Adventure with iPhone 3G S

I’ve had the Tilt (HTC Kaiser) for a year and a half and I’ve had a lot of trouble with it in recent months.  Long story short, I’ve decided to go with an iPhone.  Here’s a play-by-play.

I checked with 3 AT&T stores in the past 3 days and they were all out of the 32GB model.  As we strolled the mall yesterday, we passed by an Apple store.  *lightbulb* And they of course have it.  To be honest, my shopping experience in the Apple store was surprisingly good.  I was never left to fend for myself after I walked in.  The person that greeted me at the door was working with me the entire time until I left.  2 thumbs up.  Now I’m beginning to understand the Apple store experience people talk about.  In any case, the purchase was uneventful and the phone was all setup when I walked out the store.

Got home, got everything out of the box, put the protective film on and snapped on the case.  Hooked it up to my notebook and iTunes came up.  I set it up to sync with Outlook Contact, Calendar, and email.  It did its thing and everything looked okay.

Actually what I really need is work’s contact and calendar.  So once it was done, I set it up to connect back to work’s Exchange server.  Of course, it couldn’t find the server name.  A reboot from my old phone got me the info and it was working.  But to sync contact and calendar with work, it said it will wiped the current contact and calendar.  Oh well, I knew it would happen.  It was the same problem with ActiveSync on Windows Mobile.

Next was Gmail, simple enough.  Next was browser favorites. 

Safari on the iPhone was fairly robust.  As I go through my bookmarks on the notebook, I noticed that there are a fair number of them that I won’t be using.  Instead of using a browser to goto gmail, the mail app itself will serve that purpose.  Interestingly this felt like going backward.  Think about it, when software reconverge to use a common desktop platform like a browser, the iPhone reverted back to each app using a separate “client”.  Yes, they all run off of the same platform call iPhone OS 3.x… but the irony is very apparent.

** I’ll make a prediction.  If Apple wants to, it can release the iPhone OS as a platform to run on top of other OSes.  All of the sudden any apps written for it will be usable by any computer, netbook, phone, etc. that can run the iPhone OS… and Apple will take over the world.**

Anyway, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, RSS, etc. all have apps so I won’t be reaching to them through any browser.  In the end, I ended up with just a handful of links for Safari.

It was then that I noticed the battery gauge was at 50%.  I’m going to have watch it carefully.  While my other phones can go at least a couple of days on 1 charge, doesn’t look like this iPhone will.

Now apps.  This Facebook app is a lot better than the one on WM.  A high resoluti0n screen helps a lot, so does a sensitive touch screen.  Typing takes a bit getting used to.  I was dreading not having a physical keyboard but as I was told by others at work, it really wasn’t bad at all. 

Twitter… this is where the app store overload begun.  There are a great many Twitter apps and having no frame of reference, my only source is the web.  20 minutes of reading later, TwiiterFon was it.  The download wasn’t too slow but it was going through 3G…

A few more poking around, I found the Wi-Fi setting and got the phone on the home network.  Downloading worked much faster after that.  Going to have to get it on RoadRunner at work too.

At this point, the screen was getting a bit cluttered.  A search or two and some more readings showed how to arrange the icons… but not deleting the Apple ones.  It would seem that is a jailbroken only capability.  I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.

Google Mobile offers some interesting capability.  Voice search sounds useful.  So far “What is Labor Day?” and “Symptoms of hand, foot, and mouth” worked flawlessly. 

Finding a decent (and free) RSS reader was much harder.  I’m still searching.  At the mean time,  Google Reader will be it.

As I disassemble the old phone (pulling out the battery and SIM card), the charger, etc. to make room for the iPhone, the length of the iPhone cord is definately an issue.  Charging by USB is a nice idea but 2 feet is just too short.

Next up is the blue tooth headset.  Again, a search on the net revealed where the setting is.  Turn it on and turned on the headset… uh oh… something was evidently going on as the headset didn’t exit pairing mode.  But the phone never completed the setup.  A couple more failed attempts and another 10 minutes of reading on the web confirmed: this Plantronics headset does not work with the iPhone.  *sigh*

Now ringtones.  And of course, it won’t let me use MP3s.  More searches and more reading later (with this C|Net video being the best: http://www.labnol.org/software/make-iphone-ringtons-with-free-itunes/4738/) … iTunes can convert MP3s into ringtones in some convoluted ways.  It is not hard, just humbug.  Of course, there has to be more problems.  My iTunes library is on a NAS and as with many Apple software, some iTunes operations doesn’t work on network devices.  The unknown error -39 is a fairly well known issue.  I ended up installing iTunes on my netbook and using it to convert the MP3s to AACs (M4Bs) and renamed them to M4Rs, copied them back and import them into iTunes.  Another sync later and I have my ringtones.  … now the notification sounds…. hmmm, doesn’t look like ringtones are used for those… *sigh* oh well, I’ll live.

Now the phone is pretty much set.  Just a matter of getting some Apps.  There are top 10, top 25, top this top that list all over the web.  Jolene (thanks dear) also pointed me to AppSniper which is an awesome thing for cheapo like me.

Honestly, it isn’t hard but it certainly wasn’t simple.  To successfully move to an iPhone, you need to be a fairly savvy.  You need to know something about networks, application configurations, web research, being able to read technical article is certanily necessary, etc.

The phone is by far not perfect but its execution is many steps ahead of WM and certainly miles ahead of Symbian and any other lesser OSes.  I can understand why it is popular and I too am sold on it.

… brain fried from the App store… there’s got to be a better way…

Anyway, total damage:

$299 for the phone, $35 for the case, $15 for the film, $50 for a new headset = $400.  O_O