iPhone 3GS day two

The first day with the iPhone went far better than I expected.  I have to say learning how to use the iPhone has been one of the easiest  technical devices I have even used.

The next concern was whether or not the iPhone and At&T would work from my house.  I live in the country and while my old Sprint phone did work at the house it was never great.   The iPhone is a little better at the house but not much.  I was not certain it would work there at all.  I got the voice mail working again really easy.

The next morning I woke up and tried to wake up the iPhone.  It was totally dead.  Luckily I had brought the cable and AC adapter with me and found there was nothing wrong with the iPhone, it just had totally wiped out its battery.

The first lesson to know with the iPhone is to learn power management.  My old phone would run for at least a couple of days before it needed charging.  I learned that what I had done was had the WiFi on, the Bluetooth on, the 3G on and had left the phone where it was not connecting well with At&T.  It became obvious that with the iPhone I would need to have a way to charge it at home, at the store and in the car.  Oh well I had planned to go to the Apple Store and Micro center anyway on Sunday to get a case and some other stuff.

Saturday June 20, got to the store.  I knew I would be going up to Cincinnati so I decided to try the Edge Internet.  Problem – no Data Service available was what the screen said.  (All of the Internet stuff I had been doing had been on WiFi.)  Went to the At&T website and it still would not let me log in to my account.  9AM on Saturday and it back to the phone for At&T tech support.  Once again I got a very pleasant lady and she checked my account.  She turned on my data service – she had me go to the At&T site on Edge and it worked.  Great service and help once again from At&T.  (Somehow in the rush they had not turned on my data service even though I had of course ordered it when I ordered the phone.)

Sunday I went up to the Apple Store and got a case, tried 3G which is a big improvement over Edge.  Got to try Maps and navigation on the phone and found a neat app called Where which can tell me Where things are.  Maps does not do too bad.  The interstate I normally take to get to the Apple store was closes so I ended up on a different street.  I typed in Apple Store in maps and it knew where I was and how to get to the Apple store.

I had tried a Garmin GPS a few years ago.  While it was good at telling me where I was at – I never learned to get the thing to tell me how to go someplace.  This was an early Garmin and I understand the newer GPS units are a lot more user friendly.  The iPhone was a snap.  All I did was type in Apple Store and it gave me a way to get there.    You can type in restaurant and it will show what is nearby.

The 3GS experience continues to go well.  Things just seem to work.  I may sit down and read the on line iPhone manual one of these days, so far I certainly have not needed any sort of documentation.  I have learned to always charge it up at night when I get home.  I have learned to turn on only what I am using at the time to conserve battery power and have a charger at work, at home and in the car.

I am using a screen saver (it sure is a good thing that they put two of these in the screen saver package – I totally messed up the first one I tried to put on the phone.) I got a rubber like case by incase that the phone is in – (I have dropped it a couple of times since,)  a mount so I can see it in the car.

In summary the iPhone experience has gone well, the phone is very user-friendly and easy to use.  I can for the first time actually text.  The camera works well and so does the video camera.  Something to get for sure is an app called Evernote, put this on your computers and your iPhone.  You can share photos, videos, text, almost anything from computer to iPhone and back.  Mobile me work really well also to sync the phone to a computer.

Tags: 3GS, Apple Store, iPhone, Maps