It took me a lot of deliberation, but finally I decided that the upgrade was definitely worth it. I now have, in my hands, a shiny new iPhone 3G.

But man, what a hassle. I was one of the lucky ones that managed to get one on launch day. I queued from about 7:45am with about 10 people in front of me and ate my McDonalds breakfast in line. There was the odd comment from miscellaneous chavs passing by, but I was totally happy to stand in line all day if necessary.

Unfortunately, O2′s service was quite disappointing in some respects:

• The server crashes slowed everything down so much it was ridiculous. I think it took about 90-120 minutes for me to get through in the end.
• The store staff wouldn’t tell us how many 16GB phones they had in stock. As it turns out, that number was about 4. Which is small, and irritatingly fewer than the number of people in front.

 
So all this being said, I had to settle for an 8GB, which isn’t really a big issue for me as there’s only about 5GB in use, and there’s plenty of songs to keep me happy on there. However, I think the larger storage would have been nice.

Initial Impressions

• The device is pretty solid. Build quality feels slightly less than the original phone, but that’s to be expected with the plastic backing. Unlike some, I don’t find it ‘cheap’ at all – I think the uniform black casing looks really nice. The curved edges make it quite a bit nicer to hold in the hand, although I didn’t have any problem with the first generation model anyway.
• 3G is pretty much as expected, and the speed is pretty good. It’s much better than EDGE, that’s for sure. Reception is pretty good, and the fallback EDGE/GPRS transition is quick and painless.
• Battery life is low, but acceptable. I have chargers at home and at work which pretty much suits me fine. I also found a complete power cycle (i.e. full charge, drain completely and then re-charge) helped the life out a lot.
• GPS is intermittent for me. Sometimes, I’ll get a good lock very quickly, other times it can take up to a couple minutes. The cellular assistance definitely speeds it up by several orders of magnitude.

My major complaint is actually the 2.0 software. I had multiple problems setting the phone up as a backup of my old phone: random Safari crashes, Mail refusing to open whatsover, major interface slowdowns and, for some peculiar reason, 3G didn’t work. Restoring as a new phone has alleviated this somewhat, but the interface is still real laggy and they do need to release an update as soon as possible.

But for now, I’m just enjoying it. The hacker in me really can’t wait for PwnageTool 2.0 to be released, though.

10:43 pm | Posted in Apple 3 Comments »