My iPhone experience

So, would have written this sooner, but was too busy playing with my iPhone…. Just kidding, kinda.

Started waiting in line for the iPhone at the Apple Store in San Francisco’s Marina district on Friday morning at about 6:15 AM.  Was a fun and interesting experience.

First, let me say that Apple really knows how to make customers and events like this feel special, other retailers please take notes:

• [free] Starbucks coffee and pastries for everyone in line
• [free] Smartwater for everyone in line
• Camera crews filming the event and getting everyone hyped up
• Employees on hand to answer questions and pass out necessary info so everyone was ready to go.
• General festive and appreciative atmosphere.

Funny post by GeekSugar about the different types who wait in line.

Lot’s of interesting 3rd party companies promoting their apps or acessories in line too. Some that stood out:

• Invisible Shield case - they had a “bulky case” mascot and had texting games to win a free Invisible Shield case.  I did by texting “How cool am I without a bulky case?” to kwiry with my left hand the fastest amongst a group of folks. (you could send to anyone). For anyone that wants a discount code, use 3GLAUNCH. Still debating whether to use this in addition to or instead of the Incase that I bought. Any thoughts?
• Square Trade - 3rd party warranty - interesting idea, debating it, but key drawback to full coverage (includes accidents & loss) is that it doesn’t cover replacment cost, only purchase cost (subsidized by At&t), so still pretty expensive to replace….Anybody have feedback on SquareTrade?

So a 3.5 hour wait to get into the store didn’t seem long or annoying somehow but fun and exciting.  The  experience in the store was great too:

• Tons of employees activating (maybe 30 at a time)
• Clear process and no lines (line stayed outside)
• Friendly and knowledgeable staff (as usual at Apple stores)
• Interesting difference I noticed about Apple activation vs. pics I saw of At&t stores and past experience at wireless store is that the employees used laptops and stood next to you vs. at At&t where they stood behind a counter and you couldn’t see anything…..

And then came the iBrick…. I’m sure you’ve all heard about or experienced the activation issues Apple was having on Friday.  Basically, the iTunes activation server got overloaded which meant that most people couldn’t complet the activation in-store.  For me, it meant that my old phone, a Verizon Blackberry 8830, was deactivated and my iPhone wasn’t working. So that left me with no phone, no voice mail, SMS, etc…..  I would have expected myself to be furious.  It turns out that the whole Apple experience was so good otherwise that I didn’t mind all that much. I went to the office and tried every once in a while (ok, repeatedly) to connect to the iTunes server and got it to work after a couple of hours.

Finally, the iPhone worked! Then it was time to learn all the new tricks on how to use it, explore, etc. So far, here are my conclusions:

Pros:

• Amazing interface to browse lists like e-mails or things like pictures, the whole “flicking” motion is pretty awesome
• Some great third party apps, some that come to mind are Facebook, Google, Apple’s Remote, Yelp, NYTimes and Pandora.  My favorite pointless app is RotaryDialer, which is exactly what it sounds like….
• GPS is a welcome addition and can be used by 3rd party apps in addition to built-in Google Maps, photos, etc.
• Photos - my first phone with a camera, believe it or not.  Here’s my first photo kwiry. While resolution is not great, cool to have something! And integrates well into native and 3rd party apps.
• HTML email! - wow, this is a bigger deal than I thought, enables me to process my email so much more quickly and easily than looking at HTML code on a blackberry…..
• Web browsing - definitely better than anything else I’ve tried, but note the cons below…..
• Screen resolution for viewing anything!
• Gestures - very cool, zoom in/out, etc.
• Physical switch on phone to turn off ringer/sound alerts, this is very useful.

Cons:

• Battery life - as others have mentioned, battery life is defintiely dissapointing so far. Lots of info including this post by Gizmodo on how to conserve battery life, but these are measures I expect to take when my battery is on its last legs, not the first week I own a phone?  Good news is that the ipod dock/chargers are appearing on planes and elsewhere and the portable charger is tiny, but still this is not promising….
• 3G &Wifi speeds - still doesn’t seem very fast.  Compared to Edge certainly better, but still seems so slow compared to broadband…..  Assume this is processing power (at least for wifi)
• Poor 3G coverage - I discounted these criticisms before I bought the phone thinking that it was largely a metro area vs. rural area thing, but even in San Francisco, 3G coverage has been very spotty
• Keyboard is definitely hard to get used-to - we’ll see how this changes over time, but so far, it’s been tough to master. Just learned the art of rejecting suggested word completions….
• No search for email? or for the device in general? This one was mind boggling and right up there with no copy/paste.
• No push email for GMAIL
• No calendar synch/contacts synch except through MobileMe or Exchange (Gmail has calendar synch option for blackberry)
• Slow to load applications/switch applications - this was another surprising one.
• Bluetooth - switch for bluetooth on/off (along with wifi & 3G) is buried deep in menus.

Overall: Even with all of those flaws, I am an iPhone fanboy and definitely glad I bought one.  That said, I can now reaffirm that kwiry is still a welcome and necessary tool even with the best web-browsing device out there.  This is for all the same reasons I mentioned here.  Interested to hear what others think of the iPhone in the comments!