page took 2 and a half minutes to load.. It is seriously slow folks.
I thought it came with Bluetooth support.
Even Cnet is forced to call a spade a spade. scarry. Monkey Boy’s admin jumping out of the way, screams: “Incoming!”
I saw a guy in the park the other day, not feeling too well. When he finally got up and left, I noticed he had set a new bench-mark, which goes to show, they aren’t always good…..
The iPhone may use the same network as the Blackberry, but it puts greater demands on that network because it’s downloading full web pages. AT&T needs to work on their network, both Edge and something faster for future iPhones.
AT&T needs to work on their network, both Edge and something faster for future iPhones.
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No kidding, because seriously, EDGE is almost unusable for web browsing.. iPhone flies when your in a WiFi zone, but if you’re not, you will waste up to 10 minutes just trying to get the most basic of information from a website.. Several minutes to load a SINGLE page and then several more minutes for any link you need to follow on that page. It’s not very practical if you need information on the go… Pogue and others were right when they said EDGE is embarrassing for web browsing. I do love my iPhone, but the EDGE network is a serious flaw for such a breakthrough device.
I live in Chicago and I have been very impressed with the EDGE network so far. I expected it to be very bad after reading all of the reports, but pages have loaded as fast or faster than they did with my Motorola Q and it had 3G. I can even stream YouTube videos with only about 10 seconds needed to buffer the video. I just don’t think that’s bad at all.
Average user rating 6.2?
The Ballmer family (except his uncle) started to vote on cnet.
Yeah, sorry I still have my Verizon Treo 650 activated, and comparing it to my new iPhone on AT&T in this area I am getting almost twice the download speeds on my iPhone as I am on my Treo 650 and we will not even get into the better screen quality and the speed at which I can scroll on a page as the iPhone handles the rendering of the downloaded html page FAR better than the 650 does… Oh and of course having wifi access when sitting at the airport, coffee shop, hell even the bar down the street all have wifi available for even faster access…
I guess the “lowly” score of 8/10 proves to everyone CNETS BLATANT anti-appleness!!!
…damn fanboys
AT&T sucks camel ass. Hope everyone can use their iBrick now…
AT&T iSucks.
Seems their reader reviews have all the Microsoft people in, they are panning it left and right. Idiots.
oh my “Word to Verizon (et.al) … The train has left the station !”
And this customer has left Verizon. Bon Voyage!
I don’t think AT&T bungled the launch all that bad, and in the next few weeks I expect them to be working hard to accommodate all their new customers. There could be some growing pains, but it will be worth it in the end.
If you guys knew anything about CNET, you’d know that 8.0 out of 10 is overwhelmingly positive.
They’re real sticklers for certain things, almost to the brink of fascism. They’ll drop your product down into the 6’s for omissions they find to be glaring. A major point of this criteria is 3G.
For a phone of the iPhone’s caliber to not have it, I figured it was doomed when it came to CNET. 7.0 at the most.
8.0 is very good, don’t let the number scale fool you. It means they were so blown away by everything else that they had to rate it highly. It’s the most you could hope for, believe me.
ishufflemyfeet
I know your jelous be cause you do not have one. That is ok, just go troll elsewhere.
R2 wrote:
> [8 out of 10] means they were so blown away
> by everything else that they had to rate it highly
Maybe, but they also gave the Zune an 8 w/ an average user rating of 6.7, and since I now have an iPhone, I’d say it’s leaps and bounds better than a Zune…
http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/zune-30gb-black/4505-6490_7-32068976.html
MW = couldnt, as in, I really couldn’t care less about CNET’s review…