Still liking my iPhone 3G...

I've had my iPhone 3G for almost a month now and I'm still happy with it despite a couple minor issues -- battery life and occasional freezing that requires a manual reboot.  The battery life on the phone seems to have gotten better with age.  I still mainly run on the EDGE network (3G disabled unless I need it on the road) and I don't make calls too often.  So over the past week, my battery life at the end of a long day is still around 40-50% of full capacity.

Many people would be disappointed by a phone who's battery life is half gone in a day, but it's better than my crappy old Sprint Motorola Q.  I really hated that phone, but apparently the newer version are much more solid (according to my CEO).  Now those old Motorola StarTacs were solid phones.  However, back then phones were simpler and were mainly just for phone calls on the road.

The thing that I love about the iPhone is that it offers a fair number of features while still remaining simple and easy-to-use.  It's the iPhone's touch-screen user interface that does it for me.  People can always argue that the iPhone lacks this or that, such as a removable battery or memory expansion slot, but I can deal with those shortcomings because I'm able to do everything faster on the iPhone.

I recently also got my work's Cisco VPN connection configured on the iPhone.  It was very easy to setup once I got the correct group secret password from our IT guy.  Interestingly, the VPN connection seems to more reliably connect on my phone than my computer (I'm guessing it's because of Vista).  Setting up the VPN configuration was one of the last things I wanted to do with the phone, and I think I'm set to do whatever I want with this handy little device now.

Now I just hope that Apple and AT&T continue to work towards resolving the 3G issues.  While in Berkeley yesterday afternoon, I was able to get great 3G coverage and browsing the web on the phone was a breeze.  I was actually surprised at the speeds I had (~800Kbps down).

Only other thing that would be really nice for iPhone users is copy/paste functionality.  I found this article interesting, it's about how Apple had touch-screen copy/paste 15-years ago: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/07/apple-solved-touchsc.html.

Retards on the road

During my commute home today, I became inspired to write about all the retards I see on the road each day. First of all, I hate commuting and especially hate the SF Bay Area traffic. I changed jobs earlier this year and sacrificed the luxury of working from home. Now I have a roughly 35 miles (one-way) commute to work every day, which sucks, but I still do it because this job does not require travel and being home with my baby boy every night is definitely worth the hassle of sitting in traffic.

Now, back to the retards on the road... this post focuses on California's new "hands-free device while driving" law. What I find annoying and amusing at the same time are the drivers who have to use their cell phone while driving and drive like retards as a result. Ever since California implemented the hands-free device requirement while driving on July 1st, 2008, I've noticed drivers who seem to be unaware of the new law or those who "try" to circumvent it.

On more than one occasion, I've been behind drivers who were driving particularly slow and end up holding up traffic while there is nobody in front of them. I'm usually eventually able to pass these "retards of the road" only to notice that they're talking on their cell phone. Prior to the implementation of the new California law, maybe I just never ran into these drivers as often, but now I see it occurring more. My guess is that these drivers are aware of the new law and they know they shouldn't be talking on their cell phones without a hands-free device, yet they still do it and convince themselves it's okay to do so if they drive extra-cautiously, which means slowing down to a crawl and pissing me off.

The situation that I observed today that inspired this post was another kind of retard. There was a guy in front of me who was chatting on his cell phone, but maybe he thought it was okay because he wasn't letting the phone touch his face. I watched him (while still paying attention to the traffic around me, of course) as he would bring the phone to his mouth to speak, then move the phone over towards his ear to listen, but without allowing the phone to make contact with his ear. I don't know if that's just how this guy typically uses his phone or if he thought he was cheating the law. I guess he could just tell a cop, "Officer, I wasn't using my cell phone, I was just waving my phone around my face!" All I can say is he looked like a retard. If you're going to break the law, then just do it.

Overall, I think this new law is good, but I doubt it's going to cause much of a change in people's driving behavior (as I've noted). When people need to be on the phone while driving, they may still need to dial phone numbers directly on the phone, which means they'll still look down to grab their phone, etc. The law apparently also does not prohibit people from texting or web browsing or using Google Maps on their phone while driving, which is probably much more dangerous.

I see a lot of bad drivers everyday, so there may be another post about "retards on the road" in the future.

After a week with the iPhone 3G...

I'm fairly happy with my iPhone 3G so far. I have experienced a couple of the common issues reported by most iPhone 3G users -- poor reception and dropped call with 3G and short battery life. However, those issues have not bothered me too much. I expected issues with this phone and knew that it wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. To ameliorate those two issues, I've simply disabled 3G and occassionally charge my battery during the day.

Actually, the battery life issue isn't a major problem at all in my opinion. Or maybe it's just gotten better after a week of usage, like others have reported. I rarely charge the iPhone at night and typically charge it for a few hours during the day, which seems like enough to keep it going. Over the weekend I did not charge the phone for a little over 24 hours and I still had about 20% battery life remaining. That was with a few phone calls, email push active, and a little Google Maps and web browsing on EDGE.

So despite the iPhone's battery life being worse that competitive phones, it's still better than my crappy Moto Q from Sprint. The iPhone 3G is a much better phone than my Q in general. The 2.0 software and the fact that I've jailbroken the phone make it easy to install new applications and keep me busy by wasting time playing on the phone. It's also great to finally have cell reception at home with AT&T versus Sprint's (and pretty much all other carriers') deadzone in our neighborhood.

Apple just released the 2.0.2 software update as well, but I have yet to install it. I'm not sure how it will affect my jailbroken applications, and I haven't read any reports that state the 2.0.2 update has fixed the 3G reception issues. So I don't feel the update is worth it right now.

So all in all, I'm pretty sure I'm keeping my iPhone 3G.

So I bought an iPhone 3G...

When the iPhone 3G was announced, I was excited and looking forward to getting it. I knew that by the time it was released, my Sprint contract would be expired so there would be no early termination fee. However, I was concerned about joing AT&T because I really can't stand their customer service. I went through a bad experience with them late last year where I had the original iPhone temporarily until I just couldn't tolerate the extremely poor customer service and decided to cancel our account.

This time around I've avoided AT&T as much as possible. I went and bought my iPhone 3G from the Apple store instead of an AT&T retail outlet. I first attempted to purchase the phone a week after it was released; that was a bad idea. I waited in line for 2 hours only to get nothing, the store ran out of phones. Afterwards, I started reading more and more about negative experiences people had with their new iPhones, so that made my doubt whether I really wanted this cool, new device.

Well, despite the iPhone 3G criticism and complaints on the Internet, I went to the mall early this past Sunday and picked up the phone. I decided that I just couldn't resist the urge of this shiny new gadget and I was tired of having terrible cell service at home with Sprint. I figured that between my wife and I that at least one of us should be able to consistently make a call.

With my new iPhone 3G, I've already installed a variety of free apps from Apple's AppStore, but last night I went ahead and jailbroke the phone as well. There are a lot of other cool apps you just can't get through Apple and you have the ability to further customize the appearance of the interface as well. These other apps are installed via the Cydia application.

I downloaded the PwnageTool v2.0.2 from here. I also found reviewing this step-by-step helpful even though the PwnageTool is straighforward to use: http://lifehacker.com/398906/jailbreak-iphone-20-with-pwnagetool.

Using the Winterboard app (which requires a jailbroken iPhone), I can change the "theme" of the UI, including background and icons. It's nice to add a personal touch to things, which I typically do to my cars as well. I currently have several themes downloaded to the phone and I still have to go through all of them to figure out which ones to keep and which to delete.

Another app I've installed after jailbreaking is BossPrefs, which provides direct access to enabling or disabling 3G, EDGE, WiFi, Bluetooth, and more without having to go through Settings > General > Network, etc.

The BossPrefs also allows me to quickly turn on or off SSH access to the phone. SSH access is another side benefit of jailbreaking your iPhone. You just need to install the OpenSSH application, which I think is actually installed by default, then you can SSH into your iPhone! This is great because you can then easily browse the files on your iPhone from a computer and do a lot of other cool stuff. I have yet to really play with this capability, but I hope it becomes an easy way to transfer data back and forth from the iPhone if necessary using something like WinSCP or similar.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase. It's a fun little gadget, essentially a mini-computer in your hands. What I like the most about the iPhone (original and 3G versions) is that web browsing is so much easier compared to any other phone on the market. The user interface is just so much better than anything else available. However, I still have had the phone freeze up on me a few times where a manual reboot was necessary to get it working again. These "freezes" have occured when trying to run apps from Apple's AppStore! So the iPhone 2.0 (now 2.0.1) software is a little buggy, but it's not enough to keep me from enjoying my new toy.

My first blog post...

So, I figured it was about time that I joined the masses and created my own blog. Hopefully I'll keep up with posting here over time... we'll see.