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So, I wound up getting an iPhone. Goodbye, Verizon. Hello, AT&T.

You can (and probably have) read all about Apple's latest device, so I won't bore you with the standard list of features. Overall, the device is the best phone I've played with, and I've seen them all: from first-model BlackBerry units to the RAZR to all of the various incarnations of Windows mobile devices. They all were horrid and unintuitive - apart from just plain dialing, and even then the Windows mobile units were just plain ugly even doing that.

The iPhone is just big enough, just small enough, just heavy enough and just light enough to carry around and use regularly while still feeling like a solid piece of engineering. It fits into all of the designed-for-cell-phone pockets I have on various pieces of clothing and hasn't broken since Monday (it's Wednesday, so that's a good run for me with a device with so much glass on it). While there is more than just one physical button, Apple kept them to a useful minimum and I don't have any concern about hitting the wrong one, ever. The majority of the device operations just make sense and work extremely intuitively. The camera is great in decent light (640x480 resolution) and the Internet experience on both wi-fi and EDGE are quite tolerable. Videos look great and music and calls sound clear and distortion-free.

So, what does Apple need to do for firmware version 1.1?

• Make contacts a primary widget. It's trivial, but having to go to the phone app then to the contacts is one step too many. I'm thinkin' something called "Address Book" on the main page (or just "Contacts").
• Enable video capture. It's a great camera, limited to just still pictures. It's a no-brainer to allow shooting video and they need to enable this.
• Overhaul iPhone mail app. The mail app works OK. My biggest gripe is the lack of a delete all function (deleting multiple msgs is tedious). My second biggest gripe is no landscape mode for mail. Which is a good segue to...
• More apps need landscape support. I want to be able to rotate any app, especially to use a keyboard with more real estate. It's a GUI inconsistency that Apple needs to remedy.
• Stabilize Safari and add Flash support. The browser crashes on complex sites and has no Flash support. For a modern web experience, both need to be looked at and addressed.
• Include an RSS widget. Google Reader in mobile mode works OK, but a solid, local app would work even better. The iPhone is yearning to have one. You can just hear it asking.
• iTunes ringtones. While I'm fine with a beep or two, it makes no sense to not allow the selection of a ringtone from the library on the iPhone.

That's all, so far. And, if that's the worst of it, then Apple did an amazing job with this new gadget.