iPhone Review

A quick review of my iPhone g3 is in order, especially after all the negative press I have been reading. Complaints include poor battery life, bad reception, and the installation of apps from the app store bricking the phone. So far my experience has been this.

Speed

The new iPhone is faster than its predecessor. It renders web pages much faster. The g3 network has been only slightly faster than the edge network (a bit disappointing). From what I have read, the design of the 3g network simply does not scale well. But if you are running off Wifi you will notice a big improvement in performance.

Signal

For whatever reason, the iPhone g3 almost always shows 1 bar of signal strength, pretty much wherever you are. The actual signal is much improved. I talk to my parents once a week on my phone long distance. They have raved about the improved sound quality. In addition, we seem to have less trouble with dropped calls. So the signal quality is much better, even though it appears to be worse.

Battery Life

The stand by battery life is much better. You can leave your phone on for a couple of days and the battery hardly goes down. With the old iPhone, I had to keep it turned off as much as possible. Just leaving the phone on over night would run down the battery quite a bit.

The run time battery life seems to be worse. It looks like to me the phone will only last about 3 hrs if kept on constantly. That is not good for someone who uses their phone all the time. I think the screen, which seems much brighter, may be sucking up all the juice. But, I'm just guessing.

Apps

I have only installed a Disney Card game app and that is it so far. No problems. Leo Laporte suspects the bricking problems are caused by downloading applications directly to your iPhone. If you download to iTunes and then sync, there are no issues. I haven't found any apps that really interest me much. Thought about getting the AIM client, but it had bad reviews and Meebo seems like a better choice anyway.

Summary

In summary, my experience has been good. I don't talk on the phone all day so the run time is not a problem for me. A faster phone, better signal, no special headphone jack, and more capacity (16gig) all make for an improved phone.

Apple has to solve the battery life issues. People who use their cell phones a lot are not gonna be happy.