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The "I Got My iPhone 3G S" - First Impressions Thread

Disappointing

I like the 3G S on paper a lot more than I do in person (over my first gen iPhone)

More memory is good. Speedier interface is good. I like the GPS. Compass is nice. Some of the additional functionality is good in theory.

To me the new camera is still crap in anything but bright light. The voice commands don't seem to understand me at all. The data speeds are barely better than my old 1G iphone. The WiFi reception is poor. The carrier is still AT&T and for a while at least no carrier supported MMS or Tethering.

Activation delays plagued people once again. I decided yesterday that if my iPhone was not working this morning I would be purchasing a new phone from Verizon or T-Mobile today. My iPhone is working this morning so I'll give it some time but at this point its not a slam dunk that I'll even keep it.
 
After a little trouble activating... Wow. I'm coming from a 2G, and just... Wow. First, having never had a 3G, I'm really impressed with the 3g speed. I'm hitting 600+ Kbps in metro Boston. It's not quite wifi, but it's a lot closer to that than it is to EDGE. I'm actually using the regular MR rather than the mobile version!

Gps is very cool and extremely accurate. Old news for a lot of you I'm sure, but exciting to me.

The overall speed of the 3gs compared to the 2G is very very impressive. Everything is so much more responsive, which is funny because I never thought of my 2g as unresponsive... But there's no comparison.

Compass is cool. Freaks me out that my phone knows not only where I am but which direction I'm facing in, lol.

Video quality is great. Camera much improved on the whole.

Build quality is maybe not quite on par with the 2g, but pretty close and still excellent.

Overall, a HUGE upgrade from the 2g. I'm sure it seems a lot smaller to 3g owners, but the processor/RAM alone make such a difference, I can't even tell you. Very happy right now. :)
 
NJRonbo said:
Beware!

WiFi reception on this phone seems to be pretty bad compared
to the 3G.

I have read complaints earlier in this thread, and I can see it
for myself as well. Within my home, one room away from the
router, I only get 1 bar of signal (as opposed to 5).
Click to expand...

Wow, mines better than my 3G, I get 4-5 bars now where I would get 1 or even fall off the network.
 
jimboutilier said:
Activation delays plagued people once again. I decided yesterday that if my iPhone was not working this morning I would be purchasing a new phone from Verizon or T-Mobile today. My iPhone is working this morning so I'll give it some time but at this point its not a slam dunk that I'll even keep it.
Click to expand...

Call AT&T and tell them to activate your sim, takes 5 mins.
 
Would have preferred a the matte grip backing that rumors indicated other than that this 3g s is a step above the 3g in terms of specs. The processor and ram allow the iPhone experience to work the way it should. Ive come to look at the iPhone as a yearly disposable phone now anyway. LOL :apple: :D
 
I'm sure my impressions won't be much different than most of yours. This thing is obviously very fast. In fact, after I loaded all my apps on there and arranged the icons how I wanted them, I found that this iPhone 3G s can really fly. It wasn't until later last night that I even remembered the new features such as voice control (which has worked flawlessly so far) video recording, improved camera and compass.

This is indeed a great phone.
 
Iphone 3G S keeps wanting to shut off

I went to the AT&T store in my town and all they had left was the 32GB black Iphone 3GS so I went ahead and bought it.

Since I have been home - it keeps trying to hibernate or the red tab keeps popping up to shut it off. I called AT&T and I am currently on hold for a very long time.
 
My favorite visible improvement

Ok, here is what I am apreciating:

When I am cruising around on a web site, and decide I want to flip up to the top so I can click the google search box, it is instant. Very impressive.
 
sinX80 said:
Call AT&T and tell them to activate your sim, takes 5 mins.
Click to expand...

Did that. Did not work. The AT&T rep said it must be something on the Apple activation side so call them. As soon as the apple voicemail system sensed the issue was about activations they routed the call back to AT&T. Circle jerk.

A couple hours later my old iPhone stopped working. A couple hours after that the 3G S started working finally.

Spend most of a day carrying around two phones and a couple hours without any phone service at all. Guess thats an improvement over my last iPhone firmware upgrade where I was a whole day without any phone service.

Still pathetic in my books.
 
I love the extra space going from 8GB to 32GB so now I can carry all of my music (10GB), 3 TV episodes, 1.4 GB of apps, 6 full length movies and still have about 6GB free to grow.

I love the instant scrolling in Safari.

I tried the Voice dialling and it seems to work well so I'll probably delete Vlingo and google app. There were several apps that I deleted.

To get back Emoji, I downloaded a 99 cent apps called "Emoji Icons".

I decided to start this phone as a new phone rather than restoring from a backup of my old phone since I can then have different settings of music and movies that way for each device.

I'm thinking of unlocking my old 3G to use while travelling in Europe with a local SIM.
 
After, 24 hours, I'm impressed.

1. Safari is so damn fast.
2. Reception is much better.
3. Speaker is louder (in fact, had to turn it down!).
4. Voice control is cool.
5. Camera and video is great!

Overall, amazing work by :apple:!
 
abiyng87 said:
Why would data speeds be better to begin with? You bought a new phone, you didn't upgrade AT&T's network.
Click to expand...

Um, because the first gen iphone used EDGE?

Though as I said earlier in the thread, I'm coming from and EDGE iphone and the difference is stunning, much more than I expected. I guess I never realized how fast cell data can be.
 
811.49$ later and still dont get to use my 3GS cause of restoring from a back up :( i want it to finish so i can toy with it.

and yes i was crazy enough to go with a buy out, time to sell my 3G on ebay YAY!!!
 
Fedex delivered the new 3G S for my wife Friday. She really likes her new white 16 gig. I think I am way more excited than her 'cause I got her mint-ish original iphone. Loaded 3.0 thur night and I love it. Love the spotlight search. I have pages of apps so I use it to find and launch. First new phone I've had in about 5-6 years (been using hand-me-downs). I think I like the landscape KB for text. We've been with att mobile since the beginning and I've never had a text plan till now. Yay!
 
I got my 3Gs yesterday to replace my BlackBerry Bold. This new iPhone is a night and day difference from the BlackBerrys and I have been a BlackBerry fan for years.
 
I got it mad early today and I must say, it is amazing. I can not even lie. First the look compared to the first iPhone is so amazing. The speed just adds to the quality of the phone. The video camera is great because it eliminates the use of carrying a video camera. I believe it is the best phone I have ever bought thus far... Thank you apple... 10/10
 
My .02 worth:

First off some background: I got the 1st gen iphone at launch. Had it up until a few months ago when the phone met the washing machine. Been using a loaner phone (Nokia 2610 or something) till the new one came out.

First off, the video / pictures are MUCH better than previous gens (co workers had 3g) I can finally take pictures of business cards for evernote and the square QR codes on websites and the apps can read it much more reliably. Never bothered with the case with that has a macro focus lens and now it's not needed.

The voice commands work pretty well. Haven't used it too much yet. The new coating on the glass is awesome. It's a lot less prone to fingerprints and "face grime" and when it is on there a quick wipe on the shirt and it's clean. Downside is no new cleaning cloth in new box.

Biggest complaint so far is the battery life. Friday I was playing with video stuff heavily and so I expected it to go down kinda quick. Saturday it was falling so fast that I just ran it down till the phone automatically shut off, and then had it charge fully. 6 hours after that, with little internet use and a few text messages it's around 40%. My only theory is apparently the 3g around me sucks, I'd only see 1-3 bars, usually 1 or 2. I just disabled 3g and now it's 3-5 bars. I remember this was an issue with people back when 3g came out last year. Sucks that 3g won't work for me although I live about 10 miles from downtown cleveland. Must just be a dead spot around here. I didn't expect 12 day charge cycles like I got with the nokia [sic] but I could get the 1st gen to last a whole weekend sometimes if I don't use it much.

As an aside, after like 4 months of no iphone the first apps I made sure were back up and working were Zenbe Lists and Evernote. The "hipster pda"--a bunch of 3x5 note cards--worked well enough but zenbe is so much easier.

Overall I'm happy with it compared to 1st gen. I'm thinking with 3g disabled it will solve my battery issues. Then just turn it on whenever I need to use the internet. Sucks, but no other real alternative at the moment.
 
Probably just thought of the most minor annoyance of my 3GS.

I want anti-aliasing on the waveform in voice control :p
 
abiyng87 said:
Why would data speeds be better to begin with? You bought a new phone, you didn't upgrade AT&T's network.
Click to expand...

My original iPhone used the Edge Data Network which has a much lower top speed than the 3G network. Apple advertised the "3G" as 5x faster.

My speed tests with my Old iPhone were typically in the 128kbps range. My 3G speed tests with the new 3G S iPhone are showing speeds in the 256kbps. As it happens I have an AT&T 3G aircard as well, whose speed tests in the same location show speeds of 1.2mbps.

So my 3G S data performance is abysmal, indicating a problem with provisioning, a problem with this particular phone, or a problem with the 3G S in general. If I can't get better speeds than I'm getting I won't be keeping it thats for sure.
 
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