iPhone 3G Sucks! – A Nut’s First Impression
July 22, 2008 by Ryan Ray
It’s been just over a week since the iPhone 3G launch, the world has started to settle down. Well sort of, the iPhone 3G is still out of stock for both consumers and business customers, new apps are being published every day, and the iPwnage tool is out and being used. So let me tell you about my initial impressions of the iPhone 3G. I had previously owned the original iPhone not long after the day they came out, so I am basing this off of my previous experience. Let’s get started shall we?
Initial Impression
The first thing I noticed is that the new iPhone 3G feels great in my hand(s). It is only .01 millimeter thicker than the original and slightly wider, but it makes a difference and feels great to hold it. Speaking of wider, I actually love the way the screen looks now with a slightly thicker border around it. At first it did feel a little foreign but it’s wonderful after you get used to it. The tapered edges make it look even thinner than the first one, although it is actually thicker like I said by just .01 millimeter. I used to drop my iPhone all the time, but now with the improved plastic case on the back I have yet to have the iPhone 3G slip out of my hands. The screen is still as beautiful as the first one. I haven’t had a bad yellow tint on mine luckily. If you have never used a touch screen before then prepared to be amazed at the screen on the iPhone. There are many, many phones who are trying to copy the beautiful touch screen on the iPhone, but just can’t do it. They can’t do it in either look or funcionality.
The Screen
If you haven’t used the touch keyboard before on the iPhone, then prepare for frustration at first. But after 1 week with this new keyboard you will not want to go back, I promise you. The main thing to learn about typing on the iPhone is that it usually corrects you if you make an error. So say you are trying to type “the” but really you type “yjr,” the iPhone will correct this for you. They key is to not go back and try to edit yourself until you are done with the sentence as I said the iPhone will probably correct any errors you make. If you trust it it makes your typing experience much faster and better. Can you atest to that for me Bruce? Personally I think the choice to have a touch keypad was brilliant. The keyboard can be changed and put out of the way whenever and however they please as it is all done with software. It’s not stuck to certain physical buttons that are fixed in place for FOREVER!
Buttons/Headphone Jack
The new chrome/metal buttons on the side of the phone are a big improvement too. They feel much more solid to me compared to the original ones. The volume buttons are as smooth as they were before, and the ringer switch seems to be harder to flip accidentally. Which could be a good or bad thing depending on what you want it to do. The sleep/wake button is much improved as well. It is very solid, and feels very similar to the By far my favorite thing is the new “normal” headphone jack. It is no longer recessed and I sang hallelujahs when I heard that this was fixed. I do own a 160GB iPod, but I don’t want to carry that around all of the time with my iPhone just to listen to music. Now when I’m in the car I can easily plug it into a tape adapter, or into a stereo at home and listen away! Such a little fix makes a big difference! My overall impression of the iPhone 3G is that it improves on the original design, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
Battery Life
Let’s talk about the battery for a second. In my podunk, hometown there is no 3G access, so obviously I have this turned off. I do have Wifi pretty abundently wherever I go so that is on. I’ve got push turned off and it fetches new emails every 15 minutes, and my brightness is set at halfway and it auto adjusts when it needs to. On the average day I will use the Wifi/EDGE connection for four hours, and my talk time is about an hour. With that said I can just squeeze out about two days. Not too bad at all. Now of course I have yet to go to a 3G area and test it out, but I’m sure someone else can provide you with those stats. There are always ways to squeeze more life out of your battery, or burn it up faster whichever you prefer. Things like the brightness, wifi, 3G, and push settings will drastically change the battery life if you adjust those settings. I’ll keep you updated on my battery tricks and tests.
2.0 Software
Finally let’s go over the 2.0 software. The first big improvement to the software is the exchange server functionality, push email, push contacts, and push calendar. It has no use to me yet, as where I work doesn’t use exchange servers, actually we don’t even have an email server at all, haha! Maybe someday, so get on it Google. Turn Gmail into a push service! I know this feature is huge though to a lot of people including Apple. They can start making inroads into the corporate workplace. The second and probably the most popular feature is 3rd PARTY APPS! So many people have been waiting for this since day one. The app store is a genius creation for the mobile phone world. Never before has there been a central place to collect 3rd party apps. I remember owning a Treo, (A chunk of a device) and I had no idea how to get to the apps, but once I found them how did I install them?! I am no techno idiot, so it couldn’t have been too easy to accomplish.
Thankfully Apple’s software makes it pretty darn simple to download 3rd party apps. Especially since you can download them straight from your iPhone! They automatically sync when you plugin to charge, and even alert you when there are updates to certain apps. Besides the long waiting line to get their apps into the app store, developers are getting treated like royalty for this process. They got a great developing environment on the iPhone, then once in the app store they keep %70 of the profit their app makes. Apple takes %30 to pay for hosting the app. Just think of it like this. Since the app store went live Super Monkey Ball has been downloaded 12553 times at $9.99 per download. If you take Apple’s %30 cut that leaves Sega the creators of Super Monkey Ball with $87,871! I doubt it cost them that much to develop this game so the app store is going to be a big deal.
Again this is just my first week with my iPhone 3G. There are tons of applications to go through and plenty of ways I still have yet to use my iPhone. If you like what you read then subscribe to our RSS feed so you will be notified right away when there is a new post. What are your first thoughts of the iPhone 3G? Do you like it or hate it? Let me know!
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