Both of those concerns are hog wash spread by Usenet fudsters. The
iPhone battery lasts me all day using it all the time. Just a few
minutes ago I answered a work email using just one handed iPhone touch
typing and driving. I knocked out several long sentences with no
spelling errors because of the Apple software design for the iPhone
keyboard. It took only a couple of minutes to read and reply to an
urgent query.  I would never try that with any other smart phone I
have used to date. For those of us who use it continually the iPhone
keyboard simply works!

I can't understand the losers who can't master such a simple item. I
guess they feel comfortable only with crayons and have never advanced
beyond that.

I now manage ten separate email accounts while out and about with the
iPhone. I love its versatility.

The whole thing is especially valuable to a person like me that gets
industrial oil and chemicals on their hands during the day. It is so
simple to wipe the iPhone off with an alcohol wipe or Windex.

People who live with and fear germ laden keyboards can avoid a common
health issue in spades with the ultra clean iPhone design.

Face it the iPhone is one slick compact internet tablet that slips
into any pocket that also happens to be a cell phone. I wish I had
bought one the day they came out instead of waiting. It has made that
much of a difference in my daily life.

What's the return rate of other phones?

The iPhone actually has good battery life when used as a phone. Those
complaining about battery life probably are using it a lot on WiFi,
which is of course is the reason most people purchase the iPhone in the
first place. It's a web pad with a phone and music player.

As to the "keyboard" the buyers should have known about this. The iPhone
isn't an enterprise device, and wasn't designed for massive amounts of
e-mail or texting.

It's going to have to happen to sell 45 million units. They will have to
have a low-end, inexpensive model for the masses (perhaps still only
2G), a more fully featured model for those that are willing to pay for
things like more memory, a GPS, etc, and perhaps an enterprise model
designed to compete with the Blackberry and other enterprise phones,
hopefully with a real keyboard and support for Office documents. This is
good marketing to change the consumers perspective to "which iPhone do
you want?," rather that making it an iPhone versus other phone decision.

In the U.S. they will have to move away from the sales model of not
subsidizing the phone purchase by requiring a 2 year contract (in other
iPhone countries this is already the case), back to a traditional sales
model.

Their sales problems with the current model are because it's too
expensive for a 2G device, it can't be used by large businesses (in fact
many forbid its use because of security issues), and it lacks some
essential handset features such as voice dialing. These are all issues
that can be solved, in their effort to move the iPhone from a geek
device into the general population.

I know four people with iPhones, but three of them using them without 2G
data, and didn't activate them on AT&T (the fourth is an Apple employee
that does use AT&T). They had them unlocked for around $35 and use them
as a world phone when traveling using a prepaid SIM card (international
or country specific), and a web access device, on Wi-Fi, in the U.S..
When in the U.S. they don't use it as a phone because they aren't
willing to give up Verizon's coverage (no wonder Apple approached
Verizon with the iPhone first!). As a quad-band world-phone, music
player, and web pad, the iPhone is not expensive. It's only when
compared against more fully featured, and more expensive PDA phones that
it falls short.