iPhone 3G Review

I wrote a review of the original iphone some time ago without having owned one and using articles I read online and off but I’m now happy to say I’m a proud owner and can now present my full and proper review!

I want to get a few things out of the way first:

iPhone Purchase Anecdote:

I had been keeping an eye on the O2.ie forums which had a bit of news on when some more phones were to be available cause they couldn’t be got for love nor money local to me, Sligo Carphone warehouse only got 6 in for example!! So the forums said that there would be a ‘very’ limited amount of phones made available on the O2 website on tuesday 5th august.

At 9:05 am I couldnt see any sign of any so I dawdled around and came back a few mins later and suddenly there they were for sale so I legged it in and bought one. No more then 5 minutes after I got through the checkout process the sales page was unceremoniously deleted from the server and the iphones were sold out!

It wasn’t untill the phone actually arrived that I believed I’d been successful in buying one!

iPhone Arrival Anecdote:

I was able to anxiously keep track of the iphones progress to me via the An Post tracking service so I pretty much new when it would arrive and when the postman approached I hoped on him and demanded my package. When he looked at me dumbly and said there was one in the office for me but that he’d forgotten it, I could have slapped him!

It was friday and I couldn’t wait a whole weekend so a short trip to the post office later and I had it in my possession at last!

iPhone Unwrapping Anecdote:

First off and at no fault of the phone or Apple, the phone arrived minus a few very important things:

1. My authorization form for bringing my Vodafone number to O2 which I had requested on purchase.
2. My O2 phone number!
3. My SIM PIN!..

So I had to call O2 support and have them call out to me the pin, the puk, the phone number and alternative instructions for porting my number. Once I had these I was finally ready to get stuck into my first ever Apple purchase!

iPhone Cons:

I’ll get these out of the way first!

The problems with the iphone 3G have already been well covered so I’ll just list the ones that bothered me here:

1. No Picture messaging.
2. Camera functionality feels rudimentary with absolutely no settings.
3. A little unergonomic – feels like it might slide out of your hand easily.
4. No Video Calling.
5. Didnt pick up my HSDPA/3G signal which I get through my O2 mobile Broadband from the exact same location.
6. The quality of phone calls is not a lot better than vodafone and since this was one of the reasons I decided to move from vodafone, its a little disapointing but obviously not the phones fault, rather where I live – in the wilderness!
7. Slightly sluggish, but I know theres a lot of eye candy goin on!
8. In safari flash content doesn’t work and theres no obvious way of enabling it.

iPhone Pros:

I’ve saved the best till last! Basically the iphone is light years ahead of most phones in design, functionality and user experience and going back to my Sony ericsson after playing with my iphone for a few hours was pretty dissapointing!

Heres what I liked the most:

1. Touch screen of course!
2. The whole look of it which is as I said before so influential to me that I used the theme for my own site! Chrome and black are just great together!
3. The general sound and audio quality of ringtones is excellent.
4. Connectivity and syncing with itunes is great and initial activation is painless.
5. Works straight off with no setup such as time & date, networks, etc..
6. Web browsing is amazing and email is fast.
7. Typing isn’t as bad as I thought for someone with big fingers like me!
8. I love the fact that you can customize it and put buttons wherever you like, even on different screens.
9. Works great on my house wi-fi.
10. Theres some great applications included with the iphone but you can add more. See below…

Standout Feature:

By far the best feature of the iphone for me is the fact that you can download and install additional applications via the phone or itunes. I downloaded several excellent FREE apps including:

• Flashlight – turns your iphone into a torch!
• WordPress – lets me write this blog via the phone!
• Myspace – keep in touch with the myspace gang.
• Twitteriffic – lets you twit.
• Unit Converter – for all your metric/currency conversions.
• Pregnancy Calculater – I need one of these at the min!
• and most impressively, GPS Tracker which lets you accurately follow the location of you and your iphone via a map on the web!!

Basically – GET ONE (if you can!)

Leon.