FYI, there are no longer import restrictions on Sichuan peppercorns. You just need to know where to shop. Going to the Web from your ex-iPhone would help but you could also walk into a Chinese grocer.

Mr Manjoo check out the hot rPhone at

http://www.piratepalooza.com/rphone/

That's r in arrrr, that's right a pirate phone. I haven't seen a return policy so you are on your own there.

And for the rest of you, Jitterbug has just announced an updated phone with a new interphase. They are replacing the "tow" button for a "I've fallen down and can't get up" and added this button at the top: "P.S. I'm not a crackpot".

Peace out.

You'll need another phone if you actually want to talk to anyone. I used AT&T's network for a year. I had regular dropped calls, voice quality was bad enough that friends complained about it, and there were big uncovered areas. And I don't live in a rural area by any stretch.

I wouldn't take an iPhone as a throw-in with the contract if it meant using AT&T again.

Arguably, the best part of your article is about the price of the i-phone. I'm waiting for a $299.99 price W/O the PESKY 2 year contract!

http://OsiSpeaks.com or http://OsiSpeaks.org

The total cost of a cell phone includes both the cost of the phone AND its service plan?

If only the iPhone had voice dialing, it would be worth $300 more? On 6/27 you said the iPhone would change everything. On 7/13 the iPhone is apparently not worth more than $300 because it lacks voice dialing. These are some seriously deep thoughts.

Farhad you badass-- dump that iPhone! (that is, return it with proper receipt for a full refund).

Next thing you know you'll be on a myspace login hunger strike and a blackberry blackout.

Keep it coming Salon, I can't wait to hear what these American iDorks do next.

Pretty dumb article, considering your predetermined goal to return it and apparent bias against Apple. And given all that - your only real bitch is that it is a little too much money for you? (Oh – but if it had voice dialing it would be worth it? great point… uh… not so much.) Fact is: it completely blows away any device that performs any ONE of its capabilities. It has rendered anything with a physical keypad instantly obsolete. Get a zune and a blackberry, tally up the cost and then try and do half the things the iPhone can do 10 times better with a 100 times the style. Sorry to all you jealous Apple hating suckers! You guys make me laugh. How's that windows vista thingy working out for ya?! Pretty quaint.

I also just took back my iPhone - and it's hard to explain why...

Know when you love something SO MUCH, that when you find a flaw you are more disappointed than with something less ordinary that you would normally be more accepting of?

I just couldn't get past:

1). The slow Edge network

2). The no GPS on Google maps (which my Samsung SCH-i730 has and it ROCKS! - shows traffic patterns and I can be somewhere - and hit connect and it tells me where I am)

3). The 8GB capacity

4). No swappable battery plus Apple just announced that after 300 - 400 charges you have to send in your phone to have Apple replace it for $79.00 and a loss of your phone for three days (which I cannot do)

5). No external memory and no swappable SIM (which is why you get GSM in the first place - so you can swap it out in Europe)

6). No compatibility with Microsoft Exchange Server and Active Sync - my perhaps favorite feature on my current PDA the Samsung i730 - even though rich text emails on the iPhone looked incredible and my Gmail worked especially well

7). More of my friends, family and daily calls are on Verizon - or 'In my network'

8). The text/email portion didn’t adjust to landscape mode when turned sideways which would make the keys larger and easier to text

9). The recessed headphone input - rendering my $400 Westone UM2 audiophile headphones obsolete - unless I bought a silly adapter

10). No stereo support via Bluetooth. (OK - now I'm nitpicking, but did I mention the slow Edge network???)

I agree the essay is misleading, since he never intended to keep the phone, but his rationale is silly. If I upgrade my current 3 year old phone to a new device with unlimited data plan, I'd pay the same as the contract on the iPhone. This phone isn't that outrageously expensive -- in the Apple Store lines, plenty of people were calling their loved ones with the past generation of pricy smartphones.

By bailing out after 14 days, Farhad is missing out of the real advantage of this device, the ability to deliver improvements to functionality over software.

While all phones can have software updates, up to now this has been a really difficult process. Using iTunes and Apple's existing infrastructure for pushing out software updates to millions of users on a regular basis, one can take advantage of software fixes without waiting in line at the AT&T store.

And this is perhaps the real revolution that is being missed here -- the iTunes self-activation process essentially makes it unnecessary to endure inattentive, poorly-trained clerks at the AT&T store. If AT&T were to adopt a similar means of activating phones for other devices, they could streamline their retail network while improving service. This device couldn't have been successfully launched by AT&T with the current state of their retail network, and you can believe this successful launch will ripple out to other devices and other carriers. Sure there were initial activation glitches, but could you imagine how painful this would have been if everyone buying the phone had to take it to an AT&T shop for activation?

There are other more subtle ways that Apple is changing business as usual -- most AT&T devices support their storefront MediaMall, and it's not present on the iPhone, to the chagrin of many content providers. It seems that Apple is a bit late to the game here, or thinks that user-generated content will prevail for this phone. However, the fact that they have decoupled this device from the carrier's overpriced, limited, disorganized storefront is a significant shift, even if the phone itself is locked. Content is a huge business for the phone carriers.

No matter what you think about this phone in comparison to other smartphones, it is a remarkable first effort from Apple, and the whole industry should benefit from their fresh take on the device and network services.

Any device of this type entails engineering compromises, but Apple does not make any of these decisions lightly. This is the result of a delicate dance between size, weight, power consumption, and market reality. 3G was the first to go, probably because of power and packaging considerations tempered by the low penetration of 3G service in the US market.

Other missing features, such as voice dialing, likely have been left out for reasons relating to the phone's software architecture and application robustness. Apple has existing voice synthesis and recognition technology, but making it stable in the first version of this phone OS may have been too hard given the release date.

In my book, the most telling event in the lifecycle of this device is going to be that first software update. Will Apple simply patch security holes and fix bugs? Will they add additional features and more customizability? Will they update soon and often? Will the release of Leopard enable new phone features? Will the next revision of iPhone software leverage architectural improvements in the OS X Leopard code base, enabling a stable API for third party development and for the inclusion of more advanced features.

Unfortunately, Farhad Manjoo doesn't think it's worth $300 to know the answers to these questions and share them with his readers. Fortunately there are plenty of technology writers who will pursue this further -- they just aren't on Salon.