So now that I've had my iPhone 3G for a few months and the shine has worn off a bit, here's what I think:

There's a lot of good - but there is also a lot of bad with this phone:


The good:

I still very much like the phone. You almost can't even call it just a phone, it's more of a personal-everything device. I:
  • watch movies,
  • play games,
  • listen to music,
  • text,
  • manage email,
  • surf,
  • talk,
  • GPS navigate,
  • take pictures,
  • use it as my office calculator,
  • Use it as my travel alarm clock,
  • Use it in rifle matches as my timer

- you name it, I do everything on this phone.

Sound great right? Well there's also...

The bad
AT&T SUCKS.
When they say no roaming, what you think that means is no fees for roaming. What it really means, is there's no roaming. At the inlaws - everyone else's (other plan) cell phone works. Neither my iPhone nor the wife's normal phone can get a reliable signal.

Sometimes it'll tell you no signal, so you powercycle, and look, now you have 4 bars??

On a work bus coming back from a trip - through urbania so you know there are plenty of towers- none of our AT&T phones get reliable service. It'll sometimes even say 4 bars, but the conversation is just dropping out. You don't know when the conversation drops out - you just hear a long silence and assume the other person is being thoughtful. Had I known AT&T was going to be this bad - man I don't know if I would have gotten this phone - as amazing as it is. Let me say it again - AT&T SUCKS. A cell phone that you can't reliably make calls from ain't so useful.


The iPhone is not rock solid reliable. It'll lock up. And since you can't get to the battery - there's not a thing you can do about it. It'll lock up for 20 minutes sometimes before it'll reset itself. Not too impressive there. I wouldn't say it does it a lot - but it does it a couple times a month - enough to be highly annoying.

The safari web browser is unstable. It crashes - a lot. Particularly on graphics heavy pages. There are some sites I can only surf for about 20 seconds before bam - safari crashes and I'm back to the desktop. Even more annoying, you can't spawn new pages from links - so when surfing the AK forums - I have to navigate down to where I want to be, then navigate all the way back up before I can move on to the next thread of interest. Weak.

Also, remember the world famous Apple Advertisement during the Superbowl in the 80's where the drones were stuck staring at the man - given no options in life? And the heroin runs through and smashes the screen the sledge hammer? Yea, well the guy on the screen now is Apple. Everything is Apple's way or the highway. If you want to transfer music to/from you phone - you're only option is iTunes. And iTunes doesn't work on Linux. The Apps rock, but all apps must be pre-screened and approved by Apple. Someone made a pretty handy ballistics bullet drop calculator for an iPhone - but you can't get it because apparently Apple thinks only Terrorists would be interested in that.

The GPS is fantastic - BUT, you have to be connected to a data signal to use it. It doesn't store even rudimentary maps - so if you're deep in the woods, yea, you get a GPS signal - located on a grid that doesn't move. A blinking blue dot isn't' that useful on an empty grey background. I was hoping to use the GPS to help me navigate on my international travels; where data access is expensive in the extreme - and unreliable. Is there some kind of App out there that comes with pre-built basic maps I can use for that? Otherwise the GPS usefulness just took a real hit.

Battery life is attrocious. I regularly drain it to 0 in less than an 8 hr day. Mostly this is because the GPS and data connections suck up a lot of juice.


Conclusion
If I lost my iPhone tomorrow would I get another one? you bet! And I'd pay over $500 to do it w/out batting an eye - it's that amazing.

When someone finally makes something as good as an iPhone and it's not on the horrible AT&T network will I switch. You bet!

One thing I didn't mention is cost. I personally think the price of the phone and the plan is fair - for what you get. I'm mostly annoyed with the poor connection service reliability. Did I mention AT&T sucks?