Well, not really out on the streets. Yesterday (Saturday), I took the iPhone to my daughter’s birthday celebration at a local kids gym—basically a large room with padded walls and floor, and lots of things to climb on, swing from, and jump off of. We had about 20 parents there, and when word got out that I had an iPhone on my person, I became an instant demo center for almost all of them.
So I played Mr. Demo Man, showing videos, photos, scrolling through contacts, the weather and stocks widgets, etc. A general summary of their opinions would be simply “wow, that’s impressive.” A few of them took the iPhone in hand and tried it out, and nobody had any issues with navigation or understanding the interface. Had I tried the same thing with my Treo, I’m sure I would have had many confused users asking for help. But with the iPhone, everyone just seemed to “get it” with very little help from me. (I did have to explain the “pinch” action, but usually just once.) And to a person, they were amazed at the screen’s size and amazing image quality.
I didn’t put the phone itself through much of a test—only two calls all day—but it worked fine for those two calls. I also set up the Jawbone Bluetooth headset, and it works quite nicely. (The Jawbone was my Friday splurge; I’ve had a third-rate Bluetooth headset that sorta worked some of the time on my Treo. I decided the iPhone merited a nicer headset.) It’s weird not having a microphone boom of any sort sticking out, but those people I talked to on test calls Friday evening all said that my voice sounded fine.
