How do you like your iPhone?
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There is no doubt the Apple iPhone offers one of the most fun, sexiest, intuitive, and easy to use interfaces ever seen on a mobile device. But, is it really worth getting? Let’s get into that a little later. Right now here are the problems I am noticing on the device and I’m wondering if any of you are experiencing these issues too. Mind you all in all I activated 5 iPhones and we compared a lot of them, so the list below applies generally to every handset, not a malfunctioning one unless noted.
- When talking on the phone loudly, you can hear your voice "distorting".
I secretly kind of wish the iPhone was on the "Can you hear me now" network. Almost. - Yahoo!’s "push" email really does not work well, and definitely is not "push". Can’t we get some Exchange love here? Sure it’s supposedly coming soon, but can’t a guy just sync his darn contacts and all that fun business stuff?
- Please for the love of everything holy, can we get a "Reply-To" field so we change the reply address?
- The SMS and email alerts are so quiet that I can barely hear them in a quiet room. Really disappointing, with no way to increase that volume.
- This happened on one of the iPhones, but not really on my current one, yet I thought I’d mention it anyway…When the device is "sleeping" you sometimes miss calls. This is because the network indicator will show 1 bar, or "No Service", then when you unlock it, the bars jump up.
- The first iPhone I got would let me use all the functions of the phone, except it would not let me activate it in iTunes. Precisely the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen. A long call to tech support yielded no results and I ended up returning it. When connected to iTunes, instead of the activation screen, it would let me see the iPhone tab, copy music, sync contacts, etc. All the things you are able to do when the phone is activated.
- There are so many issues with the email program. For instance, you can’t mark all of them as "Read", you also can’t delete more than one at a time. To add insult to injury, there isn’t an "Empty Trash" option. Look forward to deleting all those emails you just deleted painstakingly one by one, again.
- The activation system is not at all setup for AT&T "legacy" customers. It just tells you that more information is required, and leaves you to die in pain waiting. What we ended up doing is migrating the "Blue" account to an "Orange" account, cancelled the pending activation, and went through again. That time it worked. AT&T reps in stores for the most part know this, and that is why they ask questions, but in all honestly most of the phones are being sold at Apple stores.
- My battery life is definitely suspect.
All in all, I personally love the phone. Shortcomings aside, it really is easy to use, and enables the user to get things done. Assuming that’s not real, heavy, hardcore email. The lack of a file system doesn’t bother me that much, but saving pictures to memory from emails, or the web would have been nice. And the whole "Web 2.0" applications talk, really sucks. Except for JiveTalk, but I’m not supposed to mention that. Maybe you guys have trouble using some applications that were designed for the iPhone like the IM program or whatever. When you scroll, the whole window scrolls and you can’t see more than one page, right? Wrong. Just use two fingers to scroll, exactly like a MacBook baby! That is about it. Again, I’d love to know what everyone thinks of the device, and what, if any, issues your having. On a side note, one of the reasons why AT&T stores got so few units, and were trumped by Apple stores, is because of the commission. AT&T reps make money when you activate an iPhone. What happens at the Apple store? Nothing. That whole commision goes right to Apple and AT&T. So genius. Hit us up!
UPDATE: Meebo.com officially works now. They added a "Go" button!
Finally people are beginning to see that the iPhone is nothing but an eye-candy device, very expensive candy i might add..
But this is to be expected with a first gen handset. I’ll get the second version if they fix these problems.
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I thought the purpose of this post was for iPhone owners to discuss their iPhones? You blackberry zombies can go back to ironing your Dockers now. Why do you assume iPhone is trying to be anything like a blackberry? Would you also assume that Cooper Minis are trying to compete with Jeep Wranglers just because they both have four wheels and drive on the road? Blackberry OBVIOUSLY does what it does very well. iPhone is intended for a whole different kind of user experience and owner. Please go away now. You guys are the biggest downers!!
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Apple needs to come out with a device that is more of a phone, cut the screen in 2/3 and add at least a keypad doesn’t have to be QWERTY, but come on, this phone will not change the industry, 700,000 people purchase this? There are over 100,000,000 cell phone subscribers, and over 500,000,000 cell phones, they had MP3 players on phones for some time now. I would say the motorola RAZR changed the industry of CELL PHONES. the iphone is just another device with a company that is EXCELLENT at marketing its products
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HTC KRAISER BB 9xxx
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dsm,
I doubt highly that the krzr sold nearly this many units in its first few days! People see the innovation in the iPhone and they are buying as a result. And this isn’t because they think it has some huge feature no other phone has. Its because of the simplicty and elegance that apple provides.
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It is really the best phone/work tool I have ever used. Its not a toy, its a tool that makes my day on the road much more productive.
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Wow… To all those who slammed my last post with a minus eight rating, let me elaborate on some things. I have used a blackberry since the RIM 957 that ran on Mobiltex. I loved my BB Curve and have been a faithful user of the BB as a private/BIS customer. I don’t need the network/exchange support personally. Though the Iphone does not push my email, getting it every 15 minutes is OK in my profession.
While In understand people dis Apple as just a marketing juggernaut, the performance of the phone is not static to be sure. The software and features will fundamentally change, as OS updates and 3rd party apps appear. The BB is a great device and has given me years of service.
However, most users who are not in a hardcore arena of business competition will appreciate the interface, usability and features. This is a great smartphone for many business and personal users-but it is not for everyone. Quit hating and attacking Apple as smoke and mirrors. If their devices were such crap, people would not buy them over and over. Apple people are not that bad of “Lemmings” or prone to stupidity. After 2 days, the email and other apps are all working well.
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People love to bitch, period. Anyone who uses a Windows Mobile phone totally needs to just shut the fuck up. Those phones constantly crash, and EVDO on a phone with a shitty web browser is pointless. What good is it if it won’t load a complete web page without hosing. People love to hate Apple and that’s what you see. The iPhone is truely a revolutionary device. Oh, and if you think I’m some kind of fanboy…I CHOSE to run a Windows Mobile for my work phone…so I do have extensive experience using this operating system.
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OK, I’ve been up and running on my iPhone as a legacy user from Cingular since Saturday.
Coverage on GSM is great.
I was at Golden Gate Park and SF Zoo Monday throughout the day, and EDGE sucked…but this was during the supposed outage. Later though, at Fisherman’s still EDGE crawled…maybe I’ve been too spolied with my Treo with HSDPA hack.
ON a similar note, I have been lucky with WIFI coverage, although it doesn’t always want to connect or find WIFI spots.
Phone itself it great. Works fine for calls…contacts popped over…Bluetooth recognized my Jawbone…seamless.
Best IPOD ever is right. Just wish a 64 GB version or 128 GF NAND was commercially viable…but when it is, I’ll upgrade. (Please Xmas????)
BG you’re spot on about the email problems…deleting one by one…reply to…email needs some work…soon…Jobs or Jobs underlings…are you listening?!?!?!?!
Still the best phone I’ve used…a work of art…beautiful Ipod interface…surfing on WIFI is a viable option…worth the money.
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1. Wi-Fi connectivity to various routers is being widely reported as flawed with regards to DNS configurations. This has been reported for Belkin, Linksys, and D-Link routers (not all but a lot) where DHCP (perhaps just over WEP) is pulling the local IP of the router (as it should) and the iPhone is unable to translate across this private IP address. To resolve, you have to configure the Wi-Fi DHCP connection’s DNS to that of your ISP’s primary DNS address (usually found in the admin interface for the router).
2 - VPN connectivity is absolutely HORRID. From experiences with BG’s iPhone and now my own, this is a pathetic, at best, implementation of PPTP and LT2P. Oh, and best of all, I’ve yet to come across many persons who can actually get traffic to flow through the tunnel once connected (which takes MINUTES after it actually authenticates). Authentication was a b*tch to pass, as well. The lack of a definitive ‘cancel’ button when it’s connecting also bothers me quite a bit.
There are a LOT of bugs in these two aspects of the networking on the iPhone.
Aside from that, the only other issues I’ve found, thus far, are the sluggishness of directional orientation changing from normal to widescreen and back.
And as BG mentioned, battery life is DEFINITELY suspect. One hour on Wi-Fi and trying to configure VPN and my battery drained 50% without surfing or anything.
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interesting comments on battery life. It is possible you have a defective unit I think. I’ve gone two days if constant tinkering and surfing via wifi, and have yet to see less than 75% at the end of the day. incredibly good compared to my old 8525 which barely made it through the day with low usage!
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no cut copy paste? From the guy who basically invented that…
Amazing they left that out. I’m gonna wait for a later version.
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I had absolutely no problems at all. I downloaded iTunes 7.3, set the phone in the cradle and about 5 - 10 minutes later all of my music, contacts and calendar were ready to go.
Everyone who complains about push email and exchange should probably get blackberrys. Don’t list that as a “problem” when a majority of people don’t need it.
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I am enjoying my iPhone more each day, however I do have one pet peeve: I notice in Safari I am not able scroll within boxes. For instance, I went to iPhone availability page and when I clicked on California stores, only the first 15 or so appeared and I was unable to scroll through all the locations. Another feature I would like to see added to Safari is arrow keys (though I assume the magnifying glass is supposed to function similarly).
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Well, sorry for the multiple posts, but I have spent some time with mine now and have several observations that might help.
Stability: The phone has locked up once on me (most forums seem to say this is a memory buffer issue). My music would quit playing after 2-3 seconds and the phone would lock itself. After poking around some troubleshooting sites, I decided to reset the phone. Rebooting itself was fairly painless and had no after effects. The OS seems fairly stable, though it is not without some bugs of course.
Reception: As a long-time ATT-Cingy-ATT Again customer, I can say that the phone’s reception is above-average in fringe areas. The phone really does hold signal well for a PDA/Smartphone.
Email: As far as the email app, I agree with everyone’s comments about versatility and functionality improvements that need to occur to make the thing truly as useful or more useful than other smartphones with real email support. Obviously, not having attachment support in email is a bummer. Also, the lack of one “big inbox” for all accounts is a bit of a pain. The HTML email rendering is excellent overall.
SMS: The only way i can find to send the same SMS to multiple people is through creating a group for those people (TUAW has similar experiences documented). That is a disappointment for me since I send multiple people the same texts often. Others might find that to be no big deal. I hope that gets rectification with similar email issues. Calling a contact directly from the SMS application would also be a nice addition.
Applications: We need some office applications and some type of file storage/system. One has to wonder if the association of Apple and Google will make these office applications the standard Microsoft Office apps in some form or some of the Google office-like products. That will be interesting to see.
In the end, it is an excellent device and has replaced my Blackberry, after years of faithful use. While I do tend to like Apple Products, the BB’s have been great. The simplicity of the OS for both is welcome, despite some limitations. The IPhone is exceptional-whether you like Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry, Symbian or whatever else. It delivers advanced features to the masses and the advanced users alike, and I’m sure its simple, yet effective interface will only continue to improve with updates to the OS and the emergence of more and improved applications. Its an 8.5 out of 10. With some minor tweaks to the OS and applications and greater memory capacity, it could be a 9 out of 10-especially if they roll out 3G in this model (secretly I hope!?) or in another version. You can hate all you want, but it is the best media and web phone out there, hands down!
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Former blackberry user also agrees the iPhone is a monstrous beast!
I have already gotten some folder sync’ing to happen via enterprise… just waiting for apple to fire out activesync support or my IT guy to figure out how to enable imap push.
The one thing nobody mentions in reviews is that the iPhone hauls ASS… like big time. Having used high tech convergence devices for years (p800, p910, treo 650, K750, Samsung Blackjack, BB Pearl) the phone just multitasks in a league of its own.
You can go from playing full-screen video to the home screen in an INSTANT… with no lag/chop/lockup.
The keyboard works fine with thumbs, it just takes a day of practice and a little faith in the autocomplete… people who bash it are over 45 years old or technological neophytes.
Give the platform some time to evolve… friggen symbian, windows mobile, and palm os have been around for years and years and boast only a fraction of the launch innovation apple demonstrated.
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Yea, so I thought I would share this tid-bit of information that may/may not be helpful to you if you want an iPhone and NOT a 2 year contract.
Basically you buy one at retail price at the ATT store.
You: “yes I’d like an 8gb iphone for a present *ahem to myself ahem. no no, I do not need to do a credit check or to give you any of my personal info.”
store: “that will be $645″
You get home and activate the phone on itunes with all your real info EXCEPT your social. Typo that which will send it to AR. Since iTunes cannot verify your credit it will give you the prepaid option.
ATT tries to keep that whole prepaid thing very hush hush.
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The motorola RAZR has sold over 50 million units in 2 years, the iphone has sold over 700,000 in the first weekend, it would seem that the iphone would do better in the long run, but the iphone sales will decrease, the razr phone increased rapidly over those two years, the iphone will go down, all of the people that wanted it went to go get it.
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dsm,
all the people that want it do not already have it, watch the numbers. Also it will slow more than the razor because the prices on the razor went down over time. Apple will not drop their prices, they will stay the same until a new model is released, its their policy with all their hardware. You wont find iphone’s in stores for sale for $49 in two years like you do with razors.
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Does anyone try to send an international SMS?? I does not work with my iPhone..
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The buying without a contract from ATT thing is very interesting! I bought my wife’s and mine from an Apple Corporate Store, but that tidbit about buying as a prepaid phone is quite unexpected, since ATT and Apple appear to be splitting the data revenues in some manner. You also have to be thinking that ATT hopes to pick up a load of new subscribers or re-signed contracts from this deal as another incentive. As others noted, it seems that ATT stores had far less handsets than Apple stores. That was certainly true in Pittsburgh, where I am. It seems odd then, that ATT would let any go without a hitch-hmmmmm…..
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OK I have the Iphone since the day it came out and I LIKE it. I say Like because it is just OK! I dont hate it like my Sidekick 3, but it needs work!
The Cut and Paste is Killing Me! That is the most needed thing since a KEYBOARD!
Also I need to send text messages to more than ONE person at a time. But I cant!!!! Thats just stupid!
I cant see Flash??? I think the first Nextel i1000 saw Flash!
The Camera is AWESOME, but where the hell is the VIDEO?
And what is going on with the BCC? IT WOULD BE NICE TO SEND OUT GROUP EMAILS AND BE ABLE TO BCC EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK! This is not modern technology we are talking about here, and this is a cutting edge device… RIGHT???
I guess I will have to wait like the other 100,000 people for the updates and I hope the make them FAST!
Will someone make a list of all the things we expect out of this $600 phone and send it to Steve himself so he can get on the JOBB!
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There is only one original Mandeville Mike, and you are not ME!
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=active&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS278US278&q=%22mandeville+mike%22+%22new+orleans%22+music
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