My review of my iPhone 3G

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hf1khal,viewfly, maybe I use my task and/or To-Do list differently from you. Some line items contain descriptions, next steps etc, more like a project planning. I wouldn't want to clutter up my calendar with so much information. I also use notes a lot & this doesn't synch either.

I was with two iPhone owners at the same table last night, interestingly they had been talked out of the upgrade by the Apple Store claiming the only advantage would be data speed & GPS neither of which they cared about.

I found this rather irresponsible & ignorant on the part of the store; they kept borrowing my Treo to make calls, another person with the SLM had no problems receiving calls.

I did try to tell them that an upgrade would help the reception situation based on what you two had said, but I don't think I got through.

Looking forward to more reviews.

 

I've been told that one of the things Apple improved with the 3G version is the antenna, resulting in better reception even in the absence of the 3G signal.

 

I'm like hf1khal and viewfly. I prefer to use the calendar for everything instead of Tasks or To-Do lists. I even stopped using the Alarm Clock in my V9 in favor of the Calendar which is much more flexible. Looking forward to join you guys on the iPhone bandwagon in a few weeks or whenever stock replenishes. I'm not in a rush since I'm waiting for the jailbreaking tools to become full featured and relatively bug free.

 

Yeah, normally I'm one of the guys that waits--usually for the price to go down. But considering I'd been out of my VZW contract for a year and the price was $199, I wanted to be one of the early guys for once. Of course all the guys with 2G iPhones are like, "Hmmph, I've had an iPhone for a year!"

 

I have to say I've been impressed with how well the first iPhone (at least mine anyway) holds on to a signal. I haven't had a dropped call yet on it. Though when the signal is low, I get the voice break-up, but calls haven't dropped, especially since T-Mobile's signal is marginal where I live.

I recently added a third party add-on where instead of the signal meter, I have the AT&T globe. The blue lines in the globe color in the better the signal. When there's no signal, you see a globe with faded lines. It's pretty cool. I got this from Cydia, which was put on my phone when I unlocked it from iLiberty.

 

I used to work in an office building with a problematic reception, there were several cubes with very low signal. We ran a few tests side-by-side with a number of different phones. Nokia 6820 & iPhone would not be able to hold on to it, while Nokia 3100, 6131, 6230 and SE K850i all passed. Unfortunately, can't do a side-by-side between iPhone and iPhone 3G as I'm no longer working there

 

Fortunately, most of the L.A. area I'm in has good to excellent reception for T-Mobile, so I've yet to run into a problem with reception on the iPhone. So far so good with the phone.

 

LOL, strange as it may sound, T-Mobile is the only carrier with decent signal in that office. All our troubles started when the roaming agreement between AT&T and T-Mobile got dissolved, until then we were camping on T-Mobile

 

Thanks, and by the way, I am with you when it comes to about experiencing the issues. So far (knock on wood) all has been good and can't wait to use on my trip early next month

 

Hmm that is weird, I have been actualy doing that on many occasions and usingit to mark certain points. I go back and forth between the 3 options with the Droped Pin. Try this, go to settings, general and shutoff location services. then to a reset (hold the home key down and press the the off button untill the white Apple appears then let go). Once it reboots, go to Maps and it will ask you for the location service to be turned on and say OK and try it at that point. Also, check the firmware version (settings, General, About and it will be the 7th entry) that you have, it it is not the version of 5A347, then I would advise that you upgrade. Connecting to itunes will tell you that you are up to date but in reality you are not and to get the update, click on the restore button and that will download and update the firmware. Let me know if any of the above helped.

 

Sometimes speed tests are affected by the networks in between you and their server. I just tested iphonespeedtest.com, (the one that you say always gives the same number ~ 400kbps) and I got 1599kbps from my computer. But even from my laptop using the 3G card I always get somewhere between 350kbps and 500kbps. Weird.

 

Because Apple designed the iPhone to run only one application at a time. So you need to close safari before you can get into mail and viceversa. They claim that allowing more than one app at a time, can open the potential for OS instability. They would need to build an interface to switch between apps, like a taskbar or some other way, which will take some screen space. So either way, there's a price to pay and Apple elected to have you press the Home button a lot of times.

 

I should be getting my Black 16GB iPhone tommorow, FINALLY!!! After ordering it 10 days ago, although at&t's Direct Fufillment is getting faster, I'm #7 in my queue for my store. Hoping to pick it up tommorow morning.

 

I believe it is something similar to how Android will handle memory management. When you switch from one app to another, the app will save its current state so that the next time you open it, it opens up where it left off.

Of course, there are some apps that are allowed to run in the background, but that privilege is only allowed to the phone and the ipod apps because Apple feels those are essential apps. Everything else is treated as non-essential. If Apple wanted to have several apps run at the same time, I think it would be nice if they implemented task switching by simply holding the "Home" key which would pop up a small list showing the apps running and then you could touch to select the one you want. I think that would be a clean and simple way to do it without any side effects, like a taskbar that takes screen space, or adding another hardware button. Frankly, I don't see Apple adding another button to the iPhone.

 

software 2.0.1 is released, run the update in itunes. So far the signal is a bit better, responsivness is also better. Less lag when opening contacts and so on. Also Safari flips faster to landscape mode and vice versa. Lets see if this makes a diference on battery life too.

 

Adding a bar to the same level of reception doesn't mean signal is a bit better. It just looks better to calm complaints.

 

To be honest I agree with you. I still have not been able to test teh hand off between 3G and Normal as that has caused dropped calls. But I can say at least it makes it even with teh Tilt and V9 when it comes to signal bars. Now here is the best that I can say about this phone, with no bars showing on my phone when in a stand still situation and I go a call which was going for 30 minutes and the call was completed with no issues what so ever, well lets put it this way, once in a call the bars jump dramaticaly to almost full. I take this bar reporting thing as part of the sleep function in the iphone and in all honesty it never bothered me as long as my calls were clear (which they were all the time). What mattters the ost is they fixed the lag when it comes to the contacts which was pretty long for me (as I have all my direct business contacts in there and they total over 600 with mulitpple numbers for each). Now in one second the phone is redy for searching the contacts.

 

From playing with a couple of iPhones, it seems that anything Safari's working on will continue to work in the background. I especially noticed this in google maps - Safari would continue to load maps and get a GPS lock while I was in other programs. Bobolito mentioned that not all apps may be allowed to run in the background, but Safari is the one that you'd probably want to keep going.

Also from my experiments with friends' phones, indoor 3g reception isn't as good, especially when in large complexes such as university medical centers (purely hypothetical, of course).

From a prospective iphone buyer (contract expires in October), thanks to all for this very informative thread!