Poll: iPhone 3G - 6 months on, are you still happy?

[b0rn2sk8]

So guys it’s been almost 6 months since its release. The novelty has gone. How do the early adopters feel about their phones now?

My thoughts:

It’s a good device in principle. It excels greatly over the competition in a few areas. But I just find it really restrictive in some areas and completely lacking in others which I knew about when I got it, but they are really getting to me now.

I’m finding allot of niggles with it and well its nowhere near as fast and fluid as the blogs make out on the net especially when comparing to other handsets. SMS app seems to take forever to open. Even simple apps like clock take over 3 seconds to open. Whereas the phone app is almost instant. It’s no fatty, but it’s not the lean mean UI machine it’s made out to be.


Things I love:
Clutter free clean UI
Facebook app, this is the most used app on my phone, thinking about it, it's the only 3rd party app i use.
Decent web browsing
16GB of iPod
The screen
Physical silent mode switch, this might seem simple but I love it.

Things that niggle me:
Lack of consistency with the speed of the UI, some are real slow, others lightning fast.
Lack of any kind of forwarding, be it email, text or contact.
Back plastic seems brittle compared to the front, mines got a few deep gouges and the speaker hole has a small chip

Things I hate:
Battery life, one word: Dire. I consider myself a light user, and I have to charge every day, this is a major problem.

O2's 3G network and signal strength in general, I know this is subjective and location based, but I rarely leave major cities and well it’s just dire compared to T-mobile & N95.

Camera - I didn’t think I'd miss it, I hardly used my N95 camera, but I really do, I hate to use the term but I really am a sad panda when a £80 PAYG trounces a top of the range £790 contract phone.

Bluetooth - there’s there, but really it’s not. Do I really need to go into any more detail?

Overall satisfaction: Neutral - I’m not unhappy with the phone, but then I’m not overly happy with it either and apple seem to be adding more useless features such as Google street view rather than concentrating on the core features which are subpar compared to even 3-5 year old handsets. The app store is such a mess as well and iTunes search is dire.


What do the other early adopters think about their iPhones, what are you still loving, what is niggling at you and what do you really hate. I’m looking for responses from people who have had the phone at least 4 months.

Luke


Mods - overall satisfaction poll?
Highly satisfied
Satisfied
Neutral
un-satisfied
regret?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

I voted for satisfied in the end. I think i was having a bad phone day.

The thing that displeases me most is that apple have got the complicated things spot on. But the simple things that most, wait make that all phones have been doing well for years wrong. Thats what bugs me the most.

My battery life comments are valid though, although i did compare with a N95, I also have sat in my draw a HTC TyTN, which still destroys the iPhone in the battery department and it has a similar feature set, just lacks the very rarley used GPS.

Also with the build quality, you should not need to buy a case, or a plastic film to protect your phone. It should use the correct type of plastic to protect its self. I have never had issues with chipping or gouging or scratching on any other phone. All my old phones look as new and have never been used in a case or anything along those lines and roll arround in my pocket all day.

As for the app store, out of 10000 apps, i currently use 2. Facebook and Shazam. I have been tempted by a couple of apps but, just looking in the games section alone 90% of them are what i consider to be poor quality, poor concepts in general, old games that have been ported, overpriced or have zero replay ability. Which sums up the app store as a whole. I cant believe people buy stuff like iBeer which is currently the 8th on the list.

I think Apple just need to go back to basics, look at the core features of a phone and do better in those areas, this will improve the whole user experience. But those wont make fancy adverts to sell phones like things such as steet view or 9000 apps no one needs.

But currently nothing beats it for ease of use and web browsing and maybie media intagration. But in every other area the iphone has a match as far as functions that a modern phone needs (basically excluding games).

The next 12 months i think will be intesting, seeing where apple take the phone and what other manufactures can come up with to rival it.

Edit:

Just been looking on the internet at the characteristics of a Li-ion batteries used in the 3G. From what i have gathered a typical Li-ion lasts for 300-500 charge cycles or 2-3 years from manufacture. That makes me think as i have to charge every day, what the state of my battery will be in 6 months time when im way past that 300 charge cycle milestone and what apples stance on it will be. Also take into account ill still have 6 months left to run on the contact.