So what’s wrong with the iPhone? Two things:

1. One word: AT&T. I live and work in the greater Boston area, and AT&T’s network is pretty poor here and elsewhere. When I receive calls at my house, the iPhone rings only about 50% of the time. Sometimes calls don’t even register as missed. One of the first things I noticed after switching to BlackBerry on Verizon’s network is how many calls I was suddenly getting. And calls to my BlackBerry don’t drop off or become interference plagued anywhere near as frequently as those on my iPhone. Apple’s insistence on exclusivity with AT&T in the U.S. will keep me from going back to the iPhone until that changes.

So is this a regional problem? Not according to Consumer Reports, which has more than once ranked Verizon’s network as best or second best in most major markets throughout the U.S. Both in the Northeast and in my travels all around the country I have found this to be true. I was a Verizon Wireless customer before I bought my iPhone.

2. The virtual keyboard doesn’t work for me. People assume that it’s the lack of tactile feel when pressing fingers to glass, but I don’t think that tells the story. My frustration with the iPhone keyboard is that I cannot use my thumbs, but am instead reduced to stabbing with one finger, which is slower and less accurate. The worst part is that I frequently press the wrong keys while attempting to type without looking. On the BlackBerry, even though the keys are both much smaller and packed more tightly together, I’m able to “touch type” because of the little bumps that help you locate the keys by touch. The way I see this the problem is one of size. I could deal with lack of tactile feel on the iPhone if the virtual keycaps were larger so there were less chance of hitting the wrong key. Without those tactile bumps, me and my thumbs need larger targets.

That’s my short list of serious pet peeves with the iPhone. Were I to make a list of things I love about Apple’s smartphone, it would have at least a dozen items. But while it’s a short list negatives, they hard to get around: It’s not a reliable cell phone for calls, and I can’t really type emails and texts comfortably. The switch to the BlackBerry was a no-brainer for me.

Even so, I wouldn’t say I love the BlackBerry. The software syncing situation is terrible for Mac users. PocketMac is hopeless. (I’m about to try Missing Sync.) RIM needs to break down and write a true Desktop Manager for the Mac. I’m going to miss the iPhone’s seamless integration with all things Apple and Mac.

I also don’t like the BlackBerry’s over-reliance on email as a way to notify about voicemails and texts. I get so much voicemail that I need one place for that. I love the iPhone’s visual voicemail center and texting module (which uses more of an IM paradigm).

The BlackBerry Web browser and digital media features pale by comparison with those of the iPhone. I bought a 4GB SD card for the BlackBerry and still haven’t been able to successfully copy my songs and photos to RIM’s smartphone.

One BlackBerry Curve strength I hadn’t expected is that it’s noticeably lighter than the iPhone while being roughly comparable in size.

All in all, the iPhone is the most important smartphone released in the last three years. But Apple’s blind insistence on being exclusive with AT&T and Steve Job’s belief that buttons are bad — even keyboard buttons — makes the iPhone incomplete for me. I know other people who’ve gone back too. I’ll come back to the iPhone when and if Apple gets the message about the main things that a smartphone has to accomplish: phone calls and email.

If I could only get the BlackBerry keyboard and Verizon’s network on the iPhone, I’d have the best of both worlds.

My wife, Cyndy, got a nice BlackBerry at her job several months ago, and it quickly became her main phone. Neither of us were using our circa 2005 LG flip phones from Verizon. I’m a jeans-pocket guy for my cell phone, and the LG phone felt like a brick in my pocket. My older model CrackBerry was great for email, but a very poor cell phone. So bad that I found myself carrying both at times, something that’s patently ridiculous. So we dumped our Verizon phones, and I went to the Apple store in a nearby mall.

The most surprising thing for me was the purchase experience. When I bought my Verizon air card (WWAN service) at the nearby Verizon store back in May, I had to sign in, wait 15 minutes for a sales rep, politely listen to the upsell and then indicate that, no, I just wanted what I wanted, and wait while she first brought the wrong card and then the right one from the back room. Then I was ferried over to the cash register queue, where I had to wait another 15 minutes to check out. Then there was something strange in my account that involved 20 minutes of head-scratching and furrowed brows by two Verizon salespeople. Eventually, I was allowed to pay and walk away with my air card.

The Apple store was an entirely different experience. It took me longer to park my car at the mall than it did to walk out with my iPhone. The entire purchase experience lasted about five minutes. There are no decisions to make, accounts to check, or contracts to sign. All the details were taken care of by the iTunes-based iPhone activation software. You have to connect the iPhone to your Windows or Mac computer, download and install iTunes (unless you have it installed already, as all newer Macs do), and then follow the on-screen instructions. I had to remove the iPhone dock’s USB cable and plug it back in after I launched iTunes. Apple’s documentation on this process is, well, basic. But then again, you don’t really need it. The process of initializing activation required about 10 minutes, and after a little over 20 minutes of wait time, the activation was complete — including the transfer of the phone number from my old Verizon LG cell phone to the AT&T-powered iPhone.

Here’s hoping that the iPhone user experience transforms the mobile phone industry, which seems more intent on making profits than on ensuring that its customers enjoy buying and using its products.

Dazzling in Operation

Using the iPhone is an absolute joy. I’ve been using cell phones for about 15 years. The iPhone is the first mobile phone that I actually enjoy using. Things I never bothered with before — like texting — are suddenly easy and fun to do, whereas before they just seemed like a bother.

The Safari browser included on the iPhone delivers the best browsing experience I’ve ever seen on a mobile device. There’s no compromise other than the size of the screen. You can see the Web with either an emphasis on the width of the screen or length, and switching between the two is as simple as rotating the iPhone 90 degrees.

The iPhone is designed to use Wi-Fi wireless connections with the same straighforward operation of the Mac, which remembers your previous Wi-Fi connections by location and connects to them automatically. So even though AT&T’s EDGE (not 3G) network is a little slow at 100kbps, you won’t need it all that often unless you’re on the road. And it’s good enough for Web and email.

The iPhone works fine with Windows, but it’s especially well suited to Mac users who subscribe to Apple’s .mac synching and Web-based services. If you’re using iCal, iPhoto, iTunes, Safari, Apple Mail, and Apple’s Address Book already, you’ll be able to integrate your Mac with your iPhone very seamlessly. I’m big on the idea of having just one computer for both business and personal needs, so it’s also great that the iPhone bridges those two uses just as well as my MacBook Pro 17. For people like me, the iPhone is the smart phone that already has access to all my personal data and communications. Sure, the hardware may cost $400 plus $60 a month at minimum for the service, but it replaces the two phones that I previously had, and that’s worth paying extra for.

Less than two hours after I began, I had copied over all the songs from my old iPod, as well as my calendar entries, photos, bookmarks, and Web-based login info to the iPhone. I’d also set up voicemail and run through all the settings screens. All of this was so quick and easy to carry out that I soon began thinking of the iPhone as more of a portable extension of my Mac than a separate device.

The mobile phone functionality is also much better than I expected. Even though I live in an iffy AT&T service area, I haven’t had too much trouble with signal strength. One thing I’ve noticed is that AT&T’s signal strength varies a lot more than Verizon’s — even when you’re sitting in one place. Sound quality is surprisingly good on calls. I’ve dreamed about the visual voicemail feature for years. I detest the linearity of voicemail. I want to be able to pick and choose which messages to listen to right away and which ones to hold for later. The iPhone lets you do that.

Rounding out the features and programs are a camera, a YouTube access tool, a stocks reader, Google Maps, Yahoo Weather, a world clock/timer/alarm clock, a calculator, notes, and settings. The two best features of the iPhone, though, are the large touchscreen and the finger-gesture user interface, which is ahead of its time. Apple’s software and user interface design are superb.

The iPhone hardware is, like most Apple hardware, a model of industrial design and simplicity. The device is heavier than it looks, which makes it feel substantial. And it’s the perfect size to fit into your front pocket (but buy a screen protector for the touchscreen).

Sore Points

I’ve found very little to criticize in the iPhone. But there are some things. The software keyboard isn’t as bad as I’d feared. I don’t miss the tactile feel of actual keys. The audible click when you press a key helps a lot. The only problem with the keyboard is that the keys are too small for bigger fingers. That’s no surprise, really, given that the keys span the width of the tall-and-narrow screen orientation. Apple would have been smart to offer a portable external keyboard. The iPhone is good enough to be the only computer you travel with (at least, on shorter trips), but the onboard keyboard really holds it back.

Also, various screens in the iPhone software don’t actually offer a back or cancel button. For those times, Apple has a hardware-based Home button. But shouldn’t every screen have a way to back out?

And what idiot designed the iPhone’s small, recessed audio jack? Really, now, for all of Apple’s vaunted design prowess, if the iPhone doesn’t work with my Bose noise-canceling headphones — and it doesn’t as is — what good is it as an iPod replacement? I’m disgusted with the lack of attention to detail with this facet of the iPhone. Yes, I know, there are short cable-extension adapters (and less desirable rigid adapters) that solve the problem. But this seems like gratuitous aggravation on Apple’s part.

Various people around the Internet have suggested that Apple’s thinking was to add strain relief by recessing the jack, thereby limiting the leverage of the protruding connector. Theoretically, this would minimize damage to the system-card-mounted audio jack. But when you consider that the Apple Store is selling a more or less rigid Belkin adapter whose two-inch stand-off only exacerbates the strain-relief problem, what’s the point? For the record, my Bose headphones are the QuietComfort 2 model, purchased a few years back. They offer a standard, right-angle, 1/8-inch stereo male connector with built-in strain relief that’s been in use for many years. If I press on the male connector when it’s inserted in the iPhone jack, I get the sound through the headphones. So the design tolerance is just a tiny bit tight for my headphones. The actual problem is the size of the hole in the iPhone case. The difference in size might be attributed to something like a measurement in metric versus SAE for the iPhone case hole. Shame on Apple for not fully testing this in the marketplace.

But those drawbacks aside, I still love this thing. I’ve ordered a cable adapter for the audio jack. And I’m carrying my iPhone everywhere. For the first time in my life, I get all the hubbub about why cell phones can be cool. I guess it took Apple’s user-interface design to make it work for me. I’d probably have forgiven several additional minor peccadillos for that one primary advantage. Apple hit a homerun with the iPhone.

Update: November 11

More than a week after I wrote the review above, I’m happily listening to my iPhone as iPod, having purchased the 4-inch $7.95 adapter cable (link above) from RadTech. It works great.

My reliance on this phone matches no other mobile device I’ve ever owned. I will admit to having been something of a cell phone Luddite. I’ve owned a succession of mobile phones from Nokia, Motorola, LG, and RIM. Not a one of them inspired gadget lust for me. I viewed them more as annoying life complications than conveniences. Their controls, displays, signal strength, sound quality, and features were not worth the trouble. But only a few short weeks after picking up the iPhone, I already feel like I’m missing something when I forget to slip it in my pocket. I know many people will view this as mobile-phone-newbie-ish, but I don’t mind admitting that the iPhone has become my primary phone number. Ho-hum? Through almost 15 years of using cell phones, no other device has achieved that for me.

The iPhone’s touchscreen UI is brilliant and a big part of why this device is a success. It makes Web browsing on a tiny screen actually enjoyable. I find myself reading things very informally in a reclined position, almost like I would a paperback. At my daughter’s birthday party, a bunch of parents were standing around talking. One mentioned a great place to take the kids snow sledding. The place in town where families have done this for decades was recently bulldozed to expand the high school, so we’re all looking for another place to sled.

The parent in the know was having a hard time giving directions to the new sledding location. I felt a little self-conscious about whipping out my iPhone to access Google Maps and figure it out, but eventually I did just that. A few minutes later, a bunch of us huddled around the screen, where we figured out the location and could all see it on the map.

Along with all that’s truly fabulous about the iPhone, I’ve also come across some aspects that Apple should fix. The primary trade-off with this device is data entry. You can’t copy and paste, for example, a phone number from one place to another. In most operational modes, you can’t use the keyboard in the widescreen aspect; and in the vertical aspect, the keys are just too small to stab at them comfortably. The separation of basic keys like period, comma, and so forth onto a second keyboard palette is cumbersome. You can’t depress and hold down a key for an extra second or so to induce a capital letter as you can on Blackberries and other smart phones. I’d be OK if I could use two thumbs on this keyboard, but I can’t. I’m reduced to one-finger pointing. And even then, I’ve had to train myself to point slightly to the left of the key I’m pressing because otherwise I get the wrong key. Even when I do hit the right keys, the iPhone’s built-in type-completion text-changing “smart” behavior rears its ugly head wanting to “fix” things it hasn’t a clue about. The bottom line is that typing, if you can call it that, is not a great experience on the iPhone.

I realize that Apple’s iPhone engineers faced a significant challenge with the keyboard. The touchscreen-as-input-mechanism, display size, and overall form factor are collectively a huge design-limiting factor for the keyboard — but they are the heart of what makes the iPhone such a pleasure to use in all other aspects. I wouldn’t change anything about them. So the keyboard took it on the chin. It’s hard to imagine what Apple could do to make this better. But I hope that brainy engineers are working on this very point for future software upgrades and the iPhone Platinum, or whatever the next major revision to the iPhone will be called. Because if they can improve the keyboard experience, even somewhat, I’ll pay to get it.

The data-entry and keyboard weaknesses of the iPhone are magnified by the fact that Apple not surprisingly opted to use its existing Mac software set to support functions like address book, email, and so on. Most other cell phones come with proprietary software for managing some of these functions. For Mac users, it’s vastly preferable not to have separate software. But in their current renditions, the desktop Mac applications aren’t really designed to support the iPhone. As a result, Apple customized the iPhone software. For example, the iPhone’s contact favorites (the list of people you call frequently) must be managed on the phone itself. Similarly, some of the management and setup chores, such as configuring email account settings, also requires laborious use (with no copy and paste) of the not-so-ergonomic iPhone keyboard. There’s no option to configure some of these things while your iPhone is docked to your computer, and that’s something Apple should have fixed in Leopard.

The more I use the iPhone, the more I like it — but also the more glaring this keyboard/data-entry issue becomes.

Finally, for anyone who owns or intends to buy an iPhone, the most vulnerable part of this device is its touchscreen. There’s a wide and growing array of accessories for the iPhone, including many protective cases. For me, many of these add-ons take away from the perfect size and weight of the device, though.

As a compromise, to cut down on the possibility of scratches and abrasion, I highly recommend the Crystal Film Set, available from the Apple Store for about $15. This clear film is custom-shaped for the face of the iPhone, complete with holes for the speaker and Home button. The film affixes to the screen by clinging with static electricity, and it really does stay on well. There are two sides to this film. The slightly tacky side should be the one to make direct contact with the iPhone’s glass. It’s a little difficult to apply because dust and air bubbles are a little hard to control. A couple of tips: A piece of Scotch tape will lift up the film once its applied. Use another piece of tape on the tacky side to remove dust or small hairs. When you lay the film down, you’ll have fewer air bubbles if you roll it down from one edge of the glass to the other. Use a finger nail or soft plastic straight edge to direct bubbles to the edge of the screen. Don’t push too hard on the touchscreen.

When properly affixed, you’ll forget the Crystal Film is there. You really have to look close to notice it at all. And your screen has some added protection (although, this doesn’t mean you can now bang on it with a rock or something).