Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times had some hands on time with the iPhone immediately after Jobs’ Keynote, the notable tech reported spent 45 minutes with the device.

Ihnatko writes “The touch-interface works flawlessly, in terms of both technical function and user interface design. Whatever you want to do — select an album to play, make or take a call, compose and send an e-mail — your first impulse is almost always the correct one.”

He also notes that although the screen only works with direct skin contact it is made of a much more resistant material than that used on the iPod.

‘”So long as you don’t have a pocket full of broken glass, it’ll be OK in there,” I was told.’

Andy Ihnatko goes onto mention the comfort in using the on-screen keyboard, which features impressive smart prediction, correcting most spelling mistakes.

The current most disliked feature of the iPhone is the lacking ability for third parties to install third party software.

“I asked point-blank if third parties would be able to write and distribute iPhone apps and was told, point-blank, no.”

“However, it appears that there’ll be some third-party opportunities. I’m going to take a guess that iPhone software will be distributed the same way as iPod games: no “unsigned” apps will install, but apps will start appearing on the iTunes Store after successfully passing through a mysterious process of Apple certification — one that ensures that they meet a certain standard of quality and won’t, you know, secretly send your credit-card info to Nigeria.”

Also of heightened interest is the OS that the iPhone runs, Apple stated in the Keynote that the iPhone runs OS X but this has been later disputed on many levels.

Andy writes, “The iPhone runs the same OS as the Macintosh. And not in the way that Windows Mobile is, I suppose, technically, if you want to split hairs about it, classified somewhere in the Microsoft Windows phylum.

Nope, everything I’ve learned (both in official briefings and “you and I never spoke, all right?” sort of discussions) says that it truly does run Leopard, the upcoming 10.5 OS that will be released for the Macintosh late in the spring.”

But goes onto the issue of third party software again, “And no, the iPhone’s Widgets aren’t the same as the Mac’s Dashboard widgets. But they do use DashCode and other desktop widget tech, so who knows? I’m really hoping that widgets will be more open to third-party developers than apps.”