iPhone 3GS revisit
So I got another iPhone 3GS about a week and a half ago, now that the jailbreak for 3.1 is out, and supposedly ATT has fixed their signal issues around Denver. I ported my number over from my current T-Mobile/Android phone and decided to give the phone a thorough trial.
First of all, the phone is about 1000% better jailbroken. You can actually do novel things like load apps not blessed my Apple and have a background image behind your app icons (wow!), along with nifty things like add a calendar, unread email list, etc, to the lock screen. I found that very useful. Also, there is a nice Cydia app that will display notification icons on the top bar for email, txt, etc. This was nice. Given that you can have your SMS and email icons on any page, I liked to be able to see if I had a message without having to unlock the phone and find the correct icon.
Next, the backgrounder app is awesome. I could do things like keep pandora running and use another app on my phone…. kinda like Android lets you do right out of the box.
Notifications are new to the 3.0 OS, and they are nice as well. Bejive IM is excellent, better than the built-in Android IM apps. Also, since there is no push Gmail (unless you use your 1 and only ActiveSync account), there is a push notification app that alerts you to a new mail. Gmail is not quite as good as Android, but thats not unexpected as Android is Google after all. But Exchange support is much better on iPhone.
So at this point, I was pretty happy with the phone, the apps, how things were set up, etc. But then ATT came in and killed it for me.
ATT claimed they added new towers all over the Denver area and added 850MHz G service as well. I did notice that the service was much better than previously when I have testing out iPhones. But there were some interesting issues…
1) Service degraded quickly inside. I would have full 3G in the parking lot of my gym and walk inside and go to no service within 10-15 feet of the door. I had no service in my parking garage (Verizon has half 3G signal and TMO has 3/4 bars of Edge). Also, in the elevator in my building I had no service, again VZ and TMO both had signal.
2) Data service was reliable, but voice was not. With little exceptions, if I had any bars, I could get data services, txts, web, IM, etc. 3G speeds seemed fast, web pages loaded quickly. But I could have full bars of 3G and drop a call multiple times. And when I did have a call that stayed up half the time myself or the other person couldn’t understand each other. I must have said “wait, what?” 50 time a day. I find it ridiculous that a service can’t keep calls up, after all its a PHONE.
There are several routes a drive almost daily between the office, home, gym, etc. One is a major freeway between Denver and Boulder, and the others are surface roads around town. This morning, I was on a work call and I dropped the call 3 times on the freeway, another time in the middle of Boulder, and a final time near my office. This was annoying at best when talking to a friend, stupid when trying to keep a work convo going, and downright insane when trying to talk to a service like your bank or any other place where you call in, get in a queue and press 8 different numbers to get to the right place… only to be disconnected and having to do it all over again.
And the prize for dealing with this? $120 a month plan fee…. 900 minutes, “A-List”, unlimited data and unlimited SMS. It is unfortunate that you have to go to the 900 min or more plans to get A-List. I dont need 900 minutes, ever, especially with Google Voice. Compare this to my TMO account, 300 minutes, unlimited data/SMS, MyFavs.. for $70 a month.
3) Battery life. Maybe jailbreaking and adding some not so official apps hurts you here.. but I found the batt life on the 3GS to be disappointing. Today I unplugged my phone and left for work at 8am. I had a 10minute phone call over BlueTooth on the way to the office, checked some emails a few times, sent 5-6 SMS, and had a few IM convos. Oh and I played Oregon Trail for about 10min during a boring phone conf. And my batt was down to 18% by 2:30.
I never had batt issues with Android, I could go at least all day and all evening with much more activity than that.
So, in the end, I’m back on Android. I really want to like the iPhone, but its impossible for me to deal with the issues ATT has, and the iffy battery life.