So unless you have been living under a rock, you know the iPhone 3G came out yesterday. I decided a little while back that I was going to pick one of these up. Before you berate me and call me some sort of apple fanboy, try to follow my logic:
- Currently I have Sprint, which has terrible coverage in my area.
- My current phone is a Palm Treo 700wx, which pretty much sucks.
- I have been shopping for a GPS Unit for my car for a long time.
- iPhone is $199, GPS units cost at least that much by themselves.
- AT&T has great coverage in my area.
So, to me the decision was easy. I mean, don’t get me wrong I do like apple products, but I didn’t run out and by the original iPhone, it just wasn’t worth it. The 3G iPhone is feature rich and very competitively priced. To be quite honest I don’t see why there is so much animosity toward iPhone fans/owners. Many people have smart phones which are just as expensive if not more.
Another point I would like to clear up is that I did not camp out for it. I simply called the Apple Store in my local mall, they told me they had plenty of inventory, so I went. I went at 2PM. The line was very long and I stood in it for about 3 hours, but what else was I going to do? Here are some shots of the line taken using my Treo.
The line was very calm, lots of conversations going on, kinda fun actually. The problems started happening once I got into the store, which was at about 5pm. I had heard there were lots of problems apple was having activating the phones. This was the case for me. I suppose I was asking for it though when I decided that I would get two iPhones on a family plan porting one number from Sprint, and one from a Pre-paid account. The problems seemed to come from the number porting part of things for me. They actually had to send two 16gb iPhones back to warehouse because they got “half-way activated” and could no longer be sold. So I formally apologize to those two people who couldn’t get a phone because of me.
All in all, the process was pleasant, I left the house in the afternoon, and got back home in time for dinner with a shiny new iPhone. Whoever camped out for it, I feel sad for you. I took some obligatory shots of the unboxing process for your viewing pleasure, sorry they came out like crap. Even though it is against the grain of the normal topics I write about I plan to write another article this weekend outlining the process I have gone through setting my phone up to sync with my various computers, windows and mac.