我思故我在::Je pense, donc je suis.

It feels solid and comfortable in the hand and the way it displays photos, videos and Web pages on its gorgeous screen makes other smart phones look primitive.

The iPhone's most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt -- who did most of the testing for this review -- was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly.

But the iPhone has a major drawback: the cellphone network it uses. It only works with AT&T (formerly Cingular), won't come in models that use Verizon or Sprint and can't use the digital cards (called SIM cards) that would allow it to run on T-Mobile's network. So, the phone can be a poor choice unless you are in areas where AT&T's coverage is good. It does work overseas, but only via an AT&T roaming plan.

In addition, even when you have great AT&T coverage, the iPhone can't run on AT&T's fastest cellular data network. Instead, it uses a pokey network called EDGE, which is far slower than the fastest networks from Verizon or Sprint that power many other smart phones. And the initial iPhone model cannot be upgraded to use the faster networks.

The iPhone compensates by being one of the few smart phones that can also use Wi-Fi wireless networks. When you have access to Wi-Fi, the iPhone flies on the Web. Not only that, but the iPhone automatically switches from EDGE to known Wi-Fi networks when it finds them, and pops up a list of new Wi-Fi networks it encounters as you move. Walt was able to log onto paid Wi-Fi networks at Starbucks and airports, and even used a free Wi-Fi network at Fenway Park in Boston to email pictures taken during a Red Sox game.

But this Wi-Fi capability doesn't fully make up for the lack of a fast cellular data capability, because it is impractical to keep joining and dropping short-range Wi-Fi networks while taking a long walk, or riding in a cab through a city.

AT&T is offering special monthly calling plans for the iPhone, all of which include unlimited Internet and email usage. They range from $60 to $220, depending on the number of voice minutes included. In an unusual twist, iPhone buyers won't choose their plans and activate their phones in the store. Instead, they will do so when they first connect the iPhone to the iTunes software.

Despite its simple interface, with just four rows of colorful icons on a black background, the iPhone has too many features and functions to detail completely in this space. But here's a rundown of the key features, with pros and cons based on our testing.

Hardware: The iPhone is simply beautiful. It is thinner than the skinny Samsung BlackJack, yet almost its entire surface is covered by a huge, vivid 3.5-inch display. There's no physical keyboard, just a single button that takes you to the home screen. The phone is about as long as the Treo 700, the BlackBerry 8800 or the BlackJack, but it's slightly wider than the BlackJack or Treo, and heavier than the BlackBerry and BlackJack.

The display is made of a sturdy glass, not plastic, and while it did pick up smudges, it didn't acquire a single scratch, even though it was tossed into Walt's pocket or briefcase, or Katie's purse, without any protective case or holster. No scratches appeared on the rest of the body either.

There are only three buttons along the edges. On the top, there's one that puts the phone to sleep and wakes it up. And, on the left edge, there's a volume control and a mute switch.

One downside: Some accessories for iPods may not work properly on the iPhone. The headphone jack, which supports both stereo music and phone calls, is deeply recessed, so you may need an adapter for existing headphones. And, while the iPhone uses the standard iPod port on the bottom edge, it doesn't recognize all car adapters for playing music, only for charging. Apple is considering a software update to fix this.

Touch-screen interface: To go through long lists of emails, contacts, or songs, you just "flick" with your finger. To select items, you tap. To enlarge photos, you "pinch" them by placing two fingers on their corners and dragging them in or out. To zoom in on portions of Web pages, you double-tap with your fingers. You cannot use a stylus for any of this. In the Web browser and photo program, if you turn the phone from a vertical to a horizontal position, the image on the screen turns as well and resizes itself to fit.

In general, we found this interface, called "multi-touch," to be effective, practical and fun. But there's no overall search on the iPhone (except Web searching), and no quick way to move to the top or bottom of pages (except in the Web browser). The only aid is an alphabetical scale on the right in tiny type.

There's also no way to cut, copy, or paste text.

And the lack of dedicated hardware buttons for functions like phone, email and contacts means extra taps are needed to start using features. Also, if you are playing music while doing something else, the lack of hardware playback buttons forces you to return to the iPod program to stop the music or change a song.

Keyboard: The virtual keys are large and get larger as you touch them. Software tries to guess what you're typing, and fix errors. Overall, it works. But the error-correction system didn't seem as clever as the one on the BlackBerry, and you have to switch to a different keyboard view to insert a period or comma, which is annoying.

Web browsing: The iPhone is the first smart phone we've tested with a real, computer-grade Web browser, a version of Apple's Safari. It displays entire Web pages, in their real layouts, and allows you to zoom in quickly by either tapping or pinching with your finger. Multiple pages can be open at the same time, and you can conduct Google or Yahoo searches from a built-in search box.

Email: The iPhone can connect with most popular consumer email services, including Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, EarthLink and others. It can also handle corporate email using Microsoft's Exchange system, if your IT department cooperates by enabling a setting on the server.

BlackBerry email services can't be used on an iPhone, but Yahoo Mail supplies free BlackBerry-style "push" email to iPhone users. In our test, this worked fine.

Unlike most phone email software, the iPhone's shows a preview of each message, so you don't have to open it. And, if there is a photo attached, it shows the photo automatically, without requiring you to click on a link to see it. It can also receive and open Microsoft Word and Excel documents and Adobe PDF files. But it doesn't allow you to edit or save these files.

Memory: The $499 base model comes with four gigabytes of memory, and the $599 model has eight gigabytes. That's far more than on any other smart phone, but much less than on full-size iPods. Also, there's no slot for memory-expansion cards. Our test $599 model held 1,325 songs; a dozen videos (including a full-length movie); over 100 photos; and over 100 emails, including some attachments, and still had room left over.

Battery life: Like the iPod, but unlike most cellphones, the iPhone lacks a removable battery. So you can't carry a spare. But its battery life is excellent. In our tests, it got seven hours and 18 minutes of continuous talk time, while the Wi-Fi was on and email was constantly being fetched in the background. That's close to Apple's claim of a maximum of eight hours, and far exceeds the talk time claims of other smart phones, which usually top out at five and a half hours.

The interface features "cover flow" technology for flipping through album covers.

For continuous music playback, again with Wi-Fi on and email being fetched, we got over 22 hours, shy of Apple's claim of up to 24 hours, but still huge. For video playback, under the same conditions, we got just under Apple's claim of seven hours, enough to watch four average-length movies. And, for Web browsing and other Internet functions, including sending and receiving emails, viewing Google maps and YouTube videos, we got over nine hours, well above Apple's claim of up to six hours.

In real life, of course, you will do a mix of these things, so the best gauge might be that, in our two-week test, the iPhone generally lasted all day with a typical mix of tasks.

Phone calls: The phone interface is clean and simple, but takes more taps to reach than on many other smart phones, because there are no dedicated hardware phone buttons. You also cannot just start typing a name or number, but must scroll through a list of favorites, through your recent call list, or your entire contact list. You can also use a virtual keypad.

One great phone feature is called "visual voice mail." It shows you the names or at least the phone numbers of people who have left you voicemail, so you can quickly listen to those you want. It's also very easy to turn the speakerphone on and off, or to establish conference calls.

Voice call quality was good, but not great. In some places, especially in weak coverage areas, there was some muffling or garbling. But most calls were perfectly audible. The iPhone can use Bluetooth wireless headsets and it comes with wired iPod-style earbuds that include a microphone.

Google maps on the iPhone.

A downside -- there's no easy way to transfer phone numbers, via AT&T, directly from an existing phone. The iPhone is meant to sync with an address book (and calendar) on a PC.

Contacts and calendars: These are pretty straightforward and work well. The calendar lacks a week view, though a list view helps fill that gap. Contacts can be gathered into groups, but the groups can't be used as email distribution lists.

Syncing: The iPhone syncs with both Macs and Windows PCs using iTunes, which handles not only the transfer of music and video, but also photos, contacts, calendar items and browser bookmarks. In our tests, this worked well, even on a Windows Vista machine using the latest version of Outlook as the source for contacts and appointments.

iPod: The built-in iPod handles music and video perfectly, and has all the features of a regular iPod. But the interface is entirely new. The famed scroll wheel is gone, and instead finger taps and flicking move you through your collection and virtual controls appear on the screen. There's also a version of the "cover flow" interface which allows you to select music by flipping through album covers.

Other features: There are widgets, or small programs, for accessing weather, stock prices and Google Maps, which includes route directions, but no real-time navigation. Another widget allows you to stream videos from YouTube, and yet another serves as a notepad. There's a photo program that displays individual pictures or slideshows.

The only add-on software Apple is allowing will be Web-based programs that must be accessed through the on-board Web browser. The company says these can be made to look just like built-in programs, but the few we tried weren't impressive.

Missing features: The iPhone is missing some features common on some competitors. There's no instant messaging, only standard text messaging. While its two-megapixel camera took excellent pictures in our tests, it can't record video. Its otherwise excellent Web browser can't fully utilize some Web sites, because it doesn't yet support Adobe's Flash technology. Although the phone contains a complete iPod, you can't use your songs as ringtones. There aren't any games, nor is there any way to directly access Apple's iTunes Music Store.

Apple says it plans to add features to the phone over time, via free downloads, and hints that some of these holes may be filled.

Expectations for the iPhone have been so high that it can't possibly meet them all. It isn't for the average person who just wants a cheap, small phone for calling and texting. But, despite its network limitations, the iPhone is a whole new experience and a pleasure to use.

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WSJ: Steve, on the eve of the iPhone launch, we wonder if you might compare it to others you've been involved in -- the introduction of the Macintosh, for instance -- both in terms of the consumer anticipation and your own feelings about the impact the product will have in the market?

Steve Jobs: One of the things we feel is this is the biggest breakthrough in user interfaces in 23 years. Since the Mac in 1984 brought us the mouse and bit map displays and folders and icons, there really hasn't been much except for the evolution of that in the last 23 years. This is a revolutionary user interface [on the iPhone] -- multi-touch, direct action. It's pretty remarkable. I'm very excited.

I remember the week before we introduced the Mac. We knew every computer would work this way once we had the Mac. You couldn't talk about 'If,' you could debate about 'When.' That's how I feel about this. I feel this is the direction mobile devices are going to have to go. I don't think it's a matter of if, it's a matter of when. The first and most breakthrough one of them is going to be on the market tomorrow.

WSJ: One of the interesting things for people about the iPhone is the bundling of data and voice into one service plan. We've talked to some other smartphone manufacturers in the last couple days who say that would be great if that were extended to other devices because it seems like it would ensure that out-of-the-box people aren't getting an experience where they're pressing a button and something doesn't work. Is that something that you are looking at extending to other phones in the AT&T lineup over time?

Randall Stephenson: It depends on the handset itself. With this particular device, to not have an inclusive data package with a voice package would be almost irrelevant, right? This is a data and a voice product. It's nonsensical to sell a rate plan separate. As you see devices migrate towards this type of device, I fully expect you'll see rate plans migrate towards that as well.

WSJ: What do you both envision being added over time to the iPhone, in terms of access to ringtones through Cingular's (now rebranded AT&T) platform and maybe through some other manner, like turning your iTunes songs into ringtones?

Mr. Jobs: As you may know, iTunes is now the number three distributor of music in the U.S., ahead of Amazon and Target and behind Best Buy and Wal-Mart, and obviously the largest online distributor of music in the world. Of course, you can play that music now on your iPhone. One might imagine a lot of things down the road.

WSJ: Is one of those things offering music purchases and video purchases directly from the phone?

Mr. Jobs: There's a lot of things you can imagine down the road.

WSJ: Steve, how are you feeling now about how this device will impact your iPod business? Will it cannibalize iPod sales in any meaningful way?

Mr. Jobs: We can report to you that it hasn't so far. We announced this in January, and we've had a very healthy iPod business since then. This is a more expensive device and one that carries a service requirement with it, unlike any iPod does. I'm not too worried about that, but we'll certainly report to you what happens as it happens.

WSJ: A lot of attention has been focused in some of the initial reviews of the iPhone on the EDGE network that this phone is going to be on. Steve, we saw somewhere that your concern in putting a 3G chip in the first edition of the iPhone was that the current generation of that technology would drain the battery a lot, and that there were also some issues of coverage of the AT&T 3G network at the time you did this deal. Is that correct and have those issues been resolved over time as we've seen the technology evolve?

Mr. Stephenson: If you think about wireless broadband networks, EDGE is the only ubiquitous nationwide broadband network deployed today. It's a 300-plus kilobit type service. We're selling in the tens of thousands every single month of smart phones that operate on nothing but EDGE. The service experience is really, really good and what you're going to see with the iPhone is the caching technology that Steve and the Apple guys have developed here makes the EDGE experience even better. Between the Wi-Fi and the EDGE coverage, this is a really good experience.

We put right south of $16 billion of capital into this network over the last two years. I feel real good about the coverage and the performance. We put tens of thousands of hours of testing this device on this network and it's performing at the top of any device we have out there.

Mr. Jobs: You know every (AT&T) Blackberry gets its mail over EDGE. It turns out EDGE is great for mail, and it works well for maps and a whole bunch of other stuff. Where you wish you had faster speed is…on a Web browser. It's good enough, but you wish it was a little faster. That's where sandwiching EDGE with Wi-Fi really makes sense because Wi-Fi is much faster than any 3G network.

What we've done with the iPhone is we've made it so that it will automatically switch to a known Wi-Fi network whenever it finds it. So you don't have to go hunting around, resetting the phone, flipping a switch or doing anything. Most of us have Wi-Fi networks around us most of the time at home and at work. There's often times a Wi-Fi network that you can join whether you're sitting in a coffee shop or even walking along the street piggybacking on somebody's home Wi-Fi network. What we found is the combination is working really well.

When we looked at 3G, the chipsets are not quite mature, in the sense that they're not low-enough power for what we were looking for. They were not integrated enough, so they took up too much physical space. We cared a lot about battery life and we cared a lot about physical size. Down the road, I'm sure some of those tradeoffs will become more favorable towards 3G but as of now we think we made a pretty good doggone decision.

WSJ: Can you say whether 3G technology has evolved to the point where you're already working on including that in the next edition of the iPhone?

Mr. Jobs: No, we just don't comment on future stuff.

WSJ: Can you discuss any applications you'd like to see third-party developers create for the iPhone, specifically things like Skype and other voice over Internet protocol software?

Mr. Jobs: We obviously thought about VoIP. You still need a cellular phone because you're not always going to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot. One you have a cellular phone plan, it costs you zero incremental dollars to use it when you're making the next phone call. VoIP, while an interesting technology, didn't seem to be a big breakthrough to us. But others might feel differently, and others may make Web-based VoIP clients available for the iPhone – I think someone's already working on that.

But I think the majority of applications people are going to write for the iPhone are going to be things that corporations like. [Salesforce.com CEO] Mark Benioff has announced he's going to be doing some exciting stuff with the iPhone… I think people are going to surprise us over the next six or nine months with some pretty creative stuff.

WSJ: T-Mobile launched a service this week that allows cellphone calls to roam onto Wi-Fi networks when a user is in a hotspot. The technology is geared at helping people get better coverage indoors and save on their monthly cellular minutes. Is that technology impressive and something either of you have looked at?

Mr. Stephenson: At AT&T we fully expect that. We're working on the technology ourselves. The iPhone is really our first entrée into a dual-mode handset utilizing Wi-Fi and traditional wireless technologies. That's the interesting part about the iPhone. It's causing everybody to stop and reflect on what's possible.

WSJ: There was a halo effect on the Mac as a result of the iPod. Are you envisioning anything similar with iPhone? Will it have synergistic effects on other parts of your business?

Mr. Jobs: The iPod halo effect has been real. A lot of people who've never owned an Apple product are buying their first one in an iPod. They're having a great experience with it and they're saying, Wow, what else does Apple make? They're more receptive to looking at the other products we might make. I would certainly hope that happens with the iPhone. I hope the iPhone will be the first Apple product that some, maybe many, people buy.

WSJ: What about the fact that the iPhone and other Apple products share the same underlying technology or operating system. Could people who write applications for the iPhone now be more attracted to becoming Mac developers?

Mr. Jobs: We have lots of people writing applications for our computers. We have almost one million people in our developer program. I don't think that's what matters to customers. What matters to customers is the experience they have using the product.

WSJ: Have you learned anything about partnering through the AT&T experience? How has it changed Apple?

Mr. Jobs: We first chatted with AT&T two-and-a-half years ago. We're from different industries, different parts of the country. And yet it's been a great relationship so far.

We started off thinking we should do an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) and in talking that through with AT&T, both of us came to the realization that would just be a big waste of energy. We'd be trying to duplicate a lot of things they were already doing at a much greater scale. And we came to this….simple partnership: Let AT&T be AT&T. They've forgotten more about running a network than we'll ever know. And let Apple be Apple. We think we know how to design a great phone.

WSJ: Is Apple pursuing other global partnerships for the international iPhone launch?

Mr. Jobs: When we have something to talk about we'll give you a holler, but nothing today.

WSJ: To clarify on your comments about Wi-Fi handsets: Were you saying, Randall, that this phone will eventually evolve into that kind of device that does seamless roaming on Wi-Fi and cellular, or are you just saying there will be many more Wi-Fi devices?

Mr. Stephenson: This phone is the first device that truly kind of breaches that gap. You have a device they gets you true six-megabit broadband speeds on Wi-Fi connectivity. You get the mobility aspects of traditional cellular-type technologies. It begins to let your mind wonder. Once you have those kinds of speeds of a wireless handset … it just opens up a whole new world to what can be done on these wireless devices.

Mr. Jobs: A few years ago, the perception was that the large operators viewed Wi-Fi as potentially an enemy. And I think quite the opposite is now the case. Wi-Fi is viewed as a friend.

Mr. Stephenson: Absolutely -- in fact Wi-Fi is just an enhancement to your existing wireless capability. I have this perspective that the more wireless we become, the more wireline we become. The deeper you push these wireless capabilities the more you're relying on the underlying wired transport which is a much faster, high-capacity transport. And Wi-Fi just takes that to the nth degree. You could not have thought of VoIP on a wireless handset until you start thinking about Wi-Fi capabilities on these handsets. That doesn't intimidate us at all. I think it's a very nice enhancement to an existing service.

WSJ: Did you make enough of these to meet demand?

Mr. Jobs: We're building a fair number of them, but we may not. We had to make our best guess as to what the demand was going to be and what supply we were going to put in place many, many months ago. We built factories to build these things and everything. We've taken our best guess but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it ain't enough.