Well, the dream didnt last as long as i would of liked… For about the last 3 months iv been waiting for the new 3G iPhone to finally hit the shelves, and what can i say, but im dissapointed with the result…. My dream was a gorgeous, stylish and functional phone and what i ended up with was a shiny overpriced mentally handicapped device.
Lets go through my decent into this final conclusion, one step at a time !
Battery… according the the nice people at apple, the life on the new iPhone is supposed to be 300 hours (about 12 days), this might be slightly dreaming… in reality iv had this phone less than 2 weeks now, but every time i look at it, the battery indicator seems to scare me, its never full… after about half hour off the charger and me checking the txt’s on it etc it seems to drop like a stone. OK, i realise the 300 hours is standby, but they say this phone will do 10 hours worth of talk time too, i find that really really really hard to believe !
3G… Well, this is a problem everyone seem to be having, seems that apple, in their rush to get this phone in the [insert silly number here] amount of countries (feel free to go watch the keynote where steve jobs wastes like 4 mins of your life showing you the world turning red, Zzzzzz), they decided to use a 3G chip-set and protocol stack which isnt quite what you’d call ‘WORKING’.
Im a UK resident, hence im restricted in this fair country to the service provider of O2, which for £35 a month will let you have 500 mins, 600 txt’s and UNLIMITED data connection, this was the selling point for me. Being a Microsoft exchange use, and loving the fact that the iphone 2.0 firmware allows seemless exchange intergration, the unlimited data was the ONE reason i would of gone back to O2 after the nightmare which was my last experience.
Unlimited data would be a beautiful thing with the iPhone if you could ever get it. The O2 website lists my area at home as being inside one of their ‘FANTASTIC SIGNAL’ areas, well this a straight lie ! the iPhone signal strenght is virtually non existent and ontop of that, iv yet to actually see the 3G icon appear on the phone except for a brief second when i first turn it on !
The 3G problem is solved so far quite easily though, if i walk into an O2 shop and sit there, i can utilise this feature to my hearts content, through the use of their backoffice boosters, which make demo’s very nice for their commission im sure (here, look a the new iPhone, check out this amazing 3G speed… Yes of course you’ll get this same service anywhere)….
EDGE… This is kinda associated with the 3G problem, it seems that the iPhone loves to try sucking upto the EDGE network when its lacking its native 3G (kinda like its crawling back to 1.1.4 for help), alas this brings up a problem related to the face that EDGE and GPRS have adverse effects on speakers, so my life for the last 2 weeks has consisted of Morse code static in surround sound ! lov it, thinking of doing a remix !
Cleaning… I am, for the most part quite a clean person, i wash, i shower, i have even been known to have the occasional bath (when the petition comes in), but this has no effect what-so-ever on keeping the iphone clean, fingerprints, greese, and every bit of dust that can stick to it are constantly on the screen AND the plastic back ! Granted its quite easy to clean, although i think apple were kidding themselves a little with the ‘tiny’ little cloth they give you in the box !
SLOW… much like a few other thousand iPhone customers, im experiencing the contact waiting of doom scenario, pretty much every-time i attempt to open my contacts, im presented with a white screen for about 5 seconds, then when the contacts do actually arrive, i cant scroll through them for about another 3 seconds… great fun.
On top of the contacts being slow, iv found going into the settings menu seems to take about 6 seconds to load, opening SMS takes about 4 seconds to display and finally placing a call seems to take about 10 seconds to think about doing anything (this may be related to crappy O2 signal, in fact im pretty sure of that!)
Conclusion
Overall it seems the iPhone is experiencing the same bugs that the original one did, which i cant quite understand why, apple spent ages developing 1.1.4 firmware which worked fantastic (at least on my iPod touch) and then decided to go back to 1.0.0 as a base to build 2.0.0… Im not a software engineer, but is it normal to build your new application on the original version of its predecessor.
All these little problems have left me ‘wanting’… what can i say, i was always impressed with my iPod Touch, which was basically the phone with the speaker and mic ripped ou, it was fast and had everything i needed… the iPhone, with its appstore was going to be something even better, a Phone, a digital assistant and a web browsing gadget to end all gadgets… Seems my expectations were too high (at the moment).
NOW FOR THE GOOD NEWS
The phone really rules;
- Text messaging feature is really good, with message tracking it makes having a conversation perfect, just like an msn chat
- The phone app works really well, good clear speaker and easy to dial
- The touch screen is just as good, if not better than the Touch, typing, dialing, browsing all very very easy
- Predictive text sometimes gets annoying, due to its lack of learning ability, but overall its ability to correct even my most retarded spelling mistakes is impressive
- AppStore is quite cool, not too sure about some of the app’s in there, but many of the free ones are quite useful and well worth a quick download
- Exchange integration works perfectly (although apple really need to put the \ key on the screen when your typing your user credentials, exchange not to pleased with DOMAIN/USER and if your like me, a quick glance a the keyboard is all you need to tap /)
- iPod side of things is just as good as ever
- Built in speaker is very impressive, although im sure many people (including me) will eventually tire of the chavs sitting on the bus listening to random crap though it!
Well im sure you get the point. But it comes down to this. At the moment as a new O2 customer im still within my ‘14 day cooling off period’ which means iv got the option to walk back into the store and give it all back for a refund. If i wait past 14 days on the promise that apple are going to release another magic update which will fix all the sluggish processing problems and 3G service AND they don’t, then im stuck with this phone for 18 Months… NO, for now its going back to the shop, looks like me and my k800i are sticking together for a little bit longer !
However, if apple do release some new firmware and the message boards come alive with the sound of happy iPhone users, then ill gladly go walking back into the iPhone camp (especially if some Very nice person manages to unlock the thing, cus then ill be even happier to stay with my current network who will do me a much better contract for half the price, sorry O2, but u just don’t have the people skills to charge that much money 
