Questions from a potential Iphone buyer (can you sway me from "the storm"?

[kameko]

1. What is the learning curve for using the touch keypad on the Iphone? I find myself making a lot of mistakes in the short time I've used it. I find myself making a lot less errors using the Storm QWERTY in the first time I used it.

2. A lot of my friends who have Iphone's say that the Safari web browser often crashes during use. Has this happened to you?

3. How is your battery life? In my situation I would keep 3G and wifi off during the day, and turning it on only when I wanted to browse the web, etc.

4. How has your plastic casing held up? I would not want to add a case, and I fear the hard plastic would break easily if dropped. Also, if you own a white Iphone, has your plastic back gotten dirty or cracked over time? I question how durable that white case is over time.

5. Do your apps crash often? I was talking to an Apple store rep yesterday and I asked about the app that gives you a QWERTY key pad in landscape, and he said it's very buggy and he would not recommend it.

6. This is more specific: does anyone here live in or near Newton, MA? I fear AT&T's service in my area. The AT&T site says I have great coverage, but I hear a lot about dropped calls and poor call quality from my friends who live in Boston and surrounding cities.

7. Is 3G coverage still as spotty as it used to be? I've read a lot of complaints about inconsistent 3G coverage, etc.

If I think of any additional questions, I'll add them here. Thanks in advance for all your answers!

1) i don't mind the onscreen keyboard at all. but i have thin fingers.

2) safari crashes ALL of the time. don't bother listening to these ppl that just upgraded to fw 2.2 YESTERDAY. newly flashed firmware will obviously seem much snappier and bugfree. everyone claimed 2.1 also fixed slow backup issues and etc etc but then found out it didn't.

3) battery life is abysmal but thats probably to be expected from a 3g device.
seems very unlikely you're going to be switching them on and off all of the time though. its a pain to do via settings. jailbroken folks have it much easier with sbsettings/bossprefs but still.

4) the casing is fine. its the GLASS that you have to worry about. i've had friends that dropped their iphone from 2 feet from the ground and the glass just shatters into ugly spiderwebbed cracks.

5) might depend on the app. safari crashes more than any app i have. i have about 5 pages of apps. i don't even use safari anymore cause its so unreliable and only do so when necessary.

6) sorry don't live there

7) i've had no issues with 3g. occasionally on some nights it doesn't work at all but i just attribute that to regular, random system outages.

i've personally not tried the storm but i guess if you didn't like it then meh. if i had to do it all over again i would have avoided the iphone entirely. its just a buggy mess.

 

[gregoryhutchson]

BlackBerry Storm hit/not? iPhone killer?
I think not....

Nonetheless - take a look at this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:BlackBerry_Storm

BlackBerry fans vandalising the "critical reception" section

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Thunder

 

[kdarling]

BlackBerry fans vandalising the "critical reception" section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Thunder

I think you have that backwards. It looks to me as if RIM haters were adding tons of bad reviews.

Critical Reception sections should not be written for at least six months, IMO.

Note: First versions are also almost always goofed up. I was the one who rewrote (correctly) the original iPhone Wikipedia software section, which at first had ridiculous claims in it from non-techies. (E.g. claims that all the application pages were part of a large desktop that you scrolled around on and other bogus junk.) My rewrites have survived the test of time.

 

[scaredpoet]

So after my post and a few replies here, I made my way to Verizon to play with the Storm once again. To make a long experience short, it was a nightmare. I played with 3 units. The first 2 had major issues, major, and the third unit showed me how bad the browser is. I won't get into details, but to put it simply, browsing on the web with the storm is not enjoyable.

Your experience pretty much reflects the one I had with the Storm over the weekend as well. Mind you, Even before I looked at the Storm close-up, I didn't have any plans to get one. However I do like to keep my mind at least somewhat open to other gadgets, and considering I support them at work, I will need to know what I'm up against. Besides, if it was REALLY good, I might even be willing to overlook the fact that I hate Verizon with a passion.

But no, the Storm was pretty bad all around. First off, there was a line of people to use the display models... and not because they were such cool devices, much like there's a line to play with iPhones at Apple Stores. No, the line was because every time someone would play with one, it would lock up, and then the next person would have to wait for a VZW sales rep to hard-reset the phone to get it working again.

When I finally got my turn, I noticed a couple of things:

- Despite no one having made any calls on it, the Storm handset was VERY hot. I've grown accustomed to the iPhone getting a little warm during long phone calls in 3G mode, but this was MUCH hotter than that. It wasn't something I'd want to hold in my hands for a very long time, scrolling throgh e-mails and typing back responses.

- Despite advertising hype, the clickable screen seemed very un-natural to me. Maybe that's because I'm used to lightly tapping my iPhone screen, I'm not sure. But it really hindered my ability to type at any decent speed.

- The phone was SLOW. Remember back in the bad old days of iPhone OS 2.0, when the keyboard would lag? This was worse. And it was constant, and wasn't just limited to the keyboard. Launching an app, dialing the phone, making a menu selection, ALL of it was slow and felt sluggish and unresponsive.

- I don't know how the browser looks or whether it rendered pages well, because the phone locked up on me when I tried to launch it. The WHOLE phone. I've had an app on the iPhone crash on me a couple times here and there, but it never took the whole phone with it. A Verizon rep had come to the rescue and reboot the phone again, just as he had done only minutes before.

So yeah, my first impression was not good.

 

[G4R2]

Glad to find someone else who lives in Newton here.

I own a 3g iPhone and travel to New York frequently as well. My experience with 3g coverage is that it varies considerably. For instance, I work in Cambridge near MIT where you'd expect to find a robust 3g signal considering that MIT is one the foremost technology centers in the country, and yet there is an enormous dead zone where coverage is either spotty or non existent between the BU bridge and Mass Ave parallel to Memorial drive. Elsewhere it works quite well.

As others have pointed out, the iPhone is a top of its class device and the Safari browser is a generation or two ahead of the competition, particularly Windows Mobile. The main complaint with it is ATT's somewhat spotty service.

The battery life is fairly typical for a smart phone. I charge it nightly and it occasionally drops under 20% during the day. I keep a charger at my desk and have a dock in my car.

On the other hand, as a former Verizon user, I can say that ATT's service is much improved and the phone seems to be getting slightly better reception with each patch. I don't want to give you the impression it's unusable by any means, but it could use additional work.

 

[wmp.dll]

Again, forgive my ignorance. iPhone newbie here. For those of you with a 3G. If you leave 3G on, WiFi on, surf safari a little bit, use the iPod a little bit, talk on the phone a little bit, text message a little bit, can the iPhone make it through an entire day (say 8-9 Hours) without having to be charged halfway through?

 

[Rayfire]

Again, forgive my ignorance. iPhone newbie here. For those of you with a 3G. If you leave 3G on, WiFi on, surf safari a little bit, use the iPod a little bit, talk on the phone a little bit, text message a little bit, can the iPhone make it through an entire day (say 8-9 Hours) without having to be charged halfway through?

Yes, that's what I do everyday. Considering your little bit is defined as follows:

Surf Safari between 10 to 30 minutes
Use iPod for 30minutes to an hour and a half.
Talk to someone (or more) for less than 2 hours
Send SMS for like 10 times a day

It's actually more than 20% after doing all of those, I'm running 2.2 on iPhone 3G

 

[wmp.dll]

Yes, that's what I do everyday. Considering your little bit is defined as follows:

Surf Safari between 10 to 30 minutes
Use iPod for 30minutes to an hour and a half.
Talk to someone (or more) for less than 2 hours
Send SMS for like 10 times a day

It's actually more than 20% after doing all of those, I'm running 2.2 on iPhone 3G

Awesome. Thats pretty much what I meant by 'little bit'. I didnt really know how to describe it I guess. As long as the battery lasts through the day, Im happy.

 

[blairh]

Days Later.........

Hey guys,

Hate to potentially jinx myself, but I could not be happier with my new Iphone. It's a life changer. I will always want the internet in my pocket in the future. So far 3G coverage has been great in the places I find myself in. Battery life has not been an issue either. My only gripe is that Safari does at times crash on me, but I'm willing to accept that in order to have all the greatness that comes with the rest of the phone.

Glad to see Newton is being represented at the forum.

 

[RMferrer]

BB Storm experience

Earlier today while shopping at Best Buy, Me and my brother decided to stopped by the Verizon phone kiosk to check out the BB Storm. My brother is a Verizon user and wanted play with the phone. They only had dislplays but one of the Sales Associate let my brother play with his.

The whole time I noticed how much he was struggling with the touch screen. My brother assumed it was just as sensitive as the iphone's UI. So the sales associate kept on saying to my brother "push it, push it!" and my brother has this look on his face like "WTF i am!" After a few attempts he finally navigated to compose email.

The associate wanted him to see how cool the "clicking Keyboard" was. And i'll admit it did seem pretty neat. But what was interesting was how long it took for the "accelerometer" to respond to switch to landscape. The associate had to rock his phone back and forth a few times for it to respond LOL! Needless to say my brother was not impressed by the phone and decided to wait a little longer before making the plunge.