Apple iPhone review: Is it the best? (See all reviews)

The iPhone has the best iPod yet. The display, the interface, the video and audio quality are amazing.

Most of the iPod interface has been revised to take advantage of the iPhone's massive touchscreen, so navigating artists and albums in lists is simple

Flipping the device horizontally allows you to browse your music in Cover Flow mode, a novelty of breakthrough proportions and quite an eye pleaser.
Tapping an album in Cover Flow mode lets you select which track to play.

The media integration with the rest of the device is by far the best we have seen on any mobile handset.

Movie playback seemed stable enough, even when skipping around or playing video for long periods of time and the Iphone’s widescreen high-resolution display makes it very pleasant.

The device has an outstanding battery life; it can play up to 9 hours of videos and around 28 hours of music files.

The iPhone’s 2 megapixel camera is simple and ok to take indoor pictures with good lightning and no need of manual settings, but if you have to adjust the picture mode a little for something special you will have a problem.

You can't change the resolution, choose a color or quality setting, or select a night mode. We have no idea why Apple decided to equip the device with a "point and shoot" camera.
When the Camera application is opened, you get a giant viewfinder and two buttons along the bottom.
The large button in the middle snaps the picture and the smaller button to the left moves you to the camera roll, which is simply a special photo album within the Photos application.

Considering the phone’s two megapixels, no autofocus, and no flash camera, we were quite impressed by the quality of its pictures. It can easily match up with other phones from Nokia or Sony Ericsson that have the same 2 megapixel cameras.

The main drawback of the phone’s camera is that it can not record videos. So you have no chance of recording your own videos with the iPhone and upload them to YouTube.

The iPhone supports Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, USB 2.0 and of course Bluetooth 2.0. Pairing the device via Bluetooth is very simple but quite useless as the Bluetooth functionality doesn't include the A2DP profile, meaning you can not exchange data with other Bluetooth enabled devices.

The Safari web browser is very good, fast and pages look very nice in landscape mode. 

It renders a page faithfully without trying to work any fit-to-screen magic, and gives the user convenient options for zooming in on text.
You can zoom by just double tapping on a picture or a text column and then pan with your finger to navigate the page.

Double tapping on an already zoomed object zooms out and shows you the whole page in full size.
We’ve discovered a negative surprise, the iPhone Safari browser does not support Flash or Java.

In terms of additional applications, the iPhone offers a pretty common set of functions plus iTunes, iPod, YouTube client, Weather, Stocks, Maps and Notes.

The personal data management applications include the Calculator and a very elaborate Clock that includes World Clock, Alarm, Stopwatch and Timer. The iPhone's calendar one of the most usable we have ever seen on a mobile phone due to the device's massive screen and you can synchronize it with your personal computer using iTunes.

Dragging your finger around the days of the month instantly loads the appointments.

You can activate the iPhone's integrated YouTube player straight from the main menu via a colored icon.
Videos are organized using many of the same criteria as on the YouTube site, including Featured Clips, Most Viewed, Top Rated, and Most Recent.

Since the iPhone does not support Flash video, all video clips are re-encoded from Flash to H.264 video for streaming.

The iPhone doesn't have integrated GPS, but due to its Maps application it can feature pretty accurate maps from Google.
You can get turn-by-turn directions between two points, with real-time traffic information.

You can use the application to find a museum or a nearby restaurant.

The Weather application will show you the weather in all of your favorite cities divided in tabs while The Stocks will help you track the movement of your stocks on the market.

Due to its long list of drawbacks the iPhone does not claim to be the best phone on the market, but it is for sure above the average. Hopefully we gave you enough information about the iPhone's every detail so that you can draw your own conclusions. As for the European Market, Apple has announced the release of the iPhone at the end of 2007.