I've thought that a number of times. Textbook case on how to get free publicity.

Perhaps it is because some people want to advise their friends to not believe the hype. The iPhone might be a nice toy for some, but not for all of us.

Ok I can understand that reasoning. Maybe I have read too many more complete reviews bashing this and that feature.

I am getting really annoyed at smtp issues.

Like what? I have not had any problem with any of my mail accounts.

The cultural phenomena (is it to early to proclaim it one?) of Apple hype is quite amazing. Talk about developing loyalty.

They are a nice counterpoint to gushing "it's the best phone ever I can do X, Y and Z" and they forget to mention there are 20 phones around that can do X, Y, and Z or tell us why the iPhone is better at X, Y and Z

OK, here's a couple novel uses of iPhone.

1) I was at a Red Robin and we saw a photo on the wall from an old Marilyn Monroe movie set. Couldn't think of the movie. Logged on to IMDB and found the title, year, etc. Became a conversation topic during lunch (old movies of hers).

2) Bought some items from sears.com. Received email message with bar codes that needed to be scanned to claim the items at the store. Instead of printing the receipts (I was not at home when the emails arrived) I just took the iPhone and made the emails larger and scanned the barcode right off the screen.

Now that's creative!

That may be, but I've been able to access IMDB and email from...just about any phone since 2001. What's novel about the iPhone?

Well, compared to my previous sonyericsson and blackberry devices, the UI to access websites like IMDB is quite a bit easier to navigate and read on iPhone. And I'm not sure you could do the bar code embedded in an email on those tiny screens. Being able to magnify the image made things simple.

the UI.

Companies have been selling multimedia message-to-barcode systems since (at least) 2002.

Yes, but the general public hasn't had the ability to do what SFO 1K did until the iPhone.

Which brings an interesting idea... wonder if the gate readers (and the airlines) would scan online check in boarding passes right from the iPhone.

I'm not sure I follow this reference (perhaps you can provide a sample link).

So, I've got my little SonyEricsson w810i or s710 and I can read my IMAP email (as text only) -- in what way would I have been able to convert the barcode information from a text only message and scan it?

In my example, no add-ins were needed, the device does what I needed out of the box.

It's amazing what the iPhone can do.

Just yesterday I ran out of refills for my Swiffer floor mop, so I stuck the iPhone to the bottom of the mop and hey presto! It managed to sweep up all the dust from my floor.

And last week I saw a bug on the wall, and the amazing iPhone was able to splat it with just ONE hit.

I don't know how I ever lived without my iPhone. It really has changed my life. No other phone I've ever owned has been able to clean the floor AND kill bugs.

You were saying you didn't think the screens of older phones would be big enough. I was pointing out that there were commercial uses of barcodes on phone screens from 2002 onwards.

As for the email side of it - every phone I've owned since 2001 has been able to retrieve mail from an IMAP server and display picture attachments, either embedded as an HTML mail, or in an image viewer. Out of the box.