I have had my iPhone for over a full week and have gone from thinking this is the best thing on earth to having withdrawal symptoms from being away from my blackberry.

The absolute most important thing to know about the iPhone for current Blackberry users is that the iPhone is NOT a Blackberry.  Blackberry’s e-mail service is very reliable, always on, and does real push e-mail.  This means you get notified often within seconds after an e-mail is sent to your address.  The iPhone offers “push” mail - but through yahoo.com.  A week into using it, it seems a little wonky.  I have had e-mail delays - more than 15 minutes where the push technology does not seem to be working. 

Additionally - Yahoo.com requires you to send from your yahoo.com e-mail address.  You can’t mask your corporate address to this address.  I even forked over $20 to upgrade to their plus service, which allows you to send from another e-mail address while using Yahoo Mail in a web browser, but I don’t see where I can do this when replying to e-mail directly from the iPhone.

If e-mail is important to you, and every minute counts - Blackberry is still king here.

Outside of e-mail, iPhone tells a better story.

Its by far, the best iPod ever!  Navigation between files is easier.  No more click wheel to deal with - you can just smudge and flick your way to your favortite tunes.  A feature I like best is the speaker.  With my previous Video iPod (still have) and my iPod mini (still have) I have often wished it had an onboard speaker so I could hear my tunes or podcasts when I did not want to wear the headphones. No I can.  I can just sit the iPhone down - and have it play my tunes or podcasts without any extra devices.  Sure - its no bose speaker system, but it works.

 As a phone - very user friendly - easier to dial and manage contacts than my Blackberry.  The conference feature works well - as does sound quality.  I had a Blackberry 7250 and its not known for its sound quality, but the iPhone sounds clearer than my 7250 for sure, and the spearker edition is nice here as well.

 As a browser - best mobile browsing experience ever.  Your Blackberry can’t do this!  I can surf the net - as I would on my laptop - and get the latest from CNN.com, Digg.com and several sites I check on a daily basis.  If you just doing normal surfing - and you do a lot of it - the iPhone can become a possible laptop replacement.  If sites you visit often use high end video or flash and complicated log-in scripts - don’t expect much from the iPhone as Flash is not yet allowed and only Quicktime formats of video are able to viewed on the iPhone.

One odd bug - many occurances of a phantom - back to home screen - button.   While surfing and doing various iPhone tasks - I occassionally get bounced to the homescreen.  I suspect this happens when the application I am using crashes, and instead of a bad error screen - iPhone says - I think you should just start over.  So - maybe its just going ahead and doing the restart as any tech support official would tell you to do. 

On a scale of 1 to 10 - I give it an 8.5.  Push e-mail is must-fix for Apple/Yahoo/AT&T.  (Not sure who needs to fix it - but it needs to be fixed as it does not work as advertised.)

Now under 2 hours till iPhone and the line continues - but out of sight from my standpoint.    The freebies continue as well.  Chick-Fil-a shakes, Starbucks Coffee and now Red Bull!  Pic above is actually the free shirt I picked up when the Perimeter store opened.  Line was much longer then - but we still have 2 hours to go…  :-)  (also wishing I did not forget my camera….)

Two quick links - Northpoint and Lenox.

Look Mom - No Fonts!  Its all about the images.  Text just junks up the page anyway.  The design team at Apple really knows how to deliver top notch design, and now they lend a hand to every owner of a Web site - Kill the text.  JK.   Turns out this beta version doesn’t like systems with lots of fonts. I happen to have 1200.   I guess will wait for the next beta version. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The latest Safari release (3.0.2) resolved this font issue.

I have practically prepared for an iphone purchase for over a year.  The preparation is quite costly as well.  I am near the end of a two year contract with Verizon.  If you don’t ready every line of the fine print, you can easily find yourself renewed on a new term.  Each month where the family has exceeded our minutes, I get a text message inviting me to upgrade my plan to save money.  Changing my plan in anyway automatically renews my term for atleast one year.  Thus, we don’t upgrade our plan and keep paying overage fees to allow us to be free from Verizon this July.

Is Cingular  AT&T any better?  I doubt it. 

AT&T is one source for the hesitation.  What contract will they tie early adopters to?  Early ads had fine print that stated USE of the iphone would require a two year contract.  This statement has been removed, but that definitely sounds like a lot of reason to hold off.  USE?  No discount on price in exchange for a two-year committment, just the fact that you want to use it requires a two year term?  Let’s hope that line of text was removed for a reason.

Other questions remain as well.  Will the multi-touch screen work?  Will it work as good as touted? How good is the e-mail application?  Will it work as good as a Blackberry? 

In short, we’ve seen the keynote.  We’ve seen the ads.  Is that enought to validate a $500 to $600 purchase?  I have heard, but not verified, that Atlanta’s Lenox Mall Apple Store might have an iphone on display when they reopen this Saturday.  We might just have to check this out and see for ourselves.

UPDATE: Visited Apple Store at Lenox early Saturday, June 9th - No iPhone in sight.  Did get a nice shirt however.  Store staff said they would have them on the 29th.