I got up early, arriving at 7.15 at lakeside. There was already a few people queueing and by 8.00 there was about 20 of us. One of the Apple store guys did a count down, and there were cheers and clapping all very American. I got in with the first 6 people.
I wanted the White 32gig iPhone 3GS, it wasn't loaded in the system. First I gave my customer data, bank details and chose my tariff and O2 user name. Then despite the system trouble the guy went and got my iPhone, yeh! And loaded it manually. After activating with the O2 software, I had to go to the Genius Bar to get the Sim card fitted and have it hooked up with iTunes. After that I chose my case, and awesome I was now an iPhone owner, and I shared a few knowing smiles with other new owners. With a minor problem and the case choosing time it took me about 45 mins.
So I went to my car and added some contacts and tried to make my first phone call, but it failed. No service, a quick play with carrier settings and still no service. I went back into the Apple store and the guy hard restarted my iPhone and still no service. He told me it may take up to 24 hours. It turns out it took it until 1.30am the following morning after I did a hard reset, which was co-incidental or means I could have had service earlier. That seems poor O2 I've never waited that long for a Sim to activate.
I had been on the phone using non phone features; which are amazing, and then stayed up for the 3 hours using it over 3G and I can report impressive performance.
Personal shopping appointment
As a tip if I had booked a personal shopping appointment at the apple store I would have gone in the other queue and at lakeside that would have meant going in first. It just so happened I got in first anyway.
Standard features
The camera is cool; taking photos, MMS-ing them, shooting video, uploading to YouTube. It's got an amazing browser, and fantastic integration with my web email. The text messaging conversations is cool, and keeps things organised. It's got a built in dictaphone. Google maps integration and the new compass are cool. And what is fantastic is the iPod, it's a full blown iPod. A quick sync with my MacBook Pro and I've got my full music collection, pod-casts, vod-casts and films. And the music will continue in the background, this is great.
Then the app store...
Downloading apps is brilliant fun. It kindly organises into free and charged apps and gives user reviews and ratings.
@games
The first game I downloaded was UnblockMe, a really addictive puzzle game. Then I got Pac Man (controls could be better) and Tetris (controls work perfectly). Labyrinth 3D is a excellent ball in wooden box - avoid the holes games, it's brilliantly implemented and has fun controls. Sol Free is solitaire/patience and other card games, it's okay but cards so small it's hard to select them sometimes and has no zoom function, not as fun as it should be. My favourite pass time at the moment is Mafia Wars and Zynga Vampires.
@fun
For a bit of fun, the SmackTalk application is absolutely hilarious. have a hamster repeat everything you say in a high pitched voice, it is BRILLIANT! Bubble-wrap, Zippo Lighter, light-sabre and iPint are also cool novelties. Funny Pics is alright but not that well implemented, should have a Twitter, facebook and flickr sharing function.
@useful apps
I've got the facebook app and tweetie. Then I've got an RSS reader. Google Analytics has a very good iPhone interface. There is an excellent weather app called Fizz Weather, and a task management tool called Things that is really worth the 5.99 quid download price-tag. If you want to record your travels, checkout MyMovingMap by David de Niese.
For online radio check out RadioBox. Drinks is simply magnificent if you're into cocktails. Find recipes, add favourites, and build a list of ingredients and list what you can make with them, and it's free!
Istumble is a good idea but not particularly well implemented, bring on a proper version of Stumple Upon please.
Tips
Some tips that I have learnt from friends is holding down on the screen for a little while gives the magnifying glass to let you place the cursor, and then letting go gives the cut/paste context menu.
You can go into settings and sounds to turn off the noise of key presses; especially good when you are in company.
Text prediction, when a little bubble comes up with a suggestion just press space and that word will be used, if you don't want to use that word then click on the suggestion. This is a little counter-intuitive because for me as at first I thought pressing the suggestion would choose it.
Apps I like
I've already given a review of some of the apps I've installed so far. My favourite apps are Facebook and Tweetie. I hope some of my other favourite social sites will build some similar decent apps. SmackTalk is also very cool.
iPhone freezing
Very occasionally the iPhone has frozen. In each case I locked the phone and then unlocked it, and it immediately responded. Slightly annoying, from asking another iPhone owner it seems this is abnormal. Overall the iPhone is amazingly fast, but a little annoying when this has happened. A far better solution would be to give a waiting symbol on the screen.
Landscape mode playing up
Another issue was more just a problem with getting used to the phone. I thought landscape wasn't working, though it's just because there is a slight delay and also because somethings don't support landscape mode, e.g. the browser in Tweetie.
Waiting for service
This was somewhat annoying; that the phone said no service for so long. It did eventually get service. It would have been nice to have been warned about this before purchasing.
Wifi setup
When I first Tried to set up Wifi it struggled to find signal, then suddenly it found my network and it's worked perfectly since.
Things they could improve
@Landscape mode not in everything
Lots of the phones functionality and downloadable apps don't have landscape mode... It's a shame because when it works it's great. Apple should take the lead, and not let apps through unless they have a landscape mode. Also it would be good if you could landscape mode it without rotating the camera. Also the desktop photo is not rotatable, into landscape mode, which is a bit odd.
@Integration with Twitter and facebook and flickr
It would be nice is if with links, audio, video and images you were given the option to add to Tweetie and the Facebook app.
@Publishing images
Video integration with YouTube is excellent but for images not so much. E.g. if you've got an image in a browser you can copy it, but how do you save that in your photo library or upload to Flickr?
@Netvibes and rss integration
There is no built in rss software unfortunately, Free RSS is very good however it's rss setup doesn't work properly. The only way I have found to do it is copy the rss URL and edit it to remove the apple reader prefix and replace the encoding, and then pasting back into the rss reader. Come on Apple, clicking on an rss feed should allow you to add to an rss reader. I would have used netvibes, but the rss reader in that doesn't work properly with Safari.
@Caps lock
As far as I can tell there is no caps lock functionality, I hope I am wrong.
@Predictive text
Predictive text was slightly unintuitive. Also it seems to think my name is keV and keeps replacing what I type with that, and I haven't worked out how to fix that.
@Battery life
Battery life it not perfect; when using intensively I was only getting 3 to 5 hours before I needed to charge. However when only using it occasionally it lasts plenty of time. It also goes pretty well when you are playing audio loudly.
@positioning of the cursor
On some apps this didn't always work perfectly, though maybe just me getting used to the phone. Infact this is one of the only things that took a while to get used to. Despite what I'd heard the keyboard was easy to use straight off, in fact I wrote this post on my iPhone.
@Google Docs
Come on Google! The speadsheet works, but you can only view documents and not update them (I hope they resolve this, alternatively making a application for google docs would be awesome).
Overall opinion
I am extremely impressed with the iPhone; it's a phone, camera, video recorder, iPod, dictaphone, games machine, and mini netbook all in one. I am completely addicted and don't know what I did before I had this! :-) oh yes. Compared to my previous phone, a Nokia N73, this is absolute game changing. And how cool does it look?
Overall rating: 10/10