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If you own an iPhone, i'd like your advise.

S

silbeej

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 3, 2007
797
0
So i want to buy an iPhone, but as a recent mac switcher, i've noticed that apple doesn't really have the whole battery thing down pat, and their products are a little fussy.
If you have an iPhone, i would be very happy to know:
Battery life you get (stand by and talk)
Reception, wifi and GSM (i get terrible on my MBP) and if you live in connecticut that is a plus.
Degree of difficulty in registering, i have verizon, want to switch cuz their phones are junk.

Any basic info that i won't find in a biased online review would be great.

Thanks
 
The battery life I get is very good. I know there are a lot of complaints out there but I personally haven't had any difficulty. This is what I do I let the phone charge overnight and then it easily lasts me for the entire day or two if I havent been using it a lot.
I have wireless in my house so thats always on I hear music whenever I am going somewhere and being a student that happens very often so basically I dont have any battery issues.

The reception is good. AT&T service is very good where I stay so I don't have any problems but it depends on your area though. The phone does not degrade reception.

Registering is simple all you have to do is connect your phone to iTunes and then follow the steps. I ported my number from T-Mobile and was all set using the iPhone in less than 30 mins.

I would highly reccomend this phone from my own experiences. If you have any other questions feel free to post them here.
 
I absolutely love my iPhone. While I'm pissed at Apple for their 1.1.1 update, the iPhone is still the best and most fun phone available (unless you can wait and evaluate LGs now iPhone clone).

Battery life has been great. I can go the weekend with normal (for me) usage and still have a third battery life left on Monday. I do not use WiFi very much and Bluetooth never. Both remain off. My iPhone is my primary and only phone (except at the office). I did use WiFi one evening for about three hours straight and ran the battery down about half way.

In my area AT&T is the worst carrier withthe most dropped calls. I was extremely resistant to giving up Nextel for it. But the allure of the phone got to me. I bought one for my wife as well. She already had AT&T so we knew first hand about their lousy coverage. Well, Apple and AT&T must have the iPhone on a priority, because my coverage is great and I have never had a single dropped call. My wifde commented on the difference in service as well.

1.1.1 locked out third party apps, which most people on this forum are pissed about. There is still a workaround for ringtones so I can put my own ringtones on the phone.

LG is coming out with their iPhone version in November that may have all the things that we really want. Apple will either be competitive, we'll hack it again, or they will lose market share.
 
No issues with battery life.

I have been a lifelong AT&T customer, so activation was obviously a snap.

WiFi performance is fine. I get a usable signal at 100+ feet in the open.
 
My iPhone's battery life is better than any phone I've ever had! I don't use a bluetooth headset, though, which I have heard drains the battery.

Activation took maybe 3 minutes. I already had AT&T, though, so I didn't need to do a credit check, get/port a new number, or anything like that.

I get great reception on Edge and WiFi. I couldn't be happier! I love this phone! Get it! You'll love it, too!
 
My battery life has been excellent with modest daily usage. That translates to a handful of calls per day, but a good amount of browser and iPod *video* usage. I've been streaming recorded shows from my iMac that has an EyeTV. With this utilization, I don't seem to drop below 80% battery life.

In general, I charge the phone every day anyway. The are a number of threads on how frequently to charge the type of battery that the iPhone uses.

BTW - I don't live in CT, but I do work here. Is there a question about coverage?

--DotComCTO
 
I have an iPhone and love it, but I've also had Cingular/AT&T forever and noticed the one time I was in Connecticut(stamford, Darien, etc) I had horrible service. That was a few years ago, but I think it has to do with the laws about not having buildings/antennas taller than the tree line. It makes for a nice view, but horrible cell service.

That said, the iPhone seems to have the same # of bars as my old phone where I am now.
 
Cinemagic said:
In my area AT&T is the worst carrier withthe most dropped calls. I was extremely resistant to giving up Nextel for it. But the allure of the phone got to me. I bought one for my wife as well. She already had AT&T so we knew first hand about their lousy coverage. Well, Apple and AT&T must have the iPhone on a priority, because my coverage is great and I have never had a single dropped call. My wifde commented on the difference in service as well.
Click to expand...

Off topic but how old is your wife's phone? The newer the phone the more likely it is to grab and hold signal...at least in my experience.

pacohaas said:
I have an iPhone and love it, but I've also had Cingular/AT&T forever and noticed the one time I was in Connecticut(stamford, Darien, etc) I had horrible service. That was a few years ago, but I think it has to do with the laws about not having buildings/antennas taller than the tree line. It makes for a nice view, but horrible cell service.

That said, the iPhone seems to have the same # of bars as my old phone where I am now.
Click to expand...

CT is weird. When I lived in Boston and would drive to NJ for family stuff, I often found that I'd be almost out of CT and suddenly had 4 voicemails, so clearly there were dead spots. This was along I-84. However, the last few times I've been through I-84 it's been fine so maybe things improved. And I've had ATT since they were Cellular One.

To the OP: My battery life rocks. I get about 6-7 hrs of usage and about 2-2.5 days of standby. 90% of my useage is browsing the web and texting so it's all pretty screen/internet intensive. I've hit 10 hours when theres a lot of talking and music mixed in.
 
question fear said:
CT is weird. When I lived in Boston and would drive to NJ for family stuff, I often found that I'd be almost out of CT and suddenly had 4 voicemails, so clearly there were dead spots.
Click to expand...
Exactly my experience. We would be hanging out at a friend's house all day and randomly I'd get voicemails throughout the day, every once in a while a call would get through, but that was rare. I think the law I'm thinking of is to not have giant billboards visible from the highways, but i'm sure they have something similar for those UGLY cell phone towers...CT's a weird state.
 
Cinemagic said:
I absolutely love my iPhone. While I'm pissed at Apple for their 1.1.1 update, the iPhone is still the best and most fun phone available (unless you can wait and evaluate LGs now iPhone clone).

Battery life has been great. I can go the weekend with normal (for me) usage and still have a third battery life left on Monday. I do not use WiFi very much and Bluetooth never. Both remain off. My iPhone is my primary and only phone (except at the office). I did use WiFi one evening for about three hours straight and ran the battery down about half way.

In my area AT&T is the worst carrier withthe most dropped calls. I was extremely resistant to giving up Nextel for it. But the allure of the phone got to me. I bought one for my wife as well. She already had AT&T so we knew first hand about their lousy coverage. Well, Apple and AT&T must have the iPhone on a priority, because my coverage is great and I have never had a single dropped call. My wifde commented on the difference in service as well.

1.1.1 locked out third party apps, which most people on this forum are pissed about. There is still a workaround for ringtones so I can put my own ringtones on the phone.

LG is coming out with their iPhone version in November that may have all the things that we really want. Apple will either be competitive, we'll hack it again, or they will lose market share.
Click to expand...

This is so interesting to me. I guess I must use my phone a LOT because I can NEVER go a whole day without needing a recharge.
 
question fear said:
CT is weird. When I lived in Boston and would drive to NJ for family stuff, I often found that I'd be almost out of CT and suddenly had 4 voicemails, so clearly there were dead spots. This was along I-84. However, the last few times I've been through I-84 it's been fine so maybe things improved. And I've had ATT since they were Cellular One.
Click to expand...

Coverage for AT&T has improved dramatically for me in NY/CT/NJ. There are some dead spots while driving on the back roads of Stamford, but that's no different than Verizon. Signal for where I live in NY is excellent - better than Verizon.

Now - having said that, the one thing that I find odd is that there are places in NY where I have 5 bars, but still can't make an outbound call. In fact, I was on a call that ultimately got dropped and I still had 4-5 bars of signal strength. So, I'm not sure whether one can go strictly by "bars".

--DotComCTO
 
I guess the biggest issue for me is the batt, cuz i have a treo 650 on verizon, and i can go a week+ without charging. I know this is a lot, but i would like to have relatively decent battery life if i switch to the iphone.
 
silbeej said:
I guess the biggest issue for me is the batt, cuz i have a treo 650 on verizon, and i can go a week+ without charging. I know this is a lot, but i would like to have relatively decent battery life if i switch to the iphone.
Click to expand...

Its not going to be anywhere near that. It probably won't last you more than a day.
 
How much do you use the Treo? I could only get that performance out of my old Samsung i700 if I barely used the phone.

--DotComCTO
 
i guess what i'm saying is i don't use the treo that much, but i would like to get at least 3-5 days out of it without charging. So it would mostly be standby and the internet usage with the iphone. I'm jsut unsure for there are people that say they don't even get one day out of a charge.
 
Also, what is all this bad stuff i've been hearing about firmware 1.1.1??
 
IPhone Battery

Hi

I got an iphone on iDay. Its battery life is a flop. so i got another one from iStore. Now its kind of good.. No worries on battery.

so my advise is when you buy test it thoroughly.

:apple: Lover
:apple:8GB Iphone Brought on iDay
 
silbeej said:
Also, what is all this bad stuff i've been hearing about firmware 1.1.1??
Click to expand...

Jailbreak doesn't work as yet so you cant set up 3rd party applications as yet and you cant unlock the phone.
But technically that does not have to do anything with a phone bought from the store.
Your good if you don't want to hack it or unlock it.
 
silbeej said:
I guess the biggest issue for me is the batt, cuz i have a treo 650 on verizon, and i can go a week+ without charging. I know this is a lot, but i would like to have relatively decent battery life if i switch to the iphone.
Click to expand...

Wow! When I had a treo 650, i had to charge it every night. I guess it all depends on your particular usage patterns. For me the iphone has been great -far better than my sprint moto q, far better than my treo 700. The only complaint i have is that here in Denver, the att voice quality has been sub-par - lots of fizziness and static that I never had on sprint (although sprint would randomly drop all the time.)
 
You've received a lot of good advice...Mine is simple:
Get an iPhone!! It's about holding it and using it.
Nothing is perfect but nothing comes close to the iPhone.
 
I've found that the battery life really depends on what you are running. I have a fairly new unit bought on the day of the price drop, by the way. I use mine very differently from day to day and get very different battery life. On my days off my iphone is usually on standby with ocasional cellular and wifi use on my home network. When I use my phone like this I can go over 3 days without a charge.

On my work days I use the edge heavily with Safari and occasionally with youtube. I tend to use it this way in 3-4 30 min chunks over the course of a 12-hour shift. I also tend to watch videos via the ipod function for up to an hour. Using my iphone this way only gives me a days worth of use, if that, before needing a recharge. I've found edge can be a big battery drain.

Other than that I've found my iphone has slightly better reception than my previous phone(Audiovox 5600 smartphone), but not by much. Wifi reception isn't bad, but I've only been able to test with my own wifi router. I'm able to maintain a connection outside of my house(30+ft.). As for activation, I was/am an AT&T customer but my phone/plan/number was from an old AT&T wireless account(AT&T wireless>Cingular>AT&T). This forced me to call in and have them manually update my account with the iphone and one of the new minute plans. Then I completed the itunes activation by entering my #/account and adding on the data plan. The phone call only took about 5-10 min. Not to bad, seems like they have the call-in situations down fairly well.

Hope this month or so of my personal use helps.
 
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