3G iPhone – the hype is real

Friday morning. I woke up at 5:30 in the AM; The B.C.D. as my friend Felix would say. I drove like a maniac to the AT&T store. Waited in line for three hours. Paid 350 bucks for the shiny new iPhone and… found out the iTunes activation server was down. 3 hours later, the server was back up and it got activated… but still didn’t work. Turns out the guy at the AT&T store screwed it up and scanned the wrong sim card. Finally, 12 agonizing hours later, my phone was good to go. And trust me when I say it was worth the wait.

1. 3G. What can I say? It’s fast. Dang fast. It’s not always in coverage, but so what? It works great by my house and office. And at the very least, it’s an expanding network, and the phone can still switch to Edge when 3G isn’t available. Which makes Apple’s excuse for not including 3G on the original iPhone all the more confusing.

2. GPS integration. On the first iPhone, you could figure out the general area you were in with it’s locate feature (which used cell tower triangulation). But sometimes the circle it would put you in was 2-3 miles large, if it even worked at all. The 3G iPhone with the built-in GPS drops a little blue dot in your exact position. It’s so good it can be a little freaky at times. Using that, you can geo-tag your photos, find nearby restaurants, gas stations, or even stalk your friends (if they want you to).

3. Various form factor updates. They fixed the headphone port! Holy hell. Why they chose to make it proprietary is beyond me. The tapered edges make it sit in your hand a lot more comfortably. The speakerphone is louder, the audio is much better. A lot of minor tweaks, but over all I love it. Buy it. Now!