

Returning The iPhone After Two Weeks Of Daily Use - rami
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/27/AR2008072701417.html

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silencio
I'm not sure I agree with him. I have an iPhone 3G. My boyfriend is a die hard
anti-Apple fanboy (sigh, us two are complete opposites) and has a samsung
blackjack II and is tempted to get a blackberry bold when released. One of his
coworkers has an n95 he loves to death.

 _All three of us_ have pretty pathetic battery life on 3g.

My iPhone only dies faster than their two phones because they won't stop
playing crash bandicoot, dizzy bee, tap tap revenge, and de blob on my phone.
Meanwhile there's really nothing interesting to do on their phones besides
snoop on their emails and the games that exist for windows mobile etc. aren't
really...as fun. That is all.

(Also, the above would correspond with my opinion and experience that _all_ 3G
smartphones have awful battery life anyway, so if that's the only reason why
he switched then that's not much of one.

He says he mostly does email and voice calls though. I don't know where he
lives that his calls are dropped and he gets little to no signal, but my
iPhone gets comparable signal to the two other smartphones and I've never had
a dropped call (except when I was a couple floors underground). I will admit I
almost never actually call anyone on my phone though; total talk time in 1
year and 1 month is around 1 day 6 hours. But I do lots of email! And it's a
perfectly fine device for that. Just those blasted games that everyone wants
to play...)

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LKM
His main (and only) issue with the iPhone seems to be battery life.
Interestingly, tests have shown that the iPhone's battery life is about on par
(somewhat better, in fact, see links at the end) than other 3G phones' battery
lives. However, people are using the iPhone way more than other phones, so the
limited battery life is more noticeable.

So he basically returned the iPhone because he liked it so much that he used
it way more than any other phone he's owned.

Simple solution: Turn off 3G when you don't need it.

iPhone 3G battery life comparisons:

<http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3353>

[http://gizmodo.com/5024804/iphone-3g-battery-life-beats-
the-...](http://gizmodo.com/5024804/iphone-3g-battery-life-beats-the-
competition-apples-own-tests)

~~~
silencio
The other issue present on the iPhone and not on most other smartphones is the
lack of a removable battery. I suspect battery packs and power-related
accessories are going to be pretty popular with the 3G iPhone.

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jedc
I don't particularly agree with him, either.

If you're doing sensible things, like turning off push e-mail when you're in
the office, not keeping 3G on when you're in patchy coverage, etc. it should
last you the day. I live in London, where there's 3G signal _everywhere_,
which helps a bit.

We really need a developer to step up and design an iPhone app that would let
you save and easily switch "states" that could flip all of the various power-
management affecting settings at once. (3G, push, GPS, WiFi, etc.) Someone who
does this could easily sell it to virtually every iPhone owner.

~~~
briansmith
Why do you consider "turning off push e-mail" and "not keeping 3G on when
you're in patchy coverage" sensible? Push email shouldn't be much more
expensive in terms of battery life than SMS. The phone should know enough
about what you need to turn 3G on or off automatically.

~~~
ajross
Absolutely agree. The idea that the user is responsible for diddling around
with complicated settings in order to get an essential feature* to work flies
directly in the face of the way Apple products are supposed to work. I don't
have one: is it really that bad? That's a showstopper for a huge number of
users if true.

* And yeah, I'd put "24+ hours of battery life" way up there on the list of essential features for any device that goes in a pocket.

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bootload
_"... The iPhone 3G is not for me. I've returned mine exactly two weeks after
I committed a Friday and Saturday morning to buy one. ... to browse the
internet and use those cool applications, but as a phone and communications
device the iPhone leaves me wanting more ..."_

Interesting opinion especially after listening to Dave Winer talking about how
he develops on the highest end hardware he can get his hands on because the
magic time to create a useful app in his opinion is approx. 3 years. At that
time the rest of the users catch up and you magically have an
application/service ready built ~
[http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/whyIdInvestInIphoneApps.mp...](http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/whyIdInvestInIphoneApps.mp3)
[20Mb, 10:25Min] The parent article can be found here ~
[http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/07/26/listeningRespect...](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/07/26/listeningRespectAndTeamwor.html)

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lyime
Wow It bugs me when people don't really understand technology and development.
Especially journalist, they just leave a bad taste and lead people in the
wrong direction.

Those who are familiar with the iPhone software 2.0, Its is buggy to say the
least, and people I know who are testing the 2.1 are pleased with it.
Apparently the battery life is improved. Like most of you I agree, turn of the
features you are not using. You really don't need wifi and 3G on at all times,
I know its counter intuitive but its a developing technology and it will
improve over time (battery life).

Although I am a bit miffed that Apple did not do enough testing and QA on the
2.0 software before launching, I have no doubts that they will fix it.

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nailer
Releasing a 3G version with an even more severe version of the 2Gs battery
issues made much worse product.

The weird thing is, Nokia can do 3G and Webkit on the N95 and N96 with these
probs.

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geuis
So... If he's returning his I'll take it. We've been sold out here in SF for 2
weeks.

