Rabid Richard

Well,

After using the iPhone for a week so far, I just wanted to update you of my findings.

Battery

I was a little worried about the battery to start with - but so far, its all good, my battery has lasted for 26 hours at most, and thats with around 1 hour talk time, and 24-25 hours standby. Overall, I am quite impressed with the battery life of the new iPhone. I thought the battery would last around 5-6 hours tops, but 26 hours total, is quite good, but still, no where near my 72 hour Nokia, but you kind of expect a change in hours when your going from small screen to touch screen. Eh?

iPod

Owning an iPod Touch, I know what touch is like on the iPhone 3G - But I managed to pick up iTrip yesterday, and was using it in my car on the way to and from work, and I have to admit - Its amazing, as in the iPod. The loud speaker on the iPod is a great addition, missed from the iPod Touch, but the sound is no totally great on that.

SMS

I’ve only had the iphone for a week, and the ONLY major thing I’ve had problems with, is the SMS - and not being able to forward messages, sheesh, its a nightmare - I really hope apple support it soon, or I can see them pissing a lot of people off.

3G

I have now come to realize, that o2’s 3G network stinks. Totally, I have traveled all around Kent the last few days, and have rarely managed to pick up a 3G signal that’s above 2 bars - but most of the time, when turning on 3G - I get a “No Signal” message and then it switches back to edge.

I have another phone contact with “Three”, and where-ever I go, I am able to pickup a perfect 3G network - but no such luck with O2 - Its absolutely horrible.

If you live in an area away from major cities, O2’s 3G network is not for you at the moment, and don’t consider buying the iPhone 3G for its 3G speeds, as In Kent, you very rarely get a 3G signal. In fact - The only time I actually get a good 3G signal is driving down the M2, and even that, was only 3 bars of 5.

I have to admit - I’ve not really surfed the net away from a Wifi hotspot, so its not been a great problem, I have my emails downloaded every 30 minutes, and it alerts me to new ones, which is working fine, so no complaints on that yet, but I’m sure more will follow when I actually need to use the Internet out and about.

Here is a preview of the way I have my iPhone set out;

Click the images for a larger preview.

Hey.

Would just like to say a special thanks to Danny Ball, who has just found this very nice feature for both the iPhone 3G and the first gen iPhones.

The feature - Is a screenshot. Yes, thats right, a screenshot of exactly what you see on your iPhone. Here is an example of what I mean;

iPhone Screenshot

Awesome, eh? Well, its also very simple. All you have to do is hold down the power button and the home button at the same time, then let go of them right away. The screen should go white, and then return to normal, your screenshot is then in your “Photos” section.

Enjoy!

Hey guys.

I’ve just had my first iPhone 3G Crash, and from what It seems, its not all that uncommon. All I was doing was surfing the net, and my iPhone totally crashed, the screen was frozen on the google search results and some random bars showed at the bottom, the bars were blue, a few pixels high and around 20px wide.

Holding down the power button did nothing, and I could not tap the screen, even the little “Working” icon at the top stopped going around.

To fix this, I had to hold down the power and the Home button for around 3-4 seconds, the iPhone cuts the power off, and you can then restart it as normal.

I hope they fix this soon, or I hope it was a one off :S

A few days on, I have decided to write a Q&A with the most common questions from people with, and without iPhone 3G’s.

Is the iPhone 3G worth upgrading to from my old iPhone?

Yes, if you live in a 3G area, its a must, and its also a steal at only £99 ($199) - Hell, you can sell your old iPhone on eBay for £120 ($240) if you jailbreak it (Easy!) so really, apart from starting a new 18month contact, you will be better off, with around £20 extra, and a new iPhone with 3G.

Its a must. Really.

How can I tell if the battery is fully charged?

It seems a lot of people are googling this of late and being redirected to my iPhone 3G review, which cannot help you much, so I will make another post about it;

Battery charging is a strange business - Its one of those features that apple could have improved on, the truth is - The only way you can tell if your battery is fully charged is to “Lock” the iPhone (Push the Power Button) and then go to unlock it (Push the Home Button), you will be faced with a “Slide to Unlock” screen - And above that, is a picture of a battery - Its simple really, if the battery is fully green, and not glowing, its fully charged. if the battery is “glowing” that means its still charging.

The other way to tell, is it will be listed on iTunes if you connect up to charge that way, just look next to your iPhone in the iTunes listings.

Hope this helped.

I promised to so many people and I am finally going to commit to that promise - After a struggle with o2 and their activation process - I finally have a working iPhone 3G, and have been using it nearly non-stop for the last 12 hours.

The Look

I never owned an iPhone first gen, but I know someone who did - And I can tell you - I like the plastic back a lot, you can hardly tell its plastic, and the black on the back just makes it look the business.

From what I can tell, the screen is a little wider than the first generation of iPhones, but overall, I feel it looks much sleeker than the old version, much to do with the black back.

The Feel

For anyone that has not, or do not, own an iPhone or iPod Touch, hell, you don’t know what your missing. I used to own an iPod Touch, which I thought was amazing, but now I’ve got the iPhone, I’m even more amazed, the screen is more sensitive, and overall - Wow. The phone feels good.

3G

Okay, lets bite the bullet and get down to what we all want to know - How good is 3G? Well, its bloody amazing. I actually had to test opening the BBC website up with 3G on and then I disabled 3G and used EDGE - The speed was at least 3-4 times faster.

From what I can tell - o2’s 3G coverage is quite good - I was driving all around, country lanes, Motorways, etc, I got nearly full signal all over - I even get 3G in my home area - but one problem, I don’t get it in my house - Which is not a problem, seeing as I have WiFi, if I go to a window, I get full signal. I was in a big building last night and got full 3G, so it must just be my house.

If you are interested in the Internet, and want something that screams rather than shouts - get the 3G, or upgrade to the 3G - its worth it just for that!

GPS

Haha - I can totally say, the GPS is amazing as well - I was using for most the night yesterday, and it was able to pick up what side of the road I was on while driving, and even what window I was looking out of in a large building, other GPS phones I have had, just get the general area - The iPhone 3G actually gets it spot on, and the time it takes to pick up, is extremely quick.

At the same time as setting my iPhone up in my car - I also setup my Garmin SatNav system, and the iPhone picked up the GPS signal around 30 times faster than the Garmin SatNav, which was still searching for satellites after 20 seconds.

The Camera

Now - Never owning a first generation iPhone, I did not really have first hand experience with the iPhone 2MP camera, but I was pleasantly surprised with the iPhone 3G’s camera - it does the job, many people were saying its not usable - well, its very usable, a better resolution would be much better, but still, for a phone, its quite good. After all, if I wanted to go out and take pictures, I would take my camera with me.

To compare the iphones camera to my Nokia, which also has a 2MP camera, I would say its much better - the camera on my Nokia sucks, and always has - The iPhone’s camera is much better in comparison.

The Calculator

Now - Having an iPod Touch, I know about the calculator, but in the new iPhone 3G, apple have made a serious breakthrough in regards to this simple application, now, when you rotate your iPhone, the calculator turns into a scientific calculator, which is really useful.

The Battery

Okay. Now onto the down side. The battery. For the first part of my night, I took the iPhone out with me without the charger, it was fully charged and I was using it most the way, but the life of the battery hit 20% after only 6 hours - Now to be fair, I was surfing the net for awhile, and sending a few SMS’s. But still, that’s low.

On the positive side - it takes hardly any time to charge back up - in about 40 minutes, my iPhone has gone from <20% to >80% via USB. My old Nokia, used to take at least 4 hours to fully charge, this looks like its going to take less than an hour.

UPDATE: After around 50-55 minutes - my iPhone was fully charged

Problems

As with the first Gen of iPhones, the iPhone 3G still lacks the feature to copy and paste - Even my 3 year old Nokia supports copy and paste - What were apple thinking?

Another needed feature is to forward SMS’s, at the moment, due to the lack of copy and paste, the only way to forward an SMS message to someone is to type it out again, which I’m sure you can agree, is usless. I am hoping for a 3rd party app that add’s SMS forwarding to be seen soon.

The built in Safari browser still does not support flash. I thought apple would have picked up on that by now.. Guess not.

App’s

Apples app store is good, really good. I now have a whole page full of downloaded applications, most of which were free, some of which were paid, but totally worth it. This feature was the actual reason I brought an iPhone 3G, as it was a feature that was missing in the first Gen unless you went to jailbreak it.

I will be posting some must buys and must free’s shortly.

Overall

I like the new look for the iPhone, and I have and always will like the feel. I have to admit, the iPhone 3G is so far the best thing I have brought this year, it was well worth its £169 price tag. Anyone that has ever been looking for an iPhone, but could not decide to get one or not, get one now - Don’t listen to all the windows jerks out there saying the Windows phones are better - they are not. This phones advantages and ease of use counters the negative parts of it very well, and after awhile, you forget about them and enjoy. In actual fact - you enjoy from the moment you turn it on.

Anyone with a first Gen iphone - its well worth the upgrade, the faster 3G network, and the GPS make this phone a must have.

I give this phone a 9.5/10

I woke up this morning, expecting my iPhone to be fully active, after the o2 support line said stores would be working on activating the iPhone over night.

What I actually found, was that my iPhone was still showing “No Service”, restarting the iPhone and even resetting it did nothing to help the problem.

I made my way to the o2 shop that I brought the iPhone from - And guess what I was told? It could take up to 5 days to activate all iPhones, but most should be activated within the next 48 hours - Come back next week if yours has still not been activated.

WHAT THE FUCK * 2?

NEXT WEEK? I’m fucking paying for this iPhone from Yesterday, and they are just acting like this is “normal”, well, I can say for sure, its fucking not normal, and if my iPhone is not activated within the next 48 hours, I will expect a free month.

UPDATES:

12th July 2008

2:15pm - Still “No Service”, upon phoning o2 again, they told me it should be activated by the end of today.

3:16pm - Still “No Service”… I’ve had the iPhone for 30 hours now.. How long does it take?

4:27pm - Still waiting… I’ve got to go to work now, so wont be checking it until the early hours of the 13th - 48 hours after I brought the phone… It better be activated.

6:03pm - Finally! After restarting my iPhone, while in a car driving down the M25, my phone activated, and I got 3 text messages from o2, letting me know my account information. PS: I should just say, I was not the person driving the car

6:07pm - “No Service” again, guess they are still having problems.

6:15pm - Active again - Cuts on and off every now and again. But at least I know my number now

6:25pm - Stable iPhone, its not cuttoff since last time at 6:14pm

11:27pm - The iPhone has been stable, and 3G has been fast, I downloaded some song lyrics and downloaded a few more free app’s using 3G. Getting good 3G signal in general.

Review to come tomorrow I’ve been using it all night, and will let you know the details of what I found out.

Sheesh.

After waiting for most the early hours of the morning in queue for an iPhone, and being the first one to walk out the shop with one, there is further problems.

My iPhone is currently stating: “No Service” - And has been for the last 8 hours, since the time I picked it up. I called the phone number provided by O2 for iPhone issues (0870 607 2302) and after being put on hold for 20 minutes, I finally spoke to someone who’s exact words were:

Yes - We are having a few problems with the iPhone and our network at the moment, due to the large demand, the network has slowed down and we are needing to manually process orders that did not correctly go into the System. This will take about 24 hours.

24 HOURS? What the fuck? I waited in queue for over 5 hours, to have to wait over 24 to make a call using my iPhone?

High Demand? What the hell - we KNEW they would sell out on the first day, everyone expected it, apart from O2 it seemed - What a bunch of Twats, they should have seen this coming like the rest of us and prevented it.

Well. I’m now totally pissed off with O2, and will be for the remainder of the day. They refused to do anything about it, and refused to take any of my information - I’m paying for the next 24 hours - and they are giving me fuck all!

PS: Many reports are flying around that the “Searching…” then “No Service” is a problem with the iPhone, and apple/o2 are replacing them. Well, for one, how can they replace them? All stock is fully sold out - and two, its totally false - The “No Service” error is due to O2’s network not being able to handle the new activation procedure for all the iPhones. We are just going to have to wait.

Well,

I thought I would just update you all on how my search for an iPhone 3G is going. After learning that the apple shops will actually be stocking the iPhone tomorrow morning at 8:03am, I have decided that I am going to visit my local apple shop today to see how many they have in stock, the problem being, my local apple shop is in Bluewater. Apple shops initially said they would not be stocking the new iPhone, but have now decided that they will. They will only be able to take on new clients, existing iPhone owners wont be able to upgrade at an apple shop.

I have also decided to check out the towns of: Gillingham, Canterbury and Maidstone for stock levels of the new iPhone, as I might find a store than has more than 20 and I can get there early to pick one up.

After I am back from my visits, of which I am leaving with a friend at about 11am (1 hours 30 minutes away) I will update everyone with another blog entry on my, hopefully, luck in finding a store with lots of stock.

Until a few hours