The iPhone – My first 24 hours
So, I didn't really plan on getting the iPhone this weekend. It just kind of happened. Perhaps I should explain.
This was going to be a VERY busy weekend for me. As of Friday ( 7/9/09 ) I am to be house & dog sitting for my sister while she is out of town until 7/16/09. I tweaked my back on Friday morning, but still headed to work, though sitting, walking and even breathing deeply hurt. I stayed until about 1pm when I just couldn't take the pain anymore and headed home. I hadn't planned on getting to my sister's house until 6pm or so anyways, so I decided to try to go sleep off some of the pain of my back. I slept for about 2 hours, though that really didn't effect the pain. I dragged my bags to my car, somehow managed to not pass out from the pain and drove to my sisters house at about 4:30.
I got to her house and settled in, taking some more Advil for my back, still not really helping though. I went to call Brooke to tell her I had gotten to my sisters, but found my phone had no service. So, I went wandering from room to room in the house trying to get service. A restart of the phone got me 1 bar, but enough to send a few text messages before losing service again and needing a restart yet again. I was pretty flustered and realized if I was going to be in my sisters house the entire next week I needed more reliable service. I talked to my sister on the phone ( standing next to 1 window in the guest bedroom keeps service at 2 bars for whatever reason ) and she told me that this area of Encino was just a black whole for Tmobile service, and she told me to use the house phone if I needed anything. Brooke showed up around 6:30 and we went to Gelson's and Ralphs markets to pick up food and booze for BBQ we were having late Saturday afternoon. I was still in some major pain and Brooke and I decided to have some rotisserie chicken, cheese and crackers for dinner. With my back still in pain and the fact we had to be in Moorpark at 9am to see some condos, we went to bed pretty early.
We got up around 7:15 and were on the road at 8:00am. We had to drop off some bean dip I made for my brother for a party he was having for his best friend's birthday. After dropping off the food I had made, we picked up the cooler and headed to Moorpark. We were there a few minutes early but my realtor pulled up right at the same time we did. We pulled into the condo complex and started looking at the 3 places there that were on the market.
All of the units had the same floor plan, 3 bedrooms 2 baths. 2 of the bedrooms were pretty small, enough for a full bed and a dresser, but that's about it, where the master bed was bigger and had and attached bathroom.
The first unit on the ground floor ( each building had 4 units within it, 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs, but the way they overlap it is done in such a way where the noise from surrounding neighbors is minimal ), and definitely needed some work. The carpet would have had to be replaced as would be the blinds. The walls needed a repainting and the counters in the kitchen could be redone ( though not necessary ), and the entire place needed a REAL good cleaning. The location I really liked. It was VERY close to the pool and there was grass areas right outside the door which would have been great for Jack ( my dog ).
The 2nd unit was an upstairs until, right above the garages for all 4 units. This unfortunately left a noticeable amount of noise from doors opening and closing, but not so much you'd drive yourself crazy. The kitchen had very nice granite counters and stone backsplashes. The paint was a nice clean white too. The bathroom was done in the same fashion as the kitchen. The unit was in very good shape.
The 3rd and final unit took some searching to find, as it was tucked around a corner and not labeled very well. The place had been recently painted, new carpets and fixtures. The kitchen could have used some work, but the unit was quite nice. It was also upstairs. The unit was in escrow but had fallen through, so all the work had been done on it to get it move in ready.
The downsides of the units: The first unit we found was taken off the market because it was in escrow, but there was some more information the listing agent could give out yet, and my realtor was going to try to pull the info out of him. The 2nd unit was a short sale, and had a number of offers already on it. The 3rd unit was NOT approved for an FHA loan. I put a call into my loan officer to see what kind of normal loan I could get preapproved for, but as it was a Saturday morning I don't expect to hear back from him until Monday evening. Before leaving we gave Brooke's number to my realtor since my service was really bad though Brooke's service ( ATT ) was rocking full bars.
Brooke and I got back to my sisters and it was about 10am. I helped her get food ready for the BBQ and by 1pm we had everything ready to go and nothing much left on tap but to sit and wait. Dana ( the owner of this site ) sent me a text asking when I was getting a new phone ( if you saw one of my previous posts you know I had decided to get the new iPhone a few months back ). I told him I didn't have time today with people coming and that I'd do it on Sunday. Brooke asked what we were talking about and I recounted the conversation for her. She paused a moment and said "We're all ready here, why don't you just go get it now? I'll take a nap and you can pick up the ice and water on your way back.". My girlfriend gave me the green light...I knew there was a reason I wanted to keep her around 
So without any hesistation I headed down to the Sherman Oaks Galleria to pickup an iPhone from the Apple store.
I walked into the Apple store to see about 50 - 60 people inside all looking at the vast array of Apple products, from the iPhone to iPods to iMacs to Macbooks, accessories for all of the above and getting help with their Apple questions. It took me about 10 minutes to get a Apple associate that was able to help me. He asked if I had gone through the pre-approval process, to which I told him no. He directed me over to a station, where I filled in info like name, address, social security, blood type, organ donor, etc and waited for it to come back with an answer. I swear I sat looking at that little spinning icon for a good 3 minutes for it came back saying "congratulations!". The associate came back to me, asked me which model I wanted and then went into the backroom to find the phone I requested.
Upon returning he had the 32GB iPhone 3GS in white in hand. Just what I wanted. I added in a white Incase Slider as well as the Incase Power Slider. I've skipped on the screen protector for now, I'll wait to see how it holds up. I am going to add insurance to the phone, but Apple only offers the AppleCare that basically covers battery replacement for 2 years, and that's about it. Assurion throught ATT will not insure the iPhone ( probably because of the cost to replace the thing ) so I have found a site called SquareTrade that has a great reputation for iPhone insurance. As I was going through the steps with the Apple associate, he suddenly says ok, there I just need you to sign here and the phone is all yours. My heart sank. I needed a specific area code so that I could port my TMobile number over on August 2nd. I explained the issue to him. He said I'd have to call ATT to see if they could assist me. Needless to say, at this point I was reconsidering my purchase, but the phone had been activated and I had it in hand and was headed back to my car.
As soon as I was in my car I called ATT to try to remedy the situation. I was connected with a rep by the name of Amber Wright ( I believe that was her last name ). After explaining my situation, she said she was unsure she would be able to address all my concerns, but she needed to put me on hold and she would get back to me in a minute or two. After a minute on hold she returned. I think I was actually holding my breath awaiting her answer. She said she would be able to fix everything and we could get started right then. She was able to quickly change my number to an 805 area code phone number and said when I was ready to port my number, just to call in and it would be taken care of. I was on the phone for about 15 minutes when she said the process was done and that she was going to call me back to make sure the number change was successful. We hung up and I waited. 30 seconds later my phone rings, I answer and there was the rep saying everything was looking good. I was so very pleased.
I headed back to the house and put away the ice and the water that I picked up at the store. I put the drinks in the cooler with some ice, and opened up a water while I played around with my iPhone. It only had about 30% charge, so I knew I was going to have to charge it soon, but that I wouldn't have time to get a full charge out of it. I got it connecting to my sisters wireless network flawlessly, and installed the following apps: Facebook, AIM, Shazam, Fandango and Mobile Google. I also setup my email account which is my on domain hosted by Google Apps, and that setup was very easy. It took me all of a minute to have it working and I was getting email from my realtor and sending messages back and forth with easy.
I let the battery charge until people showed up and I think it got up to about 85% or so. Though the rest of the day I took a few pictures, I took a few videos, sent some texts, sent some emails, had a few more phone calls. Everything was quite easy on the phone. The call clarity has been superb, even when talking to my sister who is currently in Mexico. Once the BBQ started I really didn't mess with my phone much, it was in my pocket and I brought it out to show a YouTube link of my sister's dog on a skateboard, and to answer a few emails, but no heavy usage by any means. By end of the night when everyone left ( 4am btw ), the iPhone was back down to about 20%. I wasn't surprised, but wasn't impressed either. I plugged the phone in and went crashed face down on the bed.
Around 10 am the phone was pretty well charged ( it was at 97% ) and I pulled it from the charger for the day. As of this writing, the "Time since last full charge" reads:
Usage: 3 hours 19 minutes
Standby 5 hours 11 minutes
31 minutes call time
Cellular Data Sent: 173KB
Cellular Data Received: 2.8MB
and the battery is now at 36%. I do have my screen dimmed quite a bit, with the control probably around 35% or so with Auto-Brightness enabled for when I am outdoors it makes the screen brighter, but when in a dark area the screen is dimmer and in theory should save battery.
Tomorrow will be my real battery test, with time at work, and then the Incubus concert later that evening. I'll post a follow up then.
With all the things I like about the phone, what is it that I would like to see improved?
Well, last night I was attempting to take a picture of my sisters bulldog Violet, unfortuantely there was such little light out that it was pretty much impossible, even with the new macro abilities of the iPhone. A few friends had different phones, 2 with the Palm Pre and 1 with a Blackberry. The Pre's and the Blackberry both have a flash, which at that moment I really would have liked the iPhone to have. Granted this is a very specific situation and not something I expect to come up much.
Second, multi-tasking. While it's not a HUGE deal to go to one app to do some things, close the app, go to something else and back again, having the ability to just swipe to an already running app like they mobile safari swipes to different pages, would be nice. I know the iPhone doesn't support this really, and it's FAR from a deal breaker for me, but it would be "nice".
Finally, the keyboard is going to take some getting used to. More I guess is the inconsistency with apps that do or do not support landscape entry mode. AIM is an example of an app that doesn't support landscape mode, like the Messaging app does. Typing on a onscreen keyboard in portrait mode is a little difficult for my larger than average fingers, where in landscape it's considerably more natural feeling. I do also have to learn to trust the auto correction features of the phone. It has been pretty spot on with the suggested corrections but hitting the space bar to trigger the filling in of the auto-corrected word wasn't the mot inutitive feature for me to pick up.
Well, that's 24 hours with the phone, I'll update again at the end of my first week.