« So dead tired... | Main | Feeling dead and dreaming odd... »

September 08, 2008

Now an iPhone 3G owner...

... cause I can't be trusted with my original iPhone.

So, I hadn't intended on upgrading to the iPhone 3G. Mostly because it wasn't much of an upgrade. Apple has done a reasonable job at appeasing it's first generation of iPhone customer (quietly as it may be). Here are what I perceive to be the biggest improvements from the iPhone to the iPhone 3G:

3G
I was doing fine with EDGE internet when I wasn't near wifi because I spent most of my day in areas covered by WiFi, plus my area doesn't have the full 3G speeds that AT&T has in many larger markets so the speed bump wasn't as considerable as most people would receive has been my understanding. using it today it certainly isn't that "near WiFi speed" that the Jobsfather said it would be.

GPS
GPS has always been one of those technologies I thought was cool but didn't see a personal use for. I don't geocache, I don't really have much of a need for the mapping capabilities because I don't do much outdoors. I've also heard that iPhone 3G doesn't really have a true GPS capability though I'm not familiar enough with the technology to understand what makes it real or not. They certainly advertise it as true GPS on Apple's site. This just wasn't a huge draw to me. Although I must say that some of the 3rd parties are doing some really interesting things with this feature. At the end of the day, the original iPhone's Triangulation capabilities were fine for me.

New Design
This was probably the strongest draw for me, but not enough to get me to fork over $200-300. I'm happy about these things:

Not so happy about these things:

At any rate, I didn't plan on buying the new one but I have a tendency to not put my phone in a case because it adds so much bulk. I like to just put my phone in my pocket and go. I've dropped my original iPhone several times and never had any trouble but Saturday I dropped it several feet onto gravel and the abrasive edge of the gravel caused a crack in the screen. It didn't crack the surface but the screen underneath. The iPhone worked and displayed fine but then the crack spread a little. Surprisingly it was still responsive to touch and all the colors and everything were still fine, but I couldn't handle the crack so I had to get a new phone.

So now I have an iPhone 3G. Hopefully they don't announce brand new models at tomorrow's "Let's Rock" Apple media event, but for now it seems to be doing fine. It was pretty simple to get set up although somewhat time consuming as it had to sync all of my music, videos, and applications, but it did fine. All ready to go!

I'll let you know if I still like the new 3G or maybe if I like it more or not as much in a few weeks. For now, just as I expected, it's not much different than my original iPhone.

Posted by Decemberice at September 8, 2008 04:24 PM

Comments

Yeah I figured as much. J I remember a cell phone you had (back in the day) where you dropped it so many times that parts were falling off of it, and it rattled inside, but it still kept going...lol. I only mention this because your story reminded me.

Posted by: Austin at September 9, 2008 12:25 PM

Yeah,

That phone was great. It was a Motorola Timeport. If I remember correctly I'd dropped it an insane number of times, it once fell off on somebody's lawn when I worked in lawn care and sat there over night in the freezing cold in February. I even dropped it in a vat of fertilizer once causing liquid fertilizer to seep in and get stuck in the display. the plastic parts were coming off of it, when you shook it you could hear loose pieces in it. I even backed over it with an industrial medium duty vehicle and through all of this, it just kept ticking.

To it's defense the iPhone worked fine after I cracked the screen but I couldn't handle the crack so I went for a new one.

Posted by: Decemberice at September 9, 2008 05:24 PM