iPhone 3GS from AT&T. Free Shipping
- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 31 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Excellent business tool. Fun as well!"
Pros: Large screen size, Better call quality than my TMobile Blackberry. Lots more! See write-up
Cons: Battery life and non-replaceable battery (can only be replaced by Apple for $79.,95). Can't use other sim cards.
Summary: I bought an iTouch last Saturday. I found the functionality so intriguing (the ability to surf the web, access my Gmail account, store photos, music, etc.) that I took it back to Sam's club 3 days later and bought the iPhone. I presently have the T-Mobile blackberry Pearl, and I decided I didn't want to carry both it and the iTouch around, so I decided to go with the iPhone.
My wife and I are on the T-Mobile family plan, and I'm still under contract with a family plan (until June 09!), so I ported my phone number to the new iPhone, and had TMobile assign a different number to my old phone. We deleted the $19.95 fee for my blackberry email, and reduced her minutes from 2,000 to 1,000, thereby reducing the cost from $99.95 to $69.95. I tried to go with an Apple Corporate account for my new iPhone, thinking it would save money, however, they were going to charge $40 for 450 minutes, plus another $45 for the web bundle package (ability to access the internet, etc.) for a total of $85/month. However, I found on the Apple site (www.apple.com/iphone) that you can get an individual account for only $59.95, which includes 450 minutes, unlimited data, visual voicemail, 200 sms text messages (which I don't need), 5,000 nights and weekend minutes, rollover minutes, and unlimited mobile to mobile. I asked the corporate department about the cost difference, and they didn't have an answer, so I went with the individual plan.
In doing so, our overall monthly cost is now about the same as what I had before, yet I now have all of the iphone functionality.
Coverage:
Thus far, my iPhone has better coverage than my T-Mobile blackberry. This phone works well inside our house, which my blackberry didn't do at all (I could purchase T-Mobile's hotspot@home to fix this, but that would have been another $9.95 per month).
Call clarity:
Many people I called on my Pearl would complain sometimes while I was on the road that call quality was poor. It was fine when I was not moving, so I guess I can attribute this to an oversensitive microphone on the Pearl. I have sense used the iPhone in the same circumstances, and there is no call-quality degradation. The only issue I found is that I had to include my area code for local calls which we don't have to do on any other phone. A cingular issue? I was told by AT&T that eventually everyone will have to do this in larger metropolitan areas.
YouTube:
The iPhone comes with a link that goes straight to YouTube. I'm not a member of YouTube, but I am familiar with it. Since getting the iPhone, I have clicked on this several times and were amazed at some of the most popular videos. For example, there are some of Dolphins blowing and playing with a bubble that are just incredible! See for yourself at http://youtube.com/watch?v=TMCf7SNUb-Q
Safari:
In Safari, you can have open up to about 8 different internet sites at a time. You can also save them to the iPhone's home page for quick and easy access. I went into my Gmail account, logged in, and then created a link on my iPhone's homepage to quickly access my gmail email. The iPhone also downloaded all of my favorites from Internet Explorer. So far, browser speed hasn't been bad - it's much faster than the browser on my Pearl (which sucked). The only real drawback is it doesn't seem to support Flash, which many sites use these days. I can live without that though.
Email:
Speaking of email, the iPhone automatically synced with Microsoft Outlook (I have an HP dv6675us laptop with Office 2007, Windows Vista 64 bit) without any effort on my part other than downloading iTunes and plugging my phone in. Wow! How easy is that? All of my contacts came in, as well as my calendar items. Previously, I would have to connect my Pearl and start Desktop Manager for this to sync, and then separately sync music to the iTouch. Now, it's all synced at the same time to my iPhone.
Camera:
The iPhone comes with a camera that's very easy to use. Picture quality is good.
Stocks:
The homepage on the iPhone has a button for stocks which can be tailored to your stock choices. It's also graphs stock performance.
iTunes - Music:
When you turn the phone sideways using it in iPod mode, the accelerometer re-orients the screen sideways. It then goes into Cover Flow mode, where you can quickly and easily scroll through all of your music by Album cover. It's like flippling through albums in a Jukebox! Slide your finger left or right and the albums spin and stop. Then, touch the Album cover and it flips over to disply the song choices available on that album. Click on a song, and it's playing. Totally cool.
TouchScreen:
Works great! No problems using it. In fact, the numbers are easier to use making calls than my Pearl, as they are larger (and thus work better for larger hands).
Photos:
You can elect to choose a specific folder on your PC to sync photos from, which is what I do. That allows me to only sync what I want to carry with me (in lieu of my entire photo album). Once synced, there is a Photo button on the phone's homepage. Click on it, turn the phone sideways and the accelerometer re-orients the phone and shows your photos in a 16X9 "like" format. Swipe your finger right and the photos scroll. Swipe quickly and they scroll faster. Has to be seen to see how cool this is.
Accessories:
Sams Club sells an iPod accessory pack that includes an auto charger that also makes your iTunes playable through your stereo. When first connected, you get a message that it won't work with it. You can skip the message, and go on anyhow. I did, and it works fine. While you can hear minor background noise when nothing's playing, mine sounded fine while songs were going.
Recommendation: if you spend the money to buy the iPhone, don't skimp on the case - buy the hard plastic case in lieu of the leather one for better protection in the event of drops, etc. I did, and it works great.
There's more, but I just got this phone 2 days ago and I'm still learning all of its capabilities. Thus far, I love it!
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