From the outset the most intriguing thing about the Apple iPhone hasn't been the phone so much as the interface: a high-resolution touchscreen on which your fingers do the talking: Tap an icon to select an application, spread them to enlarge the picture, slide your finger to move the cropped image into view, swipe the screen to reveal the next slide. It all feels so natural. For a handheld entertainer/communicator, the iPhone seems like the gadget that dropped in from the future.

It happened that we got hold of an iPhone for review just before Apple Chairman Steve Jobs announced the iPod Touch, the phone-less iPhone that I'd been wishing for since the day in January when he first announced the iPhone. Having used the iPhone daily for the last couple of weeks, I'm happy to report that in most respects this marvel in Swiss Army Knife miniaturization does not disappoint.

Setup
Opening the snazzy black box reveals the iPhone, earphones (with microphone and squeeze control for pause/play), dock, dock connector to USB cable, USB power adapter, and a cleaning cloth. The iPhone can be charged through the USB connection on your computer or from a wall outlet via the AC adapter. You can bypass the dock in either case; the only advantage of using the dock is that the iPhone stands up and there's an audio line out for connecting to powered speakers.

Before you can use the iPhone, you must select a service plan and register it with AT&T. (This will not be an issue with the phone-less iPod Touch.) The least expensive plan is $60 a month entitling you to 450 minutes (5,000 night and weekend minutes), unlimited data (email and Web), visual voicemail, 200 text messages, rollover minutes, and unlimited mobile-to-mobile usage. Over two years, then, the least expensive plan works out to $1,440 in addition to the initial $399 price of the iPhone. Other plans are available if you need more minutes.

You need iTunes (version 7.3 or later) installed on your Windows or Macintosh computer. Anyone who has synched either an iPod or an Apple TV to iTunes will be familiar with the routine of selectively copying music, videos, podcasts, and photos to an iPhone. The main difference is the iPhone's relatively small capacity. After accounting for its operating system, an "8 GB" iPhone provides about 7.24 GB of flash memory for your content.

The iPhone home screen is a celebration of simplicity: 16 touch-screen icons for launching applications and one hard button for bringing you back. Also visible are the time and dynamic icons indicating battery capacity and cell-phone service and Wi-Fi access. Along the iPhone's edges are a sleep/wake button and a volume rocker for the built-in mono speaker (used by the ringer) or earphones. Neither is labeled. The earphone jack is recessed, making it impossible to use regular iPod buds or most other mini-pin earphones, though you can use the included buds with other devices.

Tapping the settings icon offered me a Wi-Fi option. I wasn't yet connected, so I tapped on it and a list of networks popped up, including my own. I touched it, a checkmark appeared, and I was wirelessly connected to the Internet.

Performance
You get to the iPod functions via one of the home-screen icons. For music, the big advance with the iPhone is touch-controlling the Cover Flow interface first introduced in iTunes and on Apple TV. Turn the iPhone sideways, and the screen changes to a carousel of covers you can flick through. Tap one, and it spins around to reveal the track titles. Touch a song, and it begins to play. Pause, volume, next track, and drag-to-position within the song are similarly managed by touching or sliding your finger on the glass.

Controlling the display at the point of display is intuitive, which is best showcased by looking at pictures, whether slides of your dog or an aerial view of the neighborhood. It all feels so natural, which wasn't how I felt the first time I pushed an onscreen pointer from a deskbound mouse.

You don't get the same sizing flexibility with video as with still pictures. But I was afforded the choice of viewing the motion picture Cars, which I had bought from iTunes, in the movie's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the iPhone fitting three Lightning McQueen magazine covers across via extreme letterboxing on a screen already at 16:9, versus blowing up the picture to contain the center cover in its entirety but cropping off the other two's outermost halves. Either way, the movie looked gorgeous, even if the smaller-than-a-playing-card screen doesn't fill your peripheral vision. There could be ownership issues if a child is watching when the phone rings.

A new addition to iTunes is the ability to create ring tones. Unfortunately, the feature works only with songs purchased through the iTunes Store, and a subset of its inventory at that. You actually pay twice — once to download the song and again to harvest a ring tone of up to 30 seconds from anywhere in the song. You graphically highlight the waveform of the music to audio accompaniment that you want to use, and iTunes crops and syncs it to your iPhone. I chose the bullet-ricocheting and dance beat beginning of The Escape Club's 1988 hit, "Wild, Wild West" instead of one of the 25 ringtones included in the iPhone. For the privilege, I paid a total of $1.98.

One of my favorite activities is looking at YouTube clips, and though Apple still hadn't converted the entire library by late September — I couldn't find my own posting via the iPhone though it's been available via computer for months — it did come through with a clip from a few days earlier of presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani interrupting his speech to the National Rifle Association in order to answer a call from his wife. (No. He wasn't carrying an iPhone.)

The Short Form

Price $399 plus 2-year AT&T contract starting at $59.99 a month / apple.com / 800-692-7753

Snapshot

The iPhone breaks new ground not as a cell phone but as the best iPod to date and as the prototype for the iPod Touch.

Plus

•Intuitive touchscreen interface •Music player enhanced by Cover Flow carousel •Screen image switches to portrait or landscape mode automatically •YouTube streaming

Minus

•Can't place calls via non-AT&T carriers or as a Skype-type phone over Wi-Fi •Doesn't stream Internet radio •Cramped onscreen keyboard •Nonstandard earphone jack •AT&T's EDGE (cellular data network) slow

Key Features

•8-GB flash drive •3.5-in (480 x 320-pixel) touchscreen •Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), EDGE, Bluetooth •Built-in speaker and 2-megapixel camera •Inputs/Outputs: proprietary multi-pin connector to docking station or cable to AC outlet or USB port, earphone jack •4.5 x 2.4 x .46 in; 4.8 oz

It was hard for me to keep my fingers off the screen. Sitting in a café in Brooklyn Heights, I used the onscreen keyboard to punch in the street (sorry, there's no GPS) and I was able to view both a street map and satellite image of our location. Spreading my fingers on the rooftops of row houses, I kept enlarging the view. I pushed it around until the Promenade came into view. Earlier, I had been standing on the actual Promenade using the iPhone to take pictures of the Lower Manhattan skyline. The 2-megapixel camera cannot zoom or capture video. One thing I didn't like was that unlike a hard button that needs pressure, the onscreen shutter goes off whenever a finger strays over it. Still, pictures I didn't quickly erase looked terrific on the high-res screen. Playback of the camera roll can be done with a variety of wipes and dissolves, or you can simply use your fingers to bring on the next image or enlarge the one onscreen. I easily emailed a picture of Prometheus from a fountain-side table in Rockefeller Center within moments of taking it.

While email may not be central to your needs, in my case the iPhone proved a blessing, enabling me to check private email in an office that blocked access through company-owned PCs. I was able to join a neighboring office's Wi-Fi network that the iPhone found, and whenever new mail arrived, my iPhone vibrated.

The iPhone includes the Safari browser for surfing the Internet, and it worked surprising well. Despite the small screen, I was able to magnify any portion of a page by spreading my fingers, and text and graphics quickly became sharp. My major disappointment was the browser's inability to stream Internet radio stations, which would have gone a long way to making up for the fact that Apple, unlike its competitors, has never built FM reception into its MP3 players. That forced me to carry both the iPhone and my battered but dependable Sony FM/AM Sports Walkman.

As for battery life between charges, Apple claims 8 hours of talk time, 250 hours of standby time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback, and 24 hours of audio playback. My own torture test showed that the iPhone was good for between five and six hours of YouTube viewing, which drains the battery via the video display and active Wi-Fi connection.

Carrying the iPhone on the subway and in the office has made me feel very, very good. People stare at my fingers as they glide across the bright, colorful screen. Colleagues at the office ask if they can try it. I haven't felt this cutting-edge since carrying around the original iPod when it was brand new.

Shortly after I started using the iPhone, Apple dropped the price from $599 to $399 and announced it would launch in late September two iPod Touch models: 8 GB, $299; 16 GB, $399. These new iPods exorcise the phone and, naturally, the AT&T contract. But the Wi-Fi connection, Internet browsing, and multi-touch interface remain, along with all of the iPod's audio, video, and slide-show features (minus the camera). In addition, you can now log onto the iTunes Store via Wi-Fi from an iPhone or iPod Touch, stream 30 second samples or pay to download songs, and synch them back to the computer. And in New York and Seattle, you can tap a logo on your screen while waiting for a tall coffee with a flat lid and sample or buy music on the Starbucks menu via the store's Wi-Fi. (Apple says this feature will be available in the San Francisco Bay area starting November 7.)

Checking email is more time-consuming on an iPod Touch, since email clients like the AOL applet are gone, but it can still be done, though only via Wi-Fi since AT&T's EDGE network won't be built in.

If you're a heavy cell-phone user, an Apple iPhone with the monthly AT&T plan is competitive. But if you're like me and use a cell phone sparingly, I expect you'll be more interested in getting your fingers on an iPod Touch.

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