NPR: Walt Mossberg opines on the Apple iPhone

Wall Street Journal tech power broker Walt Mossberg appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation to discuss Apple's iPhone. You can listen to the program via NPR's RealAudio link, or just read my brief summary here.

-Merging of phone, iPod and Internet device is what's interesting about iPhone
-iPhone screen has the "real estate and resolution" to make it look like a Macintosh. It makes his brand-new Treo seem "primitive" by comparison.
-It will be hard to determine realistic battery life until he thoroughly tests the product.
-That fact that it runs on a "subset" of MacOSX makes it very interesting.
-If you take the iPhone overseas you can bypass the Cingular-only feature, but not all features will work.
-It's very expensive. It's the BMW or Lexus of cell phones. It's probably only the first of a series of iPhones. There will be a range of prices, but for the next year or two it will be a premium product.
-The new touchscreen technology is pretty good after his 15-minute test, but he doesn't know if it would get annoying after a longer test.
-The EDGE network, which iPhone uses, is a very slow network. But that's mediated by the fact that the iPhone also has faster wifi capability.