iphone

Just a few more observations of my iPhone 3G.

Don’t ditch your camera. I was hoping to reduce the amount of gadgets I carry around using the built-in iPhone camera instead of a regular digital camera. Nope. While the iPhone camera is okay at best, it can’t beat a digital camera. The iPhone camera is low resolution (as expected), slow, and has no image stabilization. For close by, stationary subjects who are posing, the iPhone camera takes decent shots. Forget it for shots on the go.

Charge the battery all the time. Yeah, you can go without charging the phone every day, but you probably won’t have enough juice to last you the next day. If you typically surf the web on 3G and pass a lot of data, having a full battery is peace of mind.

Significant others get iPhone 2G hand-me-downs. The original iPhone still rocks, but I’ve now heard of a few examples where new iPhone 3Gs were bought and significant others inherited the replaced 2G models.

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After one week of having an iPhone, here are some of my observations.

The iPhone is not a phone. I’ve made a few voice calls on it, but I hardly use it as a phone. Mobile access to data has been my playing ground.

The iPhone App Store changes everything. Adding new applications keeps expanding the role and usefulness of the iPhone. The App Store is also available over the cell service so you can access it at anytime. Initially, I thought you had to download iPhone apps to your computer then sync your iPhone to install the apps. Nope. You can directly install apps over the air.

Location, location, location. With a built-in GPS pinpointing your location, many apps take advantage of this and correlate your location with your data. Google Maps has that neato fly in sequence showing where you are. Services like loopt.com show the locations of your friends. Even Twitter tweets can be mapped to your location.

MobileMe sync. This actually works. When I first got my iPhone, I had a busy day and didn’t get a chance to sync it with my Mac. Yet, all my contacts were already there! This info was pushed to my phone in the background by the MobileMe service.

Battery life. The first day, I was constantly on the iPhone, pulling in data over Wi-Fi or the 3G network. This ran down my battery by the end of the day. I can see charging the iPhone daily or at least every other day.

Wi-Fi access. I like the way the iPhone finds Wi-Fi networks and prompts you to join these networks. Going Wi-Fi saves battery life and gets better speeds than 3G. When you return to a location where you previously joined its Wi-Fi network, the iPhone automatically switches over without needing to ask you.

No iPhone unboxing jollies at AT&T. I don’t know about you, but opening up and unboxing an Apple product is always an experience. Weird, but true with the Internet littered with Apple “unboxing” pictures and videos. Getting an iPhone from AT&T robs you of that experience however. Since you need to now activate the phone upon purchase, the iPhone box must be opened at the store (both at AT&T and Apple). While the Apple Stores let you unbox your iPhone, at AT&T, the sales clerk disrobes your iPhone for you. 🙁

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After sitting out the first wave of iPhone mania and thanks to the great donations by Kim and Co, Coco Bean, and even Wayne’s World, I finally succumbed and joined the iPhone family.

I headed to the Windward AT&T store on Friday morning after dropping off the van for servicing right across the street. At 7am, there was already a long line. Someone counted and said we were in the 60s. AT&T employees, Drake and John, came by and explained the “rules” – seven employees working in the store, limited number of customers allowed in, about 15 minutes per transaction. Then the waiting began…

It started to drizzle, but the line was under covering. Drake came by with water a few times but wouldn’t reveal how many iPhones were available citing the information was proprietary to AT&T. Finally he did come around and counted people notifying some towards the back of the line that their odds of getting an iPhone were poor.

The 16-gig models ran out first, black then white. When my spot in line came near the store, security told the line it had to move away from the other store entrances. We moved out from the shaded covering into the hot sun. And let me say business at the other stores was slow anyways, so why make everyone uncomfortable for the business that is doing a lot of business?

Anyways after three hours in line, I got to the front where John did the pre-purchase work filling out forms with service plan, accessories, etc. He got me to go higher on everything, but at the cashier’s desk, I was able to scale back my bill. And hey, there is a 15% federal discount on monthly bills (not on the cost of the iPhone).

At long last, here it is.

There was no way I was going to one of the Apple Stores for this iPhone release. I figured it would be a madhouse. And it was according to Ryan’s pictures.

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