After one week, here's how things are shaking out:

The obvious omissions have been commented on so many times I'll only give them a brief nod: No copy/paste, no MMS, no tethering--major WTFs. App store dictatorship, mildly annoying, but frankly I'm glad not to have to sort through thousands of mediocre, buggy apps to find a few real gems. Open source is great, but I still don't have Linux installed on my home computer for a reason.

There are a couple of major failures that are worth mentioning. The camera is just shy of atrocious, with crappy image quality, significant lag and the worst "jellyvision" I've seen in a camera, ever. The otherwise-craptacular LG Dare kills the iPhone with a 3.2mpxl camera that's faster, brighter and shoots video. Mind you, I don't expect my phone to serve as a substitute for a "real" camera, but it's so bad that I can hardly use it for the one thing I really care about: capturing whiteboard meeting notes.

As expected, the iPhone is not, primarily, a phone. And so, it's phone features are very limited, though I don't really care. Of particular note is the lack of voice dial, though there are apps that handle this reasonably well (I do wish they integrated better with the default phone app). There vibrator is strong enough to count as its own ringtone, though it's suitably quiet when in a pocket. Disappointingly, there's no "vibrate, then ring" setting, so when you get a call, everyone knows right when you do.

While it appears that the phone gets good reception, the number of dropped calls I've had suggest that the signal meter is slow to update, but this is the kind of behavior you learn as you continue to use a new phone. The bluetooth signal appears to be unfortunately and disappointingly worse than my Motorlola Razr--though still usable. Forget talking on a headset in a separate room, however. The signal is so full of crackles and pops that it's not worth the effort.

The biggest iPhone failure of all has nothing to do with Apple. AT&T's presence on the phone feels like a cancer, not a service. To view your minutes, rate plan or any other provider feature, you are relegated to SMS messaging. There is--no kidding--NO AT&T iPhone webpage, application or interface other than some menu prompts to receive your information via SMS whatsoever. AT&T, like most corporate juggernauts, is so blinded by maximizing profits that they see customers as overhead, not their business. They provide you a service in the way that best serves them, making concessions only when necessary to stay competitive. Unfortunately, the competition isn't any better, so they don't have to bend very far to stay in the game. My suspicion is that Apple got into bed with AT&T because they needed a partner, they got a reasonably good deal, and they'll drop them like dead weight the instant they get the opportunity. Did I mention their 3G service sucks?

So this is the part of the interview where I make a 90-degree turn and leave you wondering if I'm off my meds, because thus far I make it sound like the iPhone is kind of a mediocre product. But the fact is, it's brilliant. C'mon now, it's not like you didn't see that coming.

First of all, I hate cell phones. They're garbage--all of them. Overpriced junk designed to hammer on your gadget lust until you succumb and sign up for 2 years of extortionary business practices from your least-disliked service provider. If you're a real chump, you'll shell out several hundred dollars for one, and keep doing so after the hinges break on your flip phone every two years. We've had telephone technology for a century and the culmination of all our worldly efforts boils down to a little plastic candybar that has worse sound quality and reception than anything made since before switchboards had human operators. (A quote from a Bell ad in the December 1947 issue of Fortune magazine comes to mind: "Connecting most out-of-town calls in less than 2 minutes!") My cell phone connects in seconds, when it connects, drops out in minutes (but hey--it reconnects seconds later, wash rinse repeat). Rather than invest in better reception or improved call quality, they give us cameras, voice recording, address books and games, when all I want is a decent phone call.

But the iPhone isn't a phone. It's a handheld computer with, among other things, a handy phone application. If you take out the SIM card, you can use your iPhone just like its sibling, the iPod Touch. Heck--leave the SIM card in, turn on Airplane Mode and turn your wireless back on and you have the same result. I suspect Apple doesn't care about a phone as much as they realize that if you're going to carry around a Tricorder, it might as well have a phone and since that's the technology paradigm that everyone understands, it's the easiest point of entry.

Fast forward to a future where cell phone service providers don't rule the world of interpersonal long distance communication and imagine a device that gives you a portal to information, provides a conduit for communication, and allows you to access your personal data over Skynet. That's what the iPhone does now, it just uses conventional channels because Apple can't (or won't) afford to be their own service provider on year one. Nor do they need to.

But on year five, after you begin to understand that the technology behind how you communicate is irrelevant compared to the interface, suddenly having a phone seems way less important than having a portal. Sure, you can make a "phone call", though now you call it something else because phones are something you had back in the dark days of proprietary communications media. You just make contact, and you choose between video, audio, or text. I'm inclined to speculate on the future of mobileMe--could this be Apple's quiet introduction of providing these kinds of services? The Apple store rep pushed it, but given my current needs, I declined.

But the LG Dare does all this too, doesn't it? Sort of. What sets Apple apart, as usual, is the quality of their experience. The iPhone feels like a computer. It's slick. The interface is fluid, intuitive and even though it has hiccups, it comes off as extremely sophisticated without being overly technical. The LG Dare, as an example, feels blocky, heavy-handed and...a lot like a cell phone. Because it is. It's a cell phone with a computer in it. The iPhone reverses the hierarchy and thus changes the conversation.

Which brings me to a feature of distinction: I placed an order on Amazon.com last night at 2am through their iPhone app. It was sublime. While I love having full web access via Mobile Safari, loading and viewing web pages on a tiny screen is slow and cumbersome, though nice to have at times. Because once again, the Internet is the current paradigm, and it's optimized for roughly 800 x 600 pixels on a large desktop monitor. But the Amazon app (among others) opens the door on a new path.

The interface is largely search-based, not browsing-based, so if you're just poking around for shopping ideas, you're better off going to the website. But for finding the thing you're looking for and buying it, I'd sooner buy it on the iPhone than my computer. For one, it's incredibly simple. No banners, extra links, or any other chaff. Just product pictures, a description, pricing, reviews, and buttons to add the product to your cart. Click through and purchasing is as simple as adding your credit card number into a field, choosing your desired shipping address, and off you go. I used to think interfaces that offered a dumbed-down version of the web were annoyingly limited. Now I think this is the future of online commerce.

The same could be said for interfaces for flickr (currently just a mobile webpage), wikipedia, and at least one iPhone porn site. The idea that these need to be viewed through a generic browser interface feels curiously outdated compared to using the iPhone. I could easily envision these spaces existing as "apps" on a desktop computer as well. The option to customize the interface adds much more benefit than having a catchall browser window. It makes me wonder if there's really any necessity for a browser application at all--one could simply open the Google search app, dig for their information which is presented as a list of apps, click on their selection and up pops a mini-app of the "page" they chose. Each site becomes its own discreet process, rather than a tab hanging in a browser window.

But I digress. I realize it's obvious, but the genius of the iPhone is the applications. And not just that they're on there, but that they're well-designed (for the most part), that they work and look like Apple products, and that the possbilities have just begun to emerge. We found three new restaraunts over the weekend using Urbanspoon (briefly: There are three tumblers for location, cuisine and price which can be locked. By shaking the device, the unlocked tumblers roll randomly, resulting in a restaraunt recommendation complete with a map and reviews from users and local papers). We avoided traffic with Google Maps. I found a color palette generator that works with colourlovers.org to access their palette library. They're not indispensable, but I'm finding value for more than just my own entertainment.

And I've managed to keep from checking my email in every meeting.

So far.