It doesn't help that iPhone isn't tunable. No two people hold iPhone exactly the same way, and your angle of view makes all the difference when you're poking at a small target on iPhone's screen. This really shows when you're using the on-screen keyboard. Its keys are huge, which is both boon and bane. The large keys are easy to read, and pressing one makes a flag pop up above your finger that echoes the key you pressed. This is necessary because you can plant your finger squarely on a key and have iPhone register the key next to it. Once you get used to the technique, you learn that if you slide your finger to the proper key before lifting it, you can get the right letter. I found that keys toward the sides of the display register erroneously more often than others.

The Bottom Line Apple iPhone Apple, http://apple.com AT&T, att.com Fair  4.9 criteria score weight Messaging 4 20% User interface 7 20% Extensibility 1 15% Voice capabilities 5 15% Application support 5 10% Multimedia 7 10% Value 6 10% Cost: $499 for 4GB Flash memory; $599 for 8GB flash memory; requires $36 activation fee plus 2 years of AT&T wireless service at $59.99, $79.99 or $99.99 per month; other options may be available to current AT&T subscribers Platforms: Apple iTunes (free download) on Mac or Windows PC; AT&T Wireless coverage with 2-year contract; Apple ID (free registration) Bottom Line: Consumers looking for a gadget fix and who don’t mind paying $60/month for it will be delighted by the iPhone, which is effectively a heavenly widescreen, Wi-Fi iPod with PDA and browser functionality. But for professionals, once you get your feet off your desk and get down to business, excitement gives way to deep disappointment. iPhone is trounced in professional features, including 3G, VOIP, push to talk, IM, voice dialing, and much more, by all comers within $200 of its price range. And because it's a closed platform in the iPod tradition, these absent features can't be added by creative third parties. Apple and AT&T ruined iPhone for the professional handset market. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

iPhone attempts to counteract this effect by presenting word-completion options that cover many "missed by one key" typing errors. It's like the correction that Microsoft built into its block-handwriting recognizer, but you shouldn't need a facility like that with a keyboard. iPhone's keyboard is very cool to watch, but despite the invitation to do so, you can't set upon it with thumbs a-blazing. You just miss too many keys.

iPhone supports BlackBerry-like contraction substitution: Type a contraction without an apostrophe and iPhone will add it. However, it lacks a modifiable shortcut dictionary. And while iPhone tries to provide correction for missed keys, it doesn't flag or correct misspelled words, and most of its normal word completion suggestions are nonsense.

Safari stumbles
As nice as iPhone's Safari browser is for reading the newspaper, iPhone is a bit oversold as the ideal mobile front end for Web 2.0 applications. The device will not upload or download files, and Safari does not allow JavaScript applications to persist data in iPhone's memory for use when the device is offline.

Safari's JavaScript interpreter proved too slow to support smooth motion in Web 2.0 applications with rich interfaces, and the animated GIFs that site builders employ for browsers that lack Flash Player support are often not rendered properly.

Safari does not allow a Web page to sense finger motion using standard events, so drag, slide, and drag/drop operations require special effort while other devices with touchscreens will mimic a mouse well enough to permit these actions in a desktop style.

iPhone offers no clear way to select, copy, or paste text in edit fields, and repositioning the text cursor in a multiline edit field requires two-finger scrolling in a tiny space above the pop-up keyboard.