Alright, it has some problems...

I'll admit it, the new Iphone is not all happiness and sunshine. It has some serious flaws that make it less than savory right now, but it's not as bad as some are making it out to be.

I've had some problems with it. One of the most frustrating is the 3G reception. Yes, I know you've heard many stories about this, read a ton of articles about how bad 3G is for this phone. However, just recently it has been discovered that it isn't the phone to blame, it's AT&T. Big surprise? I hope not, it's no secret that ATT has crappy data networks; even worse now that they have UMTS and GSM on 1 antenna. The CTO of ATT, John Donovan, came out recently to discuss the surmounting problems with their networks and just what it is they are doing to correct it. Essentially, all I saw was some technical jargon that made you feel impressed but overall I got the impression, "We make tons of money off of you and we really don't want to spend it on anything that would improve your service right now."
One of their top engineers admitted that they didn't have the experience to start troubleshooting potential problems and that they lacked the expensive equipment to help them in that capacity. Hmmmm? So ATT wants to assure us that they are doing something but refuses to give their engineers the tools they require to make sure that they achieve these lofty goals?

Even still, their admittance to a faulty network doesn't cover the frustration incurred when I'll be in the middle of a 5 bar phone call, only to have it drop to 0 and ruin the conversation, only to go immediately back to 5 bars. Okay, that's fine once, but having to call somebody back 6-7 times in a 5 minute conversation is just flat out unacceptable. Another of my complaints against the 3G is that the speed is nowhere near as fast as it has been claimed to be. If you can manage to stay on 3G long enough, you'll find that pages often open only a few seconds faster than on the much older EDGE technology (its been shown the safari 2.0 app loads things 1.5X faster than its predecessor did). Say you are bored in a car, or want to read some 20something guys crappy blog, if you surf in 3G prepare to have your battery drained faster than you can say, "Jump to Lightspeed." In about 1 hour, you'll be receiving the message for 20% battery life left, only to have the thing shut off a few minutes later. Very very convenient.
Another problem is that it has trouble acquiring or switching from Edge to 3G or vice versa. The most recent "quick fix" came from Apple and these geniuses suggested putting it into "Airplane Mode (turns off all connectivity to the phone)" and then back to normal mode. This will force the phone to find a network, but even that workaround takes a good 3-4 mintutes to work.

When your phone feels your worth enough to stay connected to a data network (which IS most of the time for EDGE), Safari may feel that it needs to sleep in just a touch longer and will randomly decide to boot you back to the home screen; more often than not losing whatever information you just looked up. This years Olympics was especially frustrating for me for multiple reasons, but some of the lesser ones were: NBC had crappy coverage and a poorly designed website to pair it with, and checking the medal count was infuriating since I either, couldn't surf the net because Safari didn't want to stay open or I couldn't connect to the network period.

Another big problem I have with it, is the updating, syncing, and restrictions placed on applications.

The updating is a big problem with mine. The last few times that I've attempted to update my applications from my phone, it has crashed mid update. Its a relatively small app that crashes my phone and makes it sit at the boot screen for a number of minutes, 9 at the most so far. The real kicker is that Apple once again came up with a brilliant work around....re-download all your apps and reinstall them. Wonderful, this is exactly how I wanted to spend my free time, re-downloading and re-configuring all my applications again. I had so much fun the first time, it's nothing to do it again.
You want to sync and backup your phone? Better hope that you have updated applications on both your desktop and your Iphone, otherwise, its going to be a very uneventful two hours. Yes, it could take that long. There isn't a choice where you can just sync, it wants to back up afterwards as well. That process has taken me up to 1 hour, the most recent one I performed only took 30 minutes. It's very safe to say that the process is by and far, way too long.
Restrictions come in two forms. The prohibiting of applications you may find useful. For example Netshare was very briefly on the App Store 2 times before it was pulled for good. This application allowed you to tether your phone to your laptop as a modem. It wasn't all that fast, but it still would allow you to use some websites that perhaps you would be unable to on your Iphone. It's seems trivial, but for some its super helpful.
This was pulled because ATT apparently had a fit about it and didn't want people using it to download torrents. In reality I think they just hated people using the unlimited data plan they paid for, for two devices instead of the one. After all, you can't regulate or charge the hell out of your customers when the phone is used this way.
The other form is before it can even get started. The SDK agreement has some fairly stringent rules put into place that take much of the fun and usefullness out of some of the more popular applications. Many of these rules have been put into place by the almighty Steve Jobs out of his incessant need to micromanage everything (why else would random people get personal emails from Steve saying that everything is going to be fine soon?).
The best example is that of Palringo, a very sleek chat application but it logs you out of everything as soon as you go back to the home screen. It would be nice if the thing could run in the background so my friends could respond. Sure, I could leave it open but then my battery will die a quick and horrible death.

So yes, there are some pretty serious flaws with the phone at the moment, and with each passing day the things I felt to be little issues are growing into large annoyances. Such irritation is beginning to drive me insane. Let's just hope that the firmware patch that Steve hinted at actually IS coming in September, the keyboard lag is going to make me throw my phone through the window.

So, that is that!


OTHER STUFF:

Somebody buy me this!


I have so many topics to write about, and the only time I seem to have to do it is at 3 in the morning. My writing suffers greatly when I am forced to write in this fashion. So, I apologize if it is not up to expectation.

See you all later.