iPhone 3G – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly [My Review]
Yesterday was the big launch of the new iPhone 3G and later in the afternoon I had the opportunity to play with one for a few hours and even take some photos to write this small review.
The Good
One of the major hit of this new iPhone it’s, of course, the 3G connectivity, which during my tests works a lot faster that I thought it was going to be.
First of all I start watching some YouTube videos using my buddy’s home wireless network and the load time of the videos were pretty decent. Then I turned off the wireless connectivity to load other videos of similar duration through 3G, and they load faster, which impressed me.
The good 3G connectivity add a lot of value to the email, YouTube integration and GPS functionalities (+/-), and adding the new Rogers data plan (6GB for 30 CAD) makes a really good mix.
The outside feels very solid in the hand, smaller than I thought and definitely lighter.
The 2.0 megapixel camera is pretty decent.
The Bad
Making an evaluation of the iPhone frenzy day, one of the major issue today was the in store activation, which in my friend case took almost an hour and a half. I’m pretty sure that if you go next Monday to get an iPhone the activation will take only 10 minutes, but if Apple creates all this BIG expectation for the launching day, please guys be prepare for the public response.
Another bad thing for me was that you can’t download free apps from the App Store, until you have added a credit card information to your Apple Id account. What’s going on here, it’s a FREE application, why you need my credit card for? Also the message it’s really unhelpful “Authorization Failed, Please connect to iTunes”.”
The last but not least, it’s the inability of the GPS to give turn-by-turn directions because the small size of the antenna.
The ugly
Some of the upgrades, as the calculator transforms into a scientific calculator when you rotate the phone 90 degrees and some other, are just software teaks available for 10$ for all the original iPhone users and even the ones with an iPod Touch.
Conclusion
If you already own an iPhone, keep it.
If you have an iPod touch and a decent phone, keep both.
Of course if you want to start in all this iPhone culture, go ahead, it will be a good experience.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Original iPhone users do not have to pay anything for the new software update. Only iTouch users.