I stood in the line for five hours. I signed a two-year contract. And I traded a perfectly useful (and almost new, because Apple had just replaced it) iPhone for the new iPhone 2.0 just to be a geek. Or maybe a jerk.
I’m not unhappy with the 3G iPhone. But I wasn’t unhappy with the other one either. On balance, I probably would have been fine with not upgrading, but I cannot resist a new toy. I singlehandedly power the consumer economy.
Here’s the good and bad news: 3G is not that much faster than 2G. When I send photos, the best way to send them is wi-fi. I don’t think my new phone is that much faster. Does it put my life in my pocket? No. I will still take a laptop to conferences to live blog, and when I edit someone’s book, you can be sure it will be on a big screen:-) (Yes, I do that.)
The battery life has already been commented on ad nauseum. I suppose if you turn off the GPS and wi-fi it lasts longer, but then what’s the point? I actually do turn them both off through most of the day, and I carry the charger with me as well.
The form factor is almost the same, except my new phone has a white plastic back, which will soon be obscured by the case I ordered, because I’m sure it will scratch. It’s spiffy, though. The new phone’s a little thinner, but you wouldn’t notice it unless you weighed them with one in one hand and one in the other. Who cares about the small improvement?
The App Store is the best part of the new launch, and I could have had that on my old phone. But I forgive Apple the whole Saturday experience because I love the App store. I have downloaded Typepad, iZenGarden, SmugMug, Brightkite, and Kyte.tv. I’m not really a gamer, so I don’t have any of those games yet. I will try them, but they’re not first on my list.
The Brightkite app doesn’t work well, and neither does SmugMug. That’s disappointing. Typepad, which is the software I use for this blog is awesome. And IZen Garden is beautiful.
I must admit that I also really like the GPS services, because I can type in an address on Google Maps and it will draw me a purple line from where I am to where I need to go. I’ve never had that before.
Am I satified? Yes. Am I blown away? No. If you don’t have an iPhone, get one. If you have a first generation iPhone and you want to spend money on something else, keep it.
