I have looked at the screenshots and videos. I can tell from those that text is hard to read and icons are hard to differentiate. iOS has a long history of these gaffes.

Well at least you didn't come into it with any bias.

What makes you think this opinion is biased? They clearly and concisely explain the problem. Can you address it?

I’ll try to address this:

> That's a huge loss to productivity and ease of use

They haven’t used it and haven’t lost any productivity because of it (outside of the time they’ve spent complaining about it online).

I can tell from a photo of a book that uses dark gray ink on light gray paper that that book would be hard to read, without actually having a copy of the book in my hand. As far as I know, there's nothing about the physical display of the iPhone that would make this easier to read in person. If it were 3D (like the Nintendo 3DS), with text popping off the screen, I think that would make it even harder to read.