I saw this post on Macrumors.com. Apparently the wine director of a restaurant saw an Apple exec using 1 of the 100 test phones (all of which are personally authorized by Steve Jobs) in the wild right now. He wrote a very informative post about his use and some little features that sounded awesome. I can not attest to the veracity of the story, but it seems very convincing...judge for yourself. Below is the copied post:
I got to use an iPhone tonight. I work as a Wine Director in a prominent restaurant, and a single diner was using an iPhone and sort of trying to hide what it was. Another member of our staff spotted it and clued me in... knowing that I am interested in the phone. The customer works for Apple and was doing real world trials on the phone. I approached the table and asked if I could see it. This person (who I will call "Pat" from now on for sake of gender and anonymity) asked me if I was a journalist or a blogger to which I replied no. Pat then allowed me to play with the iPhone.
When Pat handed the phone to me, I was first amazed at how thin and light it was. It is even thinner and lighter than I imagined. In the Stevenote, Steve mentioned that when he demo'ed it for another Apple exec, he said "You had me at scrolling." Well, Steve, you had me with the sexy, elegant weight and feel. Kudos to Jony Ive.
I flipped the phone over and there was a fairly large white paper sticker on the back with very small type on it with loads of information. It covered about half of the black plastic bottom as well as about halfway up the metal back of the phone. I didn't see any easy way to open the back to replace the battery, so I don't know if it is user replaceable. No, I didn't think of asking. The font on the sticker was extremely small with loads of technical data. I assume it was software builds, serial numbers, etc. kind of like a library card.
I asked how many people had iPhones at this time, and Pat said that there were about 100 in circulation now, but those users were trying to be discreet. He mentioned that Steve Jobs has to personally authorize everyone using the iPhone at this time.
When I started using the iPhone, it was on the main screen with all 12 icons (including the YouTube icon) on the screen. There were no more additional icons on the main screen. I pushed the icon for the iPod on the lower right and the music selections came up. I rotated the phone to landscape and scrolled through the albums in coverflow mode. Very smooth and Very cool, even smoother than the videos that I have seen.
One of the key things I was looking for was how smoothly the animations were. The transitions between screens were fluid and buttery. There were no choppy/jaggy/inconsistent transitions.
I hit the home button and then pushed the YouTube button. The YouTube main screen came up and showed a very nice interface. Similar to the AppleTV. I then went back to the home screen.
I asked Pat if the phone was on WiFi or Edge, and it was using Edge. Pat showed me the there was a lower case "e" indicating Edge usage in an inverse box where the WiFi indicator usually is next to AT&T on the top of the screen. I had never heard of that "e" indicator before.
I pushed the Safari button and finger-text-input my own web site, which I know is pretty slow to load. I made two typo's in the web address window, and asked Pat how to fix the typos. Pat showed me that if I pushed my finger on the web address window and held it down, a virtual round magnifying glass (bigger than the end of my finger) pops up on the screen above your finger with a black vertical cursor in the middle of the glass. As you move your finger left and right, the the magnifying glass and cursor smoothly move showing an exploded view of what is under your finger. Even though the text is small under your finger, it looks much bigger and easier to edit in the magnifying glass. When I moved my finger over the mistyped letter, I hit the backspace (lower right keyboard) and retyped the missed character. VERY COOL! I've never heard any word of this feature before either. Even with Edge, the page loaded noticeably faster than with my Sprint Treo 650.
You had me with the look and feel of it, now you own me with the way edge works on it. I expected much slower with what I have been reading about the iPhone and edge.
Once the page was loaded, Pat showed me how to go to landscape mode and then pinch and squeeze the page, and then double tap the pictures to make the pictures fill the screen. As far as the speed of the transitions, they are very similar to what you see in the TV ads. No editing trickery in those ads based upon my experience.
While I was surfing my web site, someone else was texting Pat. When a text is coming in, the whole screen darkens, and there is a grey/blue transparent window that has the text message in the window. You may accept the text at that timeon one large button or hit another large ignore button to go back to what you were doing previous to the text arriving. I hit the ignore button and the screen smoothly but quickly lightened back to normal. Once again VERY COOL.
Since I had never heard what is behind the Settings button, I pushed it. The screen that comes up next was longer than what can be shown on the screen at one time, so I flicked down to see all of the setting names. Each icon on the main screen has an individual settings "line" on the settings page. Each line is proceeded by a (roughly) quarter-scale icon, like the icon on the main screen. For instance the Photos line has a very small icon with the sunflower to the left of the word "Photos." About one page down, there was a grey horizontal line that was a break between categories. When I touched a setting, all of the settings for that option come up in an elegant grey/blue screen with large buttons to set whatever settings there are in that window. If all of the settings do not fit on the visible page, you may flick/scroll down to see more. Once again... too cool.
Below the grey line break, there were icons that I hadn't seen or heard of before. I didn't press any of them, but one was a red square with an inverse letter in the middle (it might have been an "n" or and "e" but I do not remember. Strangely, one of the icons was the old orange Cingular "X" icon. I thought that this was rather strange that it wasn't the AT&T icon.
I didn't make a call, or take a picture, but the Captain waiting on Pat's table said that she saw Pat take a picture of a Martini in the low light of our restaurant and send it to someone. She said that the pictures looked great... very clear.
I asked if there were any more features that would be announced between now and June 29th and Pat said that "... the feature set is 'pretty much' what has been announced so far..." Read anything into this statement that you want.
I asked about GPS and Pat said that there wasn't GPS on the phone at this point.
No, I didn't think about asking about 3G.
Overall impression of my 5 minute trial... The Apple iPhone is a magical device that for the first time seemlessly blends art, architecture and electronics into a brilliantly designed... I don't know what to call it. Calling it a phone is like defining Natalie Portman as a "Homo Sapien Female Humanoid" There is so much more to it than that.
At any rate, it's going to be a restless 8 days, 16 hours and 20 minutes until I can own my own iPhone, but who's counting.
That is pretty much it... I'll let you know if I think of anything else significant.
I got to use an iPhone tonight. I work as a Wine Director in a prominent restaurant, and a single diner was using an iPhone and sort of trying to hide what it was. Another member of our staff spotted it and clued me in... knowing that I am interested in the phone. The customer works for Apple and was doing real world trials on the phone. I approached the table and asked if I could see it. This person (who I will call "Pat" from now on for sake of gender and anonymity) asked me if I was a journalist or a blogger to which I replied no. Pat then allowed me to play with the iPhone.
When Pat handed the phone to me, I was first amazed at how thin and light it was. It is even thinner and lighter than I imagined. In the Stevenote, Steve mentioned that when he demo'ed it for another Apple exec, he said "You had me at scrolling." Well, Steve, you had me with the sexy, elegant weight and feel. Kudos to Jony Ive.
I flipped the phone over and there was a fairly large white paper sticker on the back with very small type on it with loads of information. It covered about half of the black plastic bottom as well as about halfway up the metal back of the phone. I didn't see any easy way to open the back to replace the battery, so I don't know if it is user replaceable. No, I didn't think of asking. The font on the sticker was extremely small with loads of technical data. I assume it was software builds, serial numbers, etc. kind of like a library card.
I asked how many people had iPhones at this time, and Pat said that there were about 100 in circulation now, but those users were trying to be discreet. He mentioned that Steve Jobs has to personally authorize everyone using the iPhone at this time.
When I started using the iPhone, it was on the main screen with all 12 icons (including the YouTube icon) on the screen. There were no more additional icons on the main screen. I pushed the icon for the iPod on the lower right and the music selections came up. I rotated the phone to landscape and scrolled through the albums in coverflow mode. Very smooth and Very cool, even smoother than the videos that I have seen.
One of the key things I was looking for was how smoothly the animations were. The transitions between screens were fluid and buttery. There were no choppy/jaggy/inconsistent transitions.
I hit the home button and then pushed the YouTube button. The YouTube main screen came up and showed a very nice interface. Similar to the AppleTV. I then went back to the home screen.
I asked Pat if the phone was on WiFi or Edge, and it was using Edge. Pat showed me the there was a lower case "e" indicating Edge usage in an inverse box where the WiFi indicator usually is next to AT&T on the top of the screen. I had never heard of that "e" indicator before.
I pushed the Safari button and finger-text-input my own web site, which I know is pretty slow to load. I made two typo's in the web address window, and asked Pat how to fix the typos. Pat showed me that if I pushed my finger on the web address window and held it down, a virtual round magnifying glass (bigger than the end of my finger) pops up on the screen above your finger with a black vertical cursor in the middle of the glass. As you move your finger left and right, the the magnifying glass and cursor smoothly move showing an exploded view of what is under your finger. Even though the text is small under your finger, it looks much bigger and easier to edit in the magnifying glass. When I moved my finger over the mistyped letter, I hit the backspace (lower right keyboard) and retyped the missed character. VERY COOL! I've never heard any word of this feature before either. Even with Edge, the page loaded noticeably faster than with my Sprint Treo 650.
You had me with the look and feel of it, now you own me with the way edge works on it. I expected much slower with what I have been reading about the iPhone and edge.
Once the page was loaded, Pat showed me how to go to landscape mode and then pinch and squeeze the page, and then double tap the pictures to make the pictures fill the screen. As far as the speed of the transitions, they are very similar to what you see in the TV ads. No editing trickery in those ads based upon my experience.
While I was surfing my web site, someone else was texting Pat. When a text is coming in, the whole screen darkens, and there is a grey/blue transparent window that has the text message in the window. You may accept the text at that timeon one large button or hit another large ignore button to go back to what you were doing previous to the text arriving. I hit the ignore button and the screen smoothly but quickly lightened back to normal. Once again VERY COOL.
Since I had never heard what is behind the Settings button, I pushed it. The screen that comes up next was longer than what can be shown on the screen at one time, so I flicked down to see all of the setting names. Each icon on the main screen has an individual settings "line" on the settings page. Each line is proceeded by a (roughly) quarter-scale icon, like the icon on the main screen. For instance the Photos line has a very small icon with the sunflower to the left of the word "Photos." About one page down, there was a grey horizontal line that was a break between categories. When I touched a setting, all of the settings for that option come up in an elegant grey/blue screen with large buttons to set whatever settings there are in that window. If all of the settings do not fit on the visible page, you may flick/scroll down to see more. Once again... too cool.
Below the grey line break, there were icons that I hadn't seen or heard of before. I didn't press any of them, but one was a red square with an inverse letter in the middle (it might have been an "n" or and "e" but I do not remember. Strangely, one of the icons was the old orange Cingular "X" icon. I thought that this was rather strange that it wasn't the AT&T icon.
I didn't make a call, or take a picture, but the Captain waiting on Pat's table said that she saw Pat take a picture of a Martini in the low light of our restaurant and send it to someone. She said that the pictures looked great... very clear.
I asked if there were any more features that would be announced between now and June 29th and Pat said that "... the feature set is 'pretty much' what has been announced so far..." Read anything into this statement that you want.
I asked about GPS and Pat said that there wasn't GPS on the phone at this point.
No, I didn't think about asking about 3G.
Overall impression of my 5 minute trial... The Apple iPhone is a magical device that for the first time seemlessly blends art, architecture and electronics into a brilliantly designed... I don't know what to call it. Calling it a phone is like defining Natalie Portman as a "Homo Sapien Female Humanoid" There is so much more to it than that.
At any rate, it's going to be a restless 8 days, 16 hours and 20 minutes until I can own my own iPhone, but who's counting.
That is pretty much it... I'll let you know if I think of anything else significant.
