Need Feedback by IPhone Users (Vanity)

I am actively considering switching to the iphone but have heard mixed reviews about the usage with the AT&T network. I am looking for feedback from Freeper users.

Are you able to download webpages in a reasonable time and do you get kicked off the network in the middle of browsing ?

How is the quality of phone calls and do you get back connections / dropped calls frequently ? I live in the Greater Boston area.

Have you been able to sync your iphone with just the "contacts and calendar" from MS Outlook ?

I love the features of the IPhone and am very close to getting it, any user experience on the above questions would be greatly appreciated.

My grandson bought himself one (first day). Phone lasted about two weeks went belly up. Apple gave him a new one, lasted about one week. Currently he is one his 4th phone, this one still in the shop.
My experience is that the phone is a piece of junk, good concept though.

Many folks here at our company use blackberries and seem to like them. We have AT&T and it seems to work well enough, and I have AT&T for my own personal phone (Motorola Razr V3). New phones are sometimes like new cars; it's best to wait a while for the bugs to get worked out. I waited until the Razr had been out for a year before I got one, and by the time I did all the bugs were worked out of the design. I've had no problems with mine at all. If it were me, I'd wait a while on the iPhone until it's a bit more perfected.

Have you been able to sync your iphone with just the "contacts and calendar" from MS Outlook ?

On another note, I'm the IT guy for my company and I cannot articulate how much I purely despise Outlook. Where I work, folks who are going to be away from their computers just shutdown Outlook on their computers so that the email comes to their phones instead of their PCs. My experience is that synching anything with Outlook almost always results in near total disaster. Outlook is one of the most fragile pieces of commercial software on the market.

I have an iphone and work in the Greater Boston area. My personal experience with the iphone has been nearly flawless. The reception has been as good or better than with other cell phones. Edge downloads typically are in the 200 kbps range (vs 900 kbps for WiFi). I frequently visit FR on it and have experienced no difficulty in general with surfing, save the occasional Safari crash (this happens once or twice a month and just kicks you back to the home menu, relaunching Safari results in reloading of the webpages from before the crash). Since getting the iphone, I’ve stopped carrying my laptop around and have set it up as a workstation on my desk.

I have not synced contacts, but the calendar syncing works great.

Battery life for me is quite adequate. If not doing extensive surfing and music listening, I charge every other night. Otherwise, I try to charge every night. I had a couple of ipod wires which I’ve set up at work and home so I can sync the iphone and charge it while working. My car FM transmitter for my ipod has turned into my car charger for the iphone.

My only beef is lack of MMS, I hope this will come in a future firmware update.

All in all I highly recommend it.

Thanks, that was useful.

So to sync the calendar do you have to have itunes and then use a USB connection to update. The same should work for contacts as well. My concern is with the Edge network, when they upgrade to 3G the current IPhones will not work with the faster speeds.

Have you used the IPhone outside the Greater Boston area, how does it work in other parts of the country ?

I agree with your thought of not buying a VER 1.0 because of all the design screw ups. Apple is probably the only company I would buy a first release product from because their design process is very very good. Even then the next version of the IPhone has got to be better.

Agree with your take on Outlook as well. Other than MS Office (which was originally designed for the Mac), pretty all of Microsoft’s products are inherently and permanently flawed

Agree with your take on Outlook as well. Other than MS Office (which was originally designed for the Mac), pretty all of Microsoft’s products are inherently and permanently flawed

I haven't used Office 07 yet, so I don't now much about it's flaws or pluses yet. I've liked 2003 pretty well (Outlook excepted). I always thought Excel was their best product.

I bought a new computer recently (a gaming rig) and, because DirectX 10 won't run on XP, I went ahead and got Vista Home Premium. I was really concerned about it, but I'll have to say, it's turned out to be alright so far. I've only hit a few snags which I've found workarounds for. Then again, maybe I'm lucky; I've got a friend who's a web designer and he installed Vista Business on one of his machines and it's been nothing but an abject nightmare since then to hear him tell it. I know that Vista is much more stable and solid at this stage of its development than Win 95 or Win 98 was when they were this new, or at least it seems that way.

IMHO...don't waste your time with the iPhone - and here's why...

Have you gone to an Apple store to hold one in your hand? I thought that it felt cheaply constructed and would not hold up well to normal wear and tear. The user interface is nice, but the container is of poor quality.

Guess what you would get to do when it is time to change out its battery? Answer: Send it to Apple and pay them to do it.

The iPhone was released using EDGE technology. This is like putting a Moped engine in a sports car. There is absolutely no excuse for them not using G3 technology.

It's true that there is no keyboard - and this can really be a pain sometimes.

It's really expensive for a cell phone using older technology.

Answer: Buy an AT&T 8525 phone. It's about the same price, has G3 technology - which makes a HUGE difference in download speeds, has a slide-out keyboard, and runs the full suite of Windows Mobile. And guess what? You can even change its battery without sending it to the manufacturer (you would think Apple would have learned its lesson by now).

I have owned the 8525 for over 2 months and love it. I'm also a small businessman who needs a solid productivity tool - and it fills the bill. The iPhone is more of a play toy, which is why you won't be seeing it replacing corporate standards.

Yes, you use iTunes to sync contacts and calendar.
It is my understanding, based on various apple rumor sites, that a 3G version of the iphone is in the works and would probably become available sometime around the summer of next year. Whether this happens or not depends on Jobs, apparently he thinks that current 3G chips are too battery-intensive.

I have used the iphone in the northeast and south extensively and I find for most urban areas Edge speed is fairly uniform. I have also used it(very sparingly) in Europe and it worked very well.

I was an early adopter and I thought it was great even at the initial price.

Have you gone to an Apple store to hold one in your hand? I thought that it felt cheaply constructed and would not hold up well to normal wear and tear. The user interface is nice, but the container is of poor quality.

I have held one and "cheaply constructed" would not be anywhere near the descriptions I would use for it. Sounds like FUD to me.

There is absolutely no excuse for them not using G3 technology.

Yes, there is... battery life and the unavoidable fact that 3G is available in less than 3% of coverage areas in the US.

It's true that there is no keyboard - and this can really be a pain sometimes.

The virtual keyboad is not a pain once you have learned how to use it. You've said you've merely looked at one and held it briefly... ergo, this conclusion is not based on experience but FUD.

The iPhone is more of a play toy, which is why you won't be seeing it replacing corporate standards.

Perhaps Apple is not targeting "corporate" users? There are a lot more consumer users than business users out there. Have you seen Apple say this is a replacement for corporate use phones? Nope. They haven't.

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