Due to a series of misadventures, I have a new iPhone. Previously I’d been using my trusty, beloved, iPhone 1st gen on the EDGE network. Slow, yes, but it was my phone, it did what I wanted, and I liked it. Circumstances beyond my control made my upgrade, a full 10 months before I had intended to consider it, the most viable option.
I’ve had three ‘problems’ with it.
Short Battery Life
Today, on a fresh charge, I turned on music for about an hour to get to work, downloaded my email and checked my rss feeds. Two hours of ‘use’ total, depending on how you math it. Got to work and check and my battery was down 20%. I recharged as I googled what the heck was up with that, and people think it’s either ‘bad email settings’ (possible that my email never stopped checking), or ‘bad network settings.’ Three fixes were to reboot the iPhone, delete all my email accounts (off the phone) and reset them, or a full reset of the iPhone. Option number one seems to have fixed it. By the way, you reboot the iPhone by holding down the ‘sleep/wake’ button (the one of the top of the phone, to the right side) until you get a screen asking you run a slider across to turn the phone off. Do that, wait till it’s been off a minute, and then press the sleep/wake button again. Voila!
No 3G
The next thing I noticed was that after I ran a ‘restore’ on my phone (which is I took all the settings and info from my old phone and put it on the new one), I was stuck on the EDGE network. I’m paying for 3G, I want 3G. Why don’t I have it? Back to google, who gave a lot of crap answers about bad SIM cards, but then I stumbled on someone who said he reset his network settings to fix a bad WiFi password. It occurred to me that my old phone was 2G (aka EDGE) and since I knew the new phone had saved my WiFi password, it stood to reason that it saved my preferred network settings! I reset the network settings (go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings) and suddenly I’m on 3G! I will have to re-enter all my WiFi passwords, but that’s a small price to pay.
It feels funny
The last problem is tactile. The 3G iPhone has different glass than the old one, and it smudges more. The old phone felt ‘soft’ and I never worried about the smudges. My brother, on the other hand, is a fuss and has a screen cover on his to protect it. I bareback the iPhone. But after one day I find myself thinking I want a screen protector. There’s stuff like InvisiShield for $25, that promises fork protection (seriously, the video make me wince), but for now, I’m shoving my phone in an old iPod slip-case when it’s in my pocket.
Oh, and if you get the three being silent joke, then the outpatients are out in force tonight.