Gadget Techie

I bought the iPhone 3G the weekend it came out. Waited about 4 hours in line for it. I already had some experience with an iPhone since I had bought my girlfriend the first generation version (I decided to wait until 3G and GPS was in the phone).

After getting the iPhone 3G I began running my experiments to make sure I did not have a defective one (since I was an early adopter). Everything was fine until I tested the battery life. With 3G on and everything else off I was getting about 4 hours of usage time and 11 hours of standby.

The specification online (http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html) says that the phone should last 5 hours of 3G web or talk usage. I was getting 4 hours with mixed 3G usage but it was mostly sms text messaging so it was not acceptable. Since a lot of people were complaining about defective batteries on forums I decided I should go back to the Apple store and return my phone.

Apple employees were very good and I was given another iPhone, no questions asked. However, this iPhone was worse than the first. The back half did not align with the front half (leading to sharp edges), the LCD screen was misaligned and shifted to the right, the volume keys were sunk in and hard to press, and the left side of the phone was not sealed properly so light from the LCD leaked out of the side. So again, I headed back to the store and got another phone. This time, I made sure the phone was in good condition before leaving the store. This is the phone I am currently using and so far have no had any unusual problems (I say “unusual” because there are still a lot of bugs in the 2.0 software that causes random crashes).

Regardless of all these setbacks, the phone is amazing! The iPhone 2.0 software is great. Being able to download apps from the appstore right from the phone is genius! Now I am just waiting for 2.1 so that all the annoying bugs are fixed.