iPhone Experiences and Reviews - MacRumors
Skip to Content

iPhone Experiences and Reviews

One day after the iPhone release, and the reviews and impressions are rolling in. Reader reviews are being posted to this thread with other areas for iPhone Accessory, iPhone Application, iPhone Help/Troubleshooting discussion. We've also had regional discussion about buying an iPhone at the Apple Store, with our own Katie's buying experience at https://www.macrumors.com/iphone

Despite with what appears to be a high number of sales, iPhones are still available at most Apple Stores (check availability) -- though we have heard that several AT&T stores sold out last night due to minimal inventory.

John Gruber posted his first impressions of the device:

Overall day one impression: the iPhone is 95 percent amazing, 5 percent maddening. Im just blown away by how nice it is very thoughtful UI design and outstanding engineering. It is very fun.

I havent found a single element of the iPhone UI that doesnt feel super-snappy.
Can rotate to landscape in either direction.
Notes app is lame (photo)
Calendar is "very nice".
"When youre done with an app, you just tap the Home button. What happens to apps when you do this is not exposed; theres no concept of quitting or closing, just switching. I think this is a great design, Im just having trouble getting used to it."

Support pages at Apple with tech notes and troubleshooting have appeared. The biggest issue that has plagued people has been activation problems. Users have been discussing the problem, but Tech-Recipes spoke to AT&T support last night who unhelpfully advised: "they were having bugs with validation and that we should retry every 30 minutes or so until it works."

More galleries: Disassembly photos from ThinkSecret, ZDNet Unboxing.

Web developers can take note that Ajaxian.com has compiled some impressions of the Safari browser with respect to web development:
Safari sets default width as 980px if width not set.
Drag / drop elements based on mousemove events don't work since dragging one finger around causes iPhone Safari to scroll
You do not get mousedown when you touch the screen. You get mousedown and mouseup at the same time when you release your finger. The mousemove event does not seem to fire at all.

Perhaps most interesting is that PCWorld has tried its own stress tests on the iPhone (Video). They put the iPhone through Scratch Tests and Drop Tests.

Scratch Test: When the iPhone emerged with its screen just as pristine as when it went in, we then attempted to gouge the screen with one of the keys. We were very impressed that even this deliberate attempt to scratch the screen completely failed.

Drop Test: The iPhone not only continue to work after each drop test, impressively it still looked good as well. The only obvious damage suffered was a few gouges along its metal edge from the concrete drops. But it came out without a scratch on its glass screen, despite our best efforts to mar it in repeated tests of both types.

We'll be compiling ongoing iPhone notes and developments at https://www.macrumors.com/iphone/

Related Forum: iPhone

Popular Stories

macbook ultra

'MacBook Ultra' Coming Soon With These 12 New Features

Friday July 24, 2026 6:00 pm PDT by
Apple's first high-end MacBook redesign in five years is expected to arrive in the near future, bringing a run of firsts to the Mac. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman expects the laptop to arrive between late 2026 and early 2027, with the later window now looking more likely owing to the global memory chip shortage. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects mass production to begin by late 2026. Apple last...
iPhone 18 Pro Deep Red Feature

iPhone 18 Pro Launching in Two Months With These 12 New Features

Friday July 24, 2026 7:26 pm PDT by
It is now late July, and that means the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are less than two months away. The devices are expected to look similar to the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, but there will still be many year-over-year changes, with rumored features including a smaller Dynamic Island, 5G via satellite, and more. Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro...
5 Reasons to Buy the iPhone 17 Now Feature

5 Reasons to Buy the iPhone 17 Now Instead of Waiting for iPhone 18

Thursday July 23, 2026 8:26 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro models and its first foldable are less than two months from being unveiled. That may sound like a reason to sit tight if you're looking to upgrade from an iPhone 16 or older series, but between looming price hikes and Apple's new split-launch calendar, there's a decent case for grabbing an iPhone 17 series model right now. Here are five reasons in favor of putting your order ...