I used to have a Blackberry and found it extremely useful. Last year and the early part of this year I made do with a normal phone as I wasn't ever too far from an internet connection. Amongst other things my circumstances have changed recently. Discovering that Verizon was ripping me blind and that the iPhone plan gave me more for less, I bit.
Image from Information Architects Probably a bad time to purchase as the iphone 2.0 is due out soon, but whatever; either way I have found it useful already.
Like most of these things they are not necessarily for everyone, but I needed seamless email integration anywhere. The interface for the iphone which let me connect up to gmail through the main email interface is excellent. The most useful part of the phone for me.
I put all my music on it, but the iPod (or nanoPod, I have both of several generations) is a better form factor for music playing. Enough that I will still use my nanoPod at work to listen to music rather than the phone. So the iphone has limited utility there.
The browser component is far, far, superior to the same functionality on the blackberry and will come in handy when I am travelling; Which is when I need that type of thing most.
The contacts list is also written for the modern technorati and integrates with web functions. Rather than a phone list - like it is on most phones, it allows you to express a contacts web persona or personality with multiple emails etc. Hitting the contact's page means multiple forms of communication are a click away; txt, voice or email. It is well done.
The voice mail is very useful as well. It is like playing a wav file. I would let multiple voice mails build up on prior phones as it was a pain to log in, go through them one by one, hit 7, hit whatever, go through the voice activated interface; ugh. The computer screen paradigm works very well with voicemail.
One of the downsides of the iphone is that it doesn't hold charge well. It sucks the juice quickly, more quickly than other PDAs I have had in the past.
All in all it is an excellent piece of functional equipment that I have found useful immediately.
