Having had my iPhone now for a week, I feel I’m ready to share my thoughts on the product, so here it is, the promised iPhone review; It’s long, so you’ll have to venture past the fold to get it

Applications are the big story with the iPhone, and so far I haven’t found too many killer applications, but certainly the facebook application is very good, allowing me to update my status, check in with friends and upload photos direct from my phone.

There are plenty of fun games to keep you amused, and as time goes on, we can expect the iPhone App Store to grow into an amazing resource, turning your iPhone into just about anything you need it to be.

The app store auto checks for updated versions of apps you have installed, however the update process messes up your home screen layout because it adds the application a second time, installs the updated version, then removes the previous one. Thats pretty stupid, hopefully they’ll fix that.

Web browsing is unbelievably good on the iPhone. For a long time I couldn’t believe anyone would seriously browse the web on a phone, and for the most part that has always been true, with users taking advantage of “mobile” versions of their favourite site. But with the iPhone, you don’t need to; Using Safari on the iPhone is a breeze and you can quite honestly surf the regular web with no problem at all.

Reports are coming in that some users have a “yellowed” screen. Mine is beautiful and clear, so happily mine is unaffected. In fact, compared with my staff’s iMate Jam, the screen is an order of magnitude better than the competition. It is just gorgeous.

Which leads me to another great feature; I watch quite a few video podcasts, and now I just have iTunes download them to the iPhone and watch them whenever I have spare time to do so, wherever I happen to be. With 16 gigs of storage (nobody is buying the 8 Gig model when the 16 is not much more money), there’s plenty of room for heaps of videos.

The exchange integration is fantastic; Adam and I now have access to our email everywhere we go. This has already made it so much easier for us to keep on top of our growing email inbox, as there are plenty of moments through the day that would otherwise be spent twiddling thumbs, and now we can check our email. We’ve even stopped using SMS, preferring to send emails.

With exchange integration comes contacts and calendar syncing, and that is awesome as well. I started assigning photos to people in my address book on the iPhone, and was impressed to see these photos suddenly appear in Outlook as well. Now if I need someones details, staff in the office can put the contact info into my contacts folder, and my phone gets it straight away. Brilliant!

For those that do continue to use SMS, the iPHones SMS interface is to die for; Each contact has its own threaded view, showing you each sms as it was sent/recieved, so you can review your entire converstation with that person. It is just brilliant.

Finally, I thought I’d touch on some of the complaints that have been levelled against the iPhone. Some have suggested the bluetooth is no good; The facts are that it does the job (my iPhone talks to my headset and GPS just fine), and if enough people want expanded features, I’m sure a firmware update can accommodate that. Its certainly no reason not to own one.

No MMS: Who cares! I can email a photo instead which is vastly more useful, or I can zap it up to facebook.

No Card Slot: Who Cares! I have 16 Gig of space, which is bigger than any card I could get.

No Copy & Paste: Yes, this one annoys me just a little, but for the number of times I would need it, its not that big of a deal.

No voice dialling: If voice dialling worked on my old phone, I would possibly care; Voice dialling, even on my previous expensive Motorola, just didn’t work reliably enough to use it. At least the iPhone’s large screen makes it easy to select a number to dial manually.

No Video Recording: Sheesh, how much does this thing have to do for you before you are happy? Besides, you can get an app to provide video recording, so no need to worry!

So, to wrap up, I think the iPhone is a wonderful device, that will get better with age as the App store expands. Certainly not for everyone, but for those that need email on the go, and want their media along for the ride, I don’t believe there is a better option. Just make sure you don’t sign up with Telstra, their plans are very very expensive!