Check after the jump for details.  The “day” is starting at noon only b/c I was out with my realtor earlier this morning and wanted to get the battery to a full charge before doing this.

These are the settings that will not be changing during this test:

• Wifi, Bluetooth & GPS/Location services all on
• No PNS apps running ( logged out of IM )
• Google Push sync for contacts & calendar
• Google mail check every 15 min

So, here we go:

• noon – 100% battery
• 12:35pm – checked contacts …still at 100%
• 2:17 – 1 text message, app usage: 96%
• 2:45 – 3G to web – downloaded new wallpaper for the lockscreen ( for whatever reason wifi wouldn’t connect )
• 2:45 – 2:50 – text messages received: 4  sent: 3.  Batter at 93%
• 3pm: router was jacked – restarted it and connected to wifi
• more texting 2:50 – 3:15pm – battery now 87%
• 3:51 – 86%
• 4:40 – 85%
• 5:45: 10 min phone call
• 6:50 5 min phone call, some email checking – battery 74%  ( this is the 7 hour mark and but 25% of the battery is depleated: the iPhone claims 1 hour and 26 minutes of usage with and 7 hours 11 min of standby time since the last full charge ).
• 7:30 – restarted phone 2x – to recover ECID.
• 8pm – 20 min call.  Battery at 66%.  ( 8 hour mark and the phone is at 66% now.  That’s a pretty big drop of 10% in the last hour, but I suppose 2 restarts and a 20 min phone call can put a drain on the battery )
• 8:45: 5 minute phone call, 10 minutes web browsing: battery 60%.
• 9:30 – 59%
• 9:47 – 11pm. Lots and lots of texting.  Battery at 48%.  Seems that 3G usage kills the battery more than anything else.
• 11:30pm – battery at 46%.

Seems like my typical usage could take me through a full 24 hours without a charge.  I’m going to let the iPhone run all the way down until it is crying for a charge and will update this again then.

Update 1:

It’s now 7am, and with my alarm, and having hit snooze once, and checked an email my battery is still at 30%.  So, it drained 16% in 7 hours of standby.  The usage meter calims the following:

Usage: 3 hours 40 minutes
Standby 18 hours, 47 minutes.

I guess the standy time and the usage time overlap somewhat, they have to, the phone hasn’t been off the charger for 22 hours yet ( only about 19 hours ).  To note I do have between 4 and 5 ( full ) bars at home, work and in between.  I’m not really in a place where my phone struggles for signal, and in my 6 hours and 50 minutes of recorded call time, not 1 dropped call.  So far I’m quite happy with my purchase.

Update 2:  It’s now 9:45 am and my phone just hit 19%.  I’m giving it to 10% before I plug it in.

Update 3: It’s now 11am and all standby since arriving to work at 8:35am.  The phone is at 17%.  7% to go before I plug it in.  I’m actually pretty impressed, it looks like it will last a full 24 hours with some pretty heavy usage in short spurts.  This does put my TMobile Wing battery to shame and it got much less usage in terms of data b/c edge was so painfully slow, and wifi setup on it was terribad ( yes, that’s a word…it’s like terribly bad, in a single word ).

Update 4: 12:45pm and the battery is at 15%.

Check after the jump for details.

Battery:

I had the phone charged to 100% around 9:30am.  With some light to moderate usage ( it recorded 2 hrs of usages and 10 hours of standby ) it shows a battery of 57% left.  That was mostly spent fiddling around with different apps, posting a few things on facebook, exploring a bit on the web and a considerable amount of text messaging. With 12 hours passed and still 1/2 the battery, I’m pretty happy so far.  I’m going to leave it over night to see how far down I can get it and use my Incase Power Slider tomorrow while I’m at Brooke’s for most the day.  Overall I’m pretty pleased with the battery life, and watching it take nearly a full day of moderate usage to drain.

Keyboard:

I’m still getting used to the auto-correcting of the keyboard.  It’s fairly difficult for me to not want to instantly go back to fix a mistake I notice.  I know I’m getting better at typing on it, but I don’t think I’ll ever have the accuracy of typing on a real keyboard and when I’m texting I am losing my signature *action_here* because the asterisk symbol is just difficult to get to.

Ringtones:

I have a hard time being willing to pay for ringtones, especially when I have already paid for songs or entire ablums.  I’ve found it quite easy to make ringtones to put on my iPhone and have a few custom ones already.  The hard part if finding the right ringtone for the right person.

Applications:

This is both the biggest strength and the greatest weakness of the iPhone.  Apple has done a wonderful job making it easy to make applications for the iPhone.  What they haven’t made easy is getting the application approved for sale in the store.  The approval process is cloaked in mystery and now, any application that pulls data from the internet ( think like a browser ) will be tagged 17+ and that it may contain indecent material.  I wonder if the Barnes and Noble app was tagged that way, or if companies have enough pull they can get Apple to look the other way ( like how Trent Reznor got his app approval re-evaluated when it was initially declined with some very harsh posts on twitter and his own website ).

If you ignore the approval process though, the App Store is an amazing source of fun.  It’s almost like YouTube, where you can start searching for something and suddenly find yourself having spent an hour or two just looking at nothing.  People will mock the Apple App Store for having a pletora of Fart Apps, but when you really dig into it, there are a lot of very worth while applications, not all of which cost money, many very solid apps are free.

Mail:

I never thought I would use email on a phone as much as I have in the last week.  I only have it checking mail every 15 minutes and I could probably drop that down to 30 minutes if I wanted to save the battery a bit more, but as I’m not hurting for battery I’m not all that worried.  The email client ( while not perfect ) is VERY usable, and I’m quite pleased with it’s implementation.
What’s Lacking:

I do wish the iPhone had some kind of LED that could blink, or flash or something when there was something that “required” your attention ( which could be modified by preferences ).  I’d like to know when I have an unread sms, or missed call, or voicemail, while I don’t need to know immediately about IMs or emails for example.  While the phone does vibrate or chirp when a message comes in, it only does so three times ( once for the inital alert and then twice more over the course of a few minutes ) and after that you aren’t alerted again.  If I’m in the shower, chances are I’m going to miss this, and I’d really like the ability to glance at my phone from across the room and know if I have something that requires my attention.

The phone could use a flash, but it’s far from a real need for me.  If I’m going to take that many pictures I’ll get my digital camera out.

Syncing to multiple computers.  Like most people, I have a computer at work and at home.  While I don’t need, nor even WANT to sync my music/videos at home and work, I DO have the want to sync my contacts, applications, calendars, ringtones, etc between the two.  I’d love to have a backup of my sync’d information at work in case my home machine dies ( or vice versa ).  I spend between 40 and 50 hours on a normal week at the office, which is about 1/3 to 1/4 of the total hours in a calendar week.  That’s a lot of time.  I’d really like the option to sync against 2 computers.

Profiles.  I’d like to be able to set different profiles for my phone.  When I have it plugged in, I don’t care if the screen is at it’s brightest vs my normal dimmer setting for saving battery consumption.  I do like the vibrate switch on the side, making it VERY easy to turn the phone silent, but I’d also like the option for NO vibration that easily too.

Settings easier to get access.  This is one thing that can be a pain.  When I need to toggle my bluetooth on/off it takes no less than 4 taps, and that’s being generous and assuming the phone is not asleep and/or locked.

A Today Screen.  On the lock screen I would love to have a brief over view of things on my device.  Appointments I have today and perhaps coming up in the next day or two, number of missed calls or voicemails, number of missed text messages, number of unread emails.  It would be quite nice to just turn on the screen, give it a quick look over and see if I really needed to swipe to unlock or could just turn the screen off and go back to whatever I was doing.

While I have gone on about things I think that the iPhone is lacking, that by NO means is to give the impression that I do not really like the phone.  I’ve been VERY pleased with my coverage, my speed and the general quality of the phone.

Now, before I get into what happened after that, lets go into a little history of the iPhone.

The iPhone was initially released in June 29, 2007 and was initially priced at $499/$599 for the 4GB and 8GB versions.  This also came with a forced data plan and 2 year contract with NO subsidy assistance from AT&T.

On September 5th of the same year, Apple dropped prices.  The 4GB version was discontinued and the 8GB was dropped to $199 ( with 2 year contract, the rest being subsidized by AT&T ).  Those that had purchased the iPhone in the previous 2 weeks were protected by a price protection clause that AT&T and Apple both had and could be refunded the difference.  The other customers put up quite a fuss.  On September 6th Steve Jobs ( Apple CEO ) announced that any iPhone customers that were not eligible for some other form of compensation, would be eligible for a $100 Apple credit.

The iPhone 3G was released on July 11, 2008.  AT&T continued thier subsidy plan.  With the release of the 3G, AT&T decided to do something rather unique in the cellphone industry.  They allowed users that had purchased their original iPhone on or after May 27, 2008 to exchange it for an iPhone 3G.  Those that had purchased their iPhone BEFORE May 27th, were allowed to upgrade for the subsidized price and with a contract extension.  ( source )

This was a very rare move for a cellphone company.  Normally, until you are near or out of your contract period, if you want to want to upgrade your handset, you have to pay the unsubsidized price ( simiar to prices that the iPhone was when it was first released ).  AT&T never said that this would be common practice and anyone that’s been paying for higher end phones for the last few years, should understand this was likely a very rare occurrence.

As mentioned last week, Apple announced the iPhone 3GS. After it’s announcement, users excitedly went to the AT&T and Apple sites to see what it would cost them to upgrade their iPhone 3G from last year to the iPhone 3GS.  To the shock of many users they were NOT eligible for the new user price.  If they wished to upgrade they would be asked to pay $399 for the 16GB version and $499 for the 32GB version. Those wishing not to add an additional 2 year to their contract would be asked to pay $599/$699 ( source ).

Not surprisingly, iPhone users are upset, as many of them expected to be able to pay the $200 or $300 to upgrade like they did approximately 1 year ago. Since last weeks announcement forums have been flooded with disgruntled users and many different sites have written about the customer dissention.  There is even a twitten petition called twitition of uses “signing” asking AT&T to offer the subsidized price to them. Some analysts are calling this a “crisis”, as was mentioned at ComputerWorld.com.

Now, while I understand that a larger price tag, especially in this economy, is not something that anyone appreciates, but users have to realize that 1 year ago they signed a 2 year contract extention.  They also were able to the their iPhone price discounted because AT&T was paying part of that pricetag to Apple.  For AT&T to make up the price, they assume the customer will fulfill their 2 year contract or pay an early termination fee of $175 to get out of the contract.  While I sympathize with users wanting to upgrade to the lastest version, they really don’t have a leg to stand on.  They signed a two year contract and need to fulfill their end of the contract, since AT&T fulfilled their end by providing a less expesnive phone.

Users that upgraded to the iPhone 3G should wait until next year.  Next year there will undoubtedly be yet another iPhone released ( possibly with an OLED screen? ) and your contracts will be over and you’ll be eligible for the new customer pricing.  I know our society now feels like they are entitled to everything they want when they want and how they want it, but at some point we have to grow up and comply with the responsibilities that signed up for.

Today Apple hosted the World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco, CA.  As with every year, before the actual Keynote Speech ( usually hosted by Steve Jobs, but hosted by Phil Schiller due to Jobs’ health issues ).

Last year Apple announced the iPhone 3G, iPhone App Store ( both of which have been quite a phenomenal success ), and iPhone OS 2.0.

This year Apple announced: a new line of Mac Books ( starting at 13″, 15″ and 17″ models starting at $1199 for the 13″ ), OS X Snow Leopard ( upgrade price to be just $29 compared to the $120 of past upgrades ), the iPhone OS 3.0 ( to support push notifications, cut/copy/paste throughout the phone, and MMS texting* ) as well as the iPhone 3GS.  The iPhone 3GS will support everything the 3G has but: 2x faster ( unknown processor as of date ), 3.0 megapixel camera with Auto Focus and video recording & editing and voice control. ( iPhone 3G & iPhone 3GS comparison chart ).  The iPhone 3GS also ups the amount of storage space, offering 16 and 32GB versions ( their 3G 16GB and 8GB are dropping in price by 50% and the 8GB will stay on the market while the 16GB will be available while supplies last ).

Here is the iPhone 3GS Guided Tour:

Here are links to the medium, and large versions of the tour.

With the iPhone OS 3 coming out on June 17th, and the iPhone 3GS coming out just 2 days later, Apple is bound to have a busy few weeks where people are ( again ) lining up to get their latest phone.

The iPhone 3GS will cost $199/$299 for the 16/32GB versions respectively.  The current 3G iPhone is being sold at $99/$149 for the 8GB/16GB versions.

TomTom also announced support for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.  Here’s a video of what they plan to offer:

I think the ability to mount and charge the iPhone, offering the hands free experience that is required by law here in CA on top of being able to use the 3.5mm jack to pipe the sound through my car speakers means I just may have to get this.  There’s no price point yet though, and that’s always a concern.

*AT&T will NOT support MMS messaging with the release of OS 3.0, but it will be available sometime in the “summer”.  Tethering support is planned but no official statement to cost has been announced by AT&T.  BoyGeniousReports.com has supposed “insider” info as to the reasoning for the delay in the MMS support and what to expect with a tethering plan.