iPhone 3G – fail
Posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 7:19 pm. #
So, despite my desperate claims to the contrary, I bought an iPhone 3G the day it came out. (Thanks, in particular, to my colleague Martin for the reply to my Twitter asking where I could buy one at 6.00pm).
Why? Well, because £99 didn’t seem a bad deal for a new phone; and because I felt the 3G access and integral GPS would be useful additions. And because I noticed that the special £99 upgrade was only valid until October, so I felt it made sense to upgrade. And finally, because I liked the bragging rights.
Much has been written about the botched launch. In the UK, Apple stores were unable to use O2′s web-based activation system because it required, er, Internet Explorer. The O2 credit-checking system fell over, causing huge queues. Indeed, visiting my local Carphone Warehouse at 8.30am, I found it had shut instead of irritating potential purchasers. The launch didn’t bode well.
But – what are my first impressions of the iPhone 3G?
1. Good: the ugrade procedure was painless. Plug it in, and it asked me whether I was upgrading. I said yes. It silently copied everything over to the new iPhone 3G – settings, music, wallpaper, photos, the lot.
2. Fail: the iPhone 3G doesn’t come with a dock, unlike the original.
3. Fail: the dock for the original iPhone does not fit the new one – the new iPhone is slightly wider. This is damn annoying, Apple. More annoying: the Apple store has sold out of the new ones.
4. Fail: it feels cheaper. Mostly, this the plastic back, which has a cheap-looking printed Apple logo on it (rather the nice inset metal one on the metal back of the iPhone).
5. Fail: its bulging back means that you can’t stick it on a table and type on it – it now rocks and won’t stay still. Very annoying.
6. Fail: 3G actually doesn’t appear to make much difference. Downloads aren’t really much faster; and because the phone likes 3G cellsites over EDGE cellsites, that means that at home I now get the weak 3G cellsite with only one bar, instead of the full 5-bar EDGE cellsite. And given that my phone’s stuck on my home wifi, that’s doubly annoying.
7. Good: there are some design tweaks. Notably, there’s a visible piece of rubber between the glass front and the metal casing, enabling (one would assume) less glass breakages from dropping it. And the little buttons (mute and volume) are rather nicer, made from nice shiny metal.
8. Fail: the annoying inset headphone socket is now no longer inset. This means that leaving the phone in your pocket with headphones plugged in will now flex the circuit-board and the headphone socket, instead of being protected with a big amount of metal. (There really is no pleasing me, is there?)
9. Fail: the new operating system is notably more sluggish than the original, sprightly, v1. Hitting ‘contacts’ or ‘SMS’ makes me wait a good five seconds or so before the phone wakes up. And there’s at least one bug with the ‘delete’ key, which appears to go mad and delete great swathes of text.
10. Good: audio quality on calls is notably improved.
11. Fail: the last.fm app doesn’t monitor what’s playing (unlike the jailbreak MobileScrobbler version).
12. Fail: the wifi connections for BT Openzone and The Cloud need resetting, which isn’t entirely obvious if you’re using wifi to check your email.
13. Fail: the iPhone now performs a backup every single time you connect it to iTunes, making quick synchs a thing of the past.
Reluctantly therefore, I now pronounce the iPhone 3G, as an upgrade, a big steaming pile of fail.
Sorry, Steve.
I got an iPod Touch because I wanted the iphone features and didn’t want to move to a O2 priceplan, wanted to stay on my T-Mobile.
Well, well, well.
Seems I did the right thing by hanging on to my v1 then! The 2.0 software does have some niggly things, particularly the momentary pause when going for a contact or SMS, but these are outweighed by the excellent new features. I would rather have this in return for the ability to search contacts for example and I am sure I will learn to live with it.
Disappointing news about the 3g speed though. Have others experienced the same thing?
And what about the GPS? I must admit that the geo-location in the maps app has improved enormously on the v1 even without the GPS.
Of course the new version is going to be less classy than v1, that’s what makes it so much cheaper. What a shame I can’t get a hardware upgrade in my v1 body – but you can’t have everything, and I’m still going to get one soon…