Apple iPhone 3G - Australia

Features

Apple iPhone 3G – Australia

12 August 2008

You can read about the 1st gen iPhone there, which I’ve been using for 10 months now. Of course when the new one came out, and available in Australia, I was very tempted. And the day it came out, I was up early, and waiting in line at the Optus store in North Sydney. Unfortunately, I didn’t reserve one earlier in the month, so, well I couldn’t get one that morning. I didn’t immediately put in an order either, as I also wanted to see what the other operators would offer.

Still, it was itching… It’s the phone I always wanted: 3G speeds for browsing, wifi, GPS. Of course I already have all that for a long time in my Dopod D810, but really, windows mobile is sooo bad… I haven’t used that phone since I got my iPhone 2G last October. Every time I recharge it, and look at it, it’s sooo bad…

So I bit the bullet on July 17 and placed my order for a black 16 Gb iPhone 3G, on a 12 month, 39$ 500Mb Optus post-pay plan. They told me delivery would be 2 weeks. For my colleague, who placed his order at noon on the day of the release, it did take two weeks. But as you can see, it was almost 4 weeks. If they would have told me it would take 4 weeks back then, I wouldn’t have ordered it. You could get them at the Apple store pretty easy (though with considerable waiting lines of 2-3 hours during the weekend). When the Apple store in Chatswood Chase opened last weekend, you could walk in and out with one. It only hurt a little bit (the waiting), as I still had my iPhone 2G to play with. And an iPod tough to update to firmware version 2 (paid upgrade) and play with the new features, and especially the new apps from the Apple App Store on iTunes.

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Device info:

• Build quality is still fabulous, it looks fantastic. Though I still prefer the metal back.
• OSX Unix-based OS
• 3.5″ 480×320 at 163 ppi lcd
• GSM/HSDPA on 850/900/1800/1900MHz
• Camera 2M
• Innovative user interface
• Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR, WiFi 802.11 b/g,
• 115mm x 61mm x 11.6mm, 135g
• Stand-by: up to 250 hours (supplier values)
• Talk time: up to 8 hours (supplier values)
• Video time: up to 7 hours (supplier values)
• Music time: up to 24 hours (supplier values)

Apple iPhone 3G niceties (more of the same):

• The coolness factor.
• The interface, ease of use, the smoothness.
• Great email interface.
• The best mobile browsing experience, which is a full internet experience, while having lots of iPhone designed webapps.
• Great SMS interface (conversation).
• Google Maps.
• 16Gb for music, video, pictures.
• 3G, assisted GPS.
• A regular headphone jack, no need for an adapter to use other, better headphones.

Apple iPhone 3G not-so-niceties (still not perfect):

• The glass screen is scratch proof, but not so for smudges.
• Battery life is too short.
• Battery not accessible.
• No contextual menu, no Select/Copy/Paste.
• Limited bluetooth functionality, only for headphone (no internet sharing for example).
• Very limited customization, can only change the wallpaper (when in standby mode).