New York Times' Pogue likes iPhone's screen for photos, questions refresh rate

The New York Times' columnist David Pogue was able to play around with the Apple iPhone for about an hour and wrote a little bit about the camera.

Here's what he says, "I tried out the camera.  It was really cool to frame a shot using the HUGE 3.5-inch screen; it’s rare to find that big a screen on any camera.

"The refresh rate felt typical of a camera-phone to me, but Mr. Jobs said that it would be much smoother by the time the phone is done."

Other impressions

His overall impression of other aspects of the iPhone generally are positive.  However, typing when using the virtual keyboard is relatively slow (no surprise) and he's concerned about the speed of Cingular EDGE's network compared to the much faster WiFi capabilities.

He has good reason to be concerned.  If you want as snappy a response time as possible for downloading Web pages and uploading large files on a GSM network, you want HSDPA, not EDGE.

Cingular already has launched HSDPA in some major markets and more launches are on the way this year.

For a phone that's supposed to be revolutionary, EDGE is so 2004.  I suspect the European version, due at the end of this year will have HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) and the next version for the United States will have it as well.