When the iPhone first launched, I posted about three reasons I would NOT be buying an iPhone…yesterday, I broke down and bought a 4GB iPhone.  So what changed?

1) Price

I have a 5th generation iPod – so I don’t need an 8/16GB+ player – so 4GB is just fine with me.  Apple decided to discontinue the 4GB model, so the price dropped to $299 from $499.  If you look at other smartphones out there, $300 isn’t a bad price at all.

2) Seeing is Believing (i.e. why the on-screen keyboard works)

One of my original concerns was the fact that the keyboard has no feedback at all.  After playing with the phone for a bit, it’s pretty obvious the keyboard is just fine.  There is a large keyboard for use with Safari for web browsing and that keyboard is great.  Then there is a small keyboard for SMS, e-mail, etc.  The small keyboard is usable, but it isn’t quite as good.  But when I thought about it, even the small keyboard is vastly superior to the other non-querty keyboards and it’s really not much worse than the hardware qwerty keyboards I’ve used on a Treo.

3) Did I really need GPS? No.

I originally thought I really needed GPS in the phone – and I admit, I think it would still be a great feature with the built-in Google Maps.  But after thinking about this for a while, I came to the conclusion that I would most likely use the maps to figure out what streets to take, finding where to connect to the interstate, etc and really didn’t need my position or real-time navigation.  I also have a Garmin GPS unit for times when I really do want a true GPS and I have a feeling it would work much better than anything they can cram into a cellphone anyway.

The one thing I’m still worried about from my original post is 3rd party application support.  The included applications are decent overall and I can certainly get the job done, but it would be nice to have the option to extend the functionality easily (e.g. adding a Pocket Quicken application).  I know it’s possible to do a hack on the phone to make this work (or was possible at one point), but this is still something Apple needs to address.

I noticed Amazon had a $0.99 sale on a couple of new movies I had been wanting to see (Ghost Rider, 300, Shooter) so I decided to give it a try – after all, no shipping, no tax, means you can’t beat the price.  My setup is Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit and an Xbox 360 with wireless adapter (I stream the movies to the HDTV via the 360).  My initial impressions:

The Good
Install and movie purchase was quick and simple overall (however, it is a tiny bit less simple for 64-bit users…more on that later).  It was dead simple to stream to the 360 – if you already have the media center connection setup, then you’re ready to go.  The quality is on par with DVD – it’s certainly not HD, but I was watching on a 56″ HDTV and it looked as good as any DVD I have.

The Bad
When I first installed the software, I got a message saying something was wrong with my computer’s DRM configuration.  My only guess is that it has something to do with being on a 64-bit – but I really don’t know.  The Unbox software offers to help troubleshoot – so I did that and it found a patch to automatically install…after that, everything went fine.  The download speed is a bit slow – I rented 5 movies the first night (you can keep them for 30 days) at around 10pm.  By 8am or so the next morning, 4 of the 5 movies were downloaded.  The files are between 1.5GB – 3GB – so it’s certainly going to take a while to download them, but the speed could be just a tad better…but it’s not a huge issue – just realize that you’ll need to wait about an hour or so after you rent the movie before you can start playing it.  The biggest issue I have with Amazon’s Unbox service is the lack of 5.1 channel audio – the audio quality is decent, but it’s certainly not on the same level as a DVD and there is no true surround sound.

Conclusion
There’s no question that Unbox is a great deal if you find a movie you’d like to see for $0.99 – it’s the way to go at that price.  I’m not sure I’ll be using it for full price rentals though ($3.99) – for that price, I can get NetFlix or Blockbuster Online (and better sound quality).  If Amazon can drop the price to $1.99 for a one day rental, I’d be doing a lot more Unboxing.