99$ iPhone 3G Review First Impressions

By George Edward Green III

Friday morning as we were getting ready to leave for a trip to Boston I went to make a call on my Treo 650.  The Treo has served me well but alas finally had reached its end.  It’s been flakey for a while, needing to be reset, crashing when charging, most of this due to having fallen into the lake a couple years ago.  Well it blinked on more time and crashed and no subsequent attempts have revived it.  I definitely got my money’s worth since my employer bought it all those years ago and it’s survived a ton of dumb things I’ve subjected it to.  Ether way though I was phone-less and really needed a phone for communicating when the family splits up to do different tasks.  So I hopped on AT&T’s site to see what I could get quick since I’ve been due for an upgrade for like 3 years.

At the time I figured I’d price an iPhone but didn’t think one was realistic.  I didn’t pay a ton of attention when the iPhone 3G S came out, so I knew the features but not the prices.  Of course the first screen comes up and they’ve got more two models of the affordable but still pricey brand new iPhone 3G S.  There was a next button which I clicked and up comes an iPhone for 99$.  This was the first time I ever thought; hey I could be using a brand new iPhone TODAY.  I always figured I’d get one ’someday’ but at 50$ more than the plastic near demo quality phones they usually offer in the cheap upgrade range it would be silly to look at anything else.  So in response to my wife’s question as to what we’re going to do for a phone I responded; I’m gonna buy an iPhone.

Some calm explanation, dealing with tech coveting, and a drive latter we were in Boston.  I drop the family off at Franklin Park Zoo pull up to a block of stores to find an open WiFi on my MacBook Pro, and looked for the nearest AT&T dealer.  I would normally go to Apple but figured when it comes to upgrading my AT&T line that letting AT&T folks handle that might be proactive.  The first AT&T I stopped at didn’t even have iPhones.  This just seems stupid given the iPhone 3G S launch marked AT&T’s highest sales day ever.  Either way next stop was the AT&T store on Old Colony Rd in South Boston which wasn’t super far from the Zoo.  Heading inside I got to talking iPhones with a polite salesmen named Cedric.

As I mentioned I didn’t look long and hard at the AT&T online (if anything I just stared incoherently at the 99$ wondering if this was some error I should dig up a credit card to snatch up before it’s fixed).  Cedric informed me they had no iPhone 3G S models in store and that there was no way I was gonna get one for 99$ anywhere.  I was practically on my way to the Apple Store, but after sorting out the confusion I decided; Who cares?  It’s an iPhone, it’s got 3G, it’s 103 bucks with tax!  I have yet to look into the full spectrum of differences but from what Cedric said basically no compass (so no turn by turn directions, which would be a must for my wife but not a big deal for me), no video recording (and at a 30 second max who cares), and its 3G speeds are no longer highly touted.  I still felt like this was a bargain and was waiting for a catch.  The only catch I could find though was an 18$ upgrade fee which they’d bill me latter for.

Now I’d heard iPhone activation was touchy back when they came out so I braced for impact a bit but everything went pretty smoothly.  I’d brought my old sim card (wary they’d charge me for another one) but they didn’t and Cedric politely noted it’d be a lot easier for all involved to use the one that comes in the box.  He did whatever magic sales folk do, had me sign and said I was all set.  So I asked him if there’s anything else I had to do.  He mentioned I had to activate it in iTunes.  I was getting ready to scout out another open WiFi hotspot when he offered to just do it there.  Five minutes latter I was out the door with my surprisingly already charged iPhone 3G (Though to Cedric’s chagrin not with a case; he did put in a good effort though noting you can’t buy insurance for them)!  I cannot understate the fact that this process was smooth professional and if anything took less time than when I bought my Treo.

In terms of using it as a phone the iPhone 3G was up and running.  My next step though was to call my wife and find directions back to the Zoo.  I figured but wasn’t sure I could just sync up all my contacts through MobileMe.  I entered my account info though and nothing.  A few minutes latter though revealed that expecting all my calendars, bookmarks, mail, to magically sync the second I clicked a button was a tad presumptuous.  I got my first phone call, from my wife, which even had the little Address Book photo of her; all without ever plugging it into a computer.  For it’s next trick my iPhone gave me directions to the Zoo, though not before I face palmed after trying to find a WiFi Hotspot so my laptop could connect with an iPhone 3G in my pocket.  Google Maps figured out where I was and gave me enough step by step directions for me to get my bearings though I’m sure it could have guided me the whole way.  Other then the aforementioned compass and real turn by turn directions the only thing I wish it did was just give the directions as a list.

Several hours, and a few pubs, dinner, and watching my wife and mother-in-law shop latter came the next phase in my relationship with my new iPhone 3G.  I had to plug it in to charge and set it up to sync some music.  This took a bit of time but likely because of my setup which I’m sure Apple would recommend even if it is supported.  I wanted to sync the iPod to my laptop instead of my desktop and my laptop uses the same iTune’s library as my desktop but over WiFi syncing songs takes a bit longer and syncing several albums and video took a long while.  I was happy though that for free the iPhone 3G happily upgraded itself to 3.0.

In all honesty the iPhone 3G would have been worth 199 to upgrade.  The Treo was 3-400 when I got it and the iPhone 3G blows it away even accounting for the gap between their releases.  This is noteworthy too because all of these stuff wass more or less possible at the time but no one put the pieces together.  The Treo could have done WiFi but Palm didn’t want to.  It could have had a way better browser than Blazer and at least worked with sites like PayPal.  It could have done built in GPS as many phones at the time had.  If Palm expects to stick around the Pre is going to have to address the fact that Palm has a serious habit of leaving end users hanging and expecting them to upgrade to a new phone to address concerns that were promised to be fixed in the first release.  I’m not sure even with stealing folks from Apple’s iPhone team and trying to pull ‘a Microsoft’ in terms of UI look and feel Palm is going to overcome it’s penchant for treating its customers poorly and badly communicating with them.

Anyway that’s about the brunt of what I’ve gotten to play with as yet.  The iPhone was very handy keeping us from getting lost on the trip back.  The iPod like functions work as expected (though the iTunes is a store but iPod is the music player was a bit confusing; I keep clicking on iTunes expecting to find my play lists).  The SMS and calling are very smooth.  Being able to search the net, click a number and have it get called is something I’ve missed since ditching the data plan for my Treo on account of it being slow, and unable to load anything useful such as PayPal.  The ability to surf the web from anywhere is just cool, and will never get old.  Reminds me of the ominous phrase from the anime ‘Serial Experiments Lain’; ‘No matter where you go everyone is connected’.  If you’ve been holding off on purchasing an iPhone on account of cost I say bite the bullet and grab one.  It’s truly a PDA phone at prices the rest of us can afford.  Now I can’t wait for monday to see how the 99$ 3G compares with the Pre a guy at work just bought!

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