Day three of the iPhone release has yielded a working iPhone for my brother finally. After being sixth in line, purchasing two of the 8GB models plus accessories and waiting 30 hours, activation of his second iPhone was flawless after only 2 minutes. He spent his Saturday in various calls (I believe he said 17 different calls) with AppleCare and up to level 3 support at AT&T and everyone came to the conclusion he had the “first bad iPhone”… apparently, not so much AT&T’s fault on that one.
According to my brother, the phone design is amazing and seems to be scratch-proof. It seemed like his biggest issue was with the lack of ringtones. While he’s not a huge ringtone person, he felt Apple should have included support for using MP3s or even a video for a ringtone. The phone sounds very good for a receiver’s point of view with only a couple of static moments. I’m still hung up by the lack of support for a 3G network, a different cell provider and the fact that the iPhone’s keyboard is soft and not tactile.
On a side note, I was at a party yesterday with a former Cingular, now AT&T employee that mentioned that you probably won’t see AT&Ters with iPhones. Not only are employee discounts not valid for iPhones, but the service for the iPhones is not discountable either! This is counterintuitive to “the Geeks” as “evangelists” have always been part of Apple’s marketing and success.
Europeans will probably be getting thier iPhones later in the year on a 3G GSM network courtesy of Vodafone. Sucks that Apple decided to marry AT&T for 2 years I guess. Imagine talking about the download speed to your phone in Mbps instead of Kbps! To your phone, people.
I would prefer EDGE here in the US anyway – 3G, while much faster has limited coverage. I’ll get a V3 iPhone in a couple years when AT&T builds out the 3G network.
On The Keyboard – I typed a whole paragraph today without LOOKING and it was correct. Apple did a great job on the predictive text entry allowing for VERY sloppy typing. It is far better than I ever expected.