All iPhone 3G
I love my iPhone 3G and so I thought I would make a page dedicated just to my iPhone 3G and Apple and....
My iPhone 3G Review...
T-Mobile Experience...
I have been dreaming of getting a iPhone since June 2007 when the first iPhones were released. Unfortunately during that time they cost about $600! So that's all it was, just a distant dream. So I abandoned that expensive fantasy, and proceeded to make the biggest mistake of my cellular life. And by biggest Mistake, I mean signing a 2 year contract with T-mobile and getting our Sidekick 3's. At the time, I was super excited but I need to learn to be more aware of the warning signs! For instance, when we went in to sign up for T-Mobile we were told at least 50 lies about the phones, our plan, our minutes, prices, and everything else! The lady that was supposed to be helping us, had no idea what she was talking about. Most of the incorrect info she gave us were our selling points on the contract. Apparently, it was her first week and she didn't know anything she was talking about. Don't get me wrong, I'm the first one to be sympathetic too people on the
first week of a new job, but I think the company has a responsibility to make sure if that person doesn't know what they are doing, someone has to be supervising them, or at least make good on the wrong info that employee gives! That's enough ranting about that for now though! So we got our Sidekicks and the problems started the second we get home. They were stuck on the activation screen all night so we didn't even get a chance to play with our very expensive toys until hours after we got them! In the last 2 years with our Sidekick 3's, we have run into countless problems, including horrible customer service, horrible coverage, and worse of all, we have had to do about 5 warranty exchanges all together on our Sidekicks, because of them just breaking down for absolutely no reason! In fact, for about the last 3 months or so, I have been using a T-Mobile Dash because we had to do 4 warranty exchanges so they finally switched my Sidekick with a supposedly comparable Dash. Which had a lot of the same promblems with.
(finish about T -Mobile)
Finally...
Finally our 2year contract, or sentence as I like to refer to it, was over. I had been counting down the months and days and finally Feb had come, and just as fast Feb went, with no iPhone, then March came and went with no iphone still. Finally in April we had the money and headed of to the AT&T store, the excitement I felt in the car I haven't felt in a long time. Ijust couldn't believe I was on my way to getting my iPhone! I couldn't believe it so much that every step was terrifying. On the way there I was worried that somehow there had been freak fires that had burned this store and everyone in the Eugene/Springfield area, to the ground, and somehow they ended up saving everything except the iPhones!
To my relief, when we pulled up the store was just fine. We walked in and a long haired, quiet, cool talking, surfer dude representative walked up to us ''can I help you?" I excitedly said the words I have been waiting to say for over 2 years, "We need to get two iPhones please!" like I said before, every moment after that was just a big scary blur. First it was wondering if they were even in stock, then it was the credit check. That was the scariest part I think. Although it was probably only a couple minutes, it felt like an eternity! I wasn't even that worried about our credit, I just knew it was to good to be true and something was going to go horribly wrong. That thought was interrupted by the surfer dude saying "You past with no deposit." Best thing a surfer dude had ever said to me! After getting our info he walked in the back and after about 5 minutes came slinking back out with two surprisingly small, black boxes in his hand. He opened one of
the boxes and I swear I saw a yellowish gold light radiating from the box and heard the sound of a large chorus singing
"AHHHHH...." ok ok, a little over dramatic I know.
So he opened the box and pulled out a smooth, sleek, all black except for a silver lining, gorgeous little phone, and to my dismay handed it over to Michael. It took him about a second to activate it and get it all set up, which was a pleasant change from our last experience! I was about to go insane when he FINALLY handed mine over! It fit so perfect in the palm of my hand, it felt like it was meant to be. I didn't even want to move from the fear that It was going to go flying 20 feet out of my hand, hit the wall, and smash into a million pieces. Surprisingly, that didn't happen! We only had one more terrifying step left before we were walking out the door, paying for the phones. In my last blog "update", I explained that we had some 'frustrating' experiences with our financial aid check that led our bank to be a little, (or a lot) overdrawn that weekend. So I was really worried that something was going to go wrong with our debit cards. But to my
extreme relief, when I looked at the little green screen on the card machine it said "Card approved, now take your iPhones and get the heck outta here!" OK so maybe it didn't say all of that but all I cared about was being approved and having my beautiful iPhone and finally getting outta there!
Since this is starting to sound more like a love letter than a review, I better get to it!
8GB vs. 16GB
I haven't yet played around with a 16GB, but with my 8GB I've found it has so much more space than I thought it would! I've only had it for about 3 weeks or so and I have already put hundreds and hundreds of songs, pictures, documents, and tons of very large apps on it, and I was pretty surprised to find all that hasn't even put a dent in the amount of usable space on the phone! There's about a thousand MB's in one GB, and the very largest apps are usually only around 30-40 MBs. And that's the very largest apps, on average they are only around 1 - 10 MBs and a lot of them are in the KBG's. (1000 Kbg's in 1 MB) So even if you generally use up a lot of space in your phones, (like me) I would still recommend saving the $100.00 and going for the 8GB!
There's a App For That!
One of my absolute favorite things about my phone is the App Store. If you don't Know what apps are, they are fun, useful, and sometimes pointless applications, or programs, you download to your phone. The app store has games, utilities, painting programs, ebooks, search engines, music programs, travel programs, social networking programs, finance programs, news programs, sports apps, photography apps, and just countless different helpful, fun, sometimes ridiculous, random, and overall entertaining applications right at your fingertips, literally!
! I remember the equivalent to the app store on my sidekick, it was pitiful in comparison! In the Sidekick 3's "Download Catalog" There was about 5 categories, compared to the 20 categories in the app store. For each category in the Sidekicks download catalog, there were maybe 25 programs, give or take. Now as for the iPhone, lets just say the the app store is about to reach a billion apps and growing everyday,
just to clarify the difference! But the biggest difference is - with the Sidekicks, pretty much every program or app cost around 5.99 and up! And I can tell you, the ones l downloaded to my sidekick are definitely not worth the price! However, when I got my iPhone, I was very very pleasantly surprised that the majority of the apps in the app store are FREE! Those aren't the crappy little free apps you usually see, but the good, fun, addicting full size apps! And the ones that aren't free are generally around 99 cents to a 1.99!
! I also love the app store because when I get bored of a game for the time being, I can head back to the app store and in only a days time I will find at least 50 new and addicting games, that's one major advantage of the iPhone, its the phone that will never stop giving! So to sum up my app store review, I would say it is definitely in the top three reasons to get a iPhone. Without the App Store, the iPhone would not be the
wonderful device it is today. It gives you the ability to customise your iPhone to fit you perfectly. For example, my iPhone has apps like Yahoo Messenger, Myspace, Facebook, Comcast t.v. listings app, movie show times app, pocket piano app, Monopoly, Oregon Trail, many mindless little arcade games, and countless other apps that fit MY interests.
And the apps on my husbands iPhone are apps like Pocket Turn Tables app, a app of random human poses for drawing, the I-shred guitar app, AOL Radio, photography app, games that have more to do with sports and strategy, and countless other apps that fit HIS interests!
In short; there literally is a app for anything and everything you can possibly think of!
Google Maps and GPS...
The GPS system and Google Maps is definitely in the top 3 reasons to get a iPhone. It was the first things we explored the day we got our phones, and we were just amazed at the level of technology in these small phones. It just reminded me how far technology has come from my huge Nokia, green screen phone, to this crazy advanced technology that is the iPhone! To get to the review though, I was quite surprised how intricate google maps and the gps system is.
When first viewing the map, you have four viewing choices. Regular old map view is the first choice, it’s basicly just a map drawing with streets and names of locations. The second choice is satellite view, which is my favorite, and one of the very fun things to play around with. It is a satellite view of anywhere in the world, just like you are floating in the air right above whatever you are looking at on the map. You can zoom in by just a double tap on the screen, to a point where you can see your car in your back yard pretty close, or you can zoom out by taping two fingers at the same time, on the screen, to a point where you can see a satellite view of the whole world pretty much!
Another awesome feature of the iPhone is the pinch in pinch out zoom. This works really well with the maps and internet viewing. You just take your thumb and index finger, place them on the screen apart from eachother, then make a pinching motion to zoon in. Zooming out is basically the same thing accept this time you move your fingers apart instead of pinching them together. Its much more fast and accurate then the taping method. The third viewing feature is called hybrid, this is simply a mix of the map and satellite views. It has the street names and locations on the satellite view. This comes in handy when you want to see the place your going but also need the street address. The fourth one, List, I wouldn’t neccesarally call it a viewing feature, it is more for directions. It is the list feature, more for driving directions. It lists the current location and all the turns and streets on the way to your destination. This helps when you are just reading directions to the driver and they don’t need to see the map or satellite view.
The GPS is just the most awesomest thing to come to a phone! When your in the home screen of the maps, in the bottom left corner there is a small round “My Location” icon, when you click on it, it pin points your current location, anywhere in the world! I have found it to be very accurate most of the time. To a point where the little blue dot is on the exact place that my couch is at in my apartment? And that little blue dot, moves with you in real time wherever you are going! (Continue )
Camera...
I was very pleasantly surprised at the camera on the iPhone.! I was happy that I got my iPhone before I got the digital camera I was planning to get. My iPhone basically saved me the 260$ I was planning to spend on the digital camera. For me, the iPhone was very satisfactory as a camera replacement. This is my opinion, for some people the camera was one of the misses of the iPhone, because there is no flash or zoom, which I admit would be nice, but I found it to work wonderfully while taking pictures all around town and in various settings. It takes really clear photos, it’s a nice big screen, the detail and depth of the pictures is really good, and overall I found the pictures are as good as my 5 mpx digital camera, In fact, I wasn’t sure what the mpx the iPhone camera was until I went to write this review, and I was quite shocked to find out it is only a 2mpx! I would have never guessed. Here are some of the pictures I took walking around town with my iPhone camera.
I found the camera very easy to use also. Just a one or two touch kinda thing to navigate the camera, pictures, and features. I also found it entertaining to slide through all my pictures with the swipe of a finger. The slideshow feature is nice when showing off pictures to family, and in the settings icon, you have the option of how fast or slow the slideshow goes, what kind of transitions you want, including cube, dissolve, ripple, wipe across, and wipe down. There’s also a repeat and shuffle option. Although there’s room for improvement, I found the camera and photos on the iPhone, very high quality, easy to use, and is definitely a success as far as a cell phone camera, and even a everyday camera .
