Apple iTunes

5 days with a new iPhone 3G

Posted by The King on July 20th, 2008 filed in mobile, rave, review

Semi stream of consciousness thoughts on the highlights and lowlights of the new iPhone 3G, from a new iPhone owner.

    Glitches:
  1.   ”Sync w/ Google Contacts” - this isn’t a sync, it’s a “duplicate” function.  It doesn’t do any merging that I can see, and in a very un-Apple way there are two places you need to turn this off to have it really stop (once in iTunes and once in your OSX Address Book).  Back to SpanningSync, thank god it works well.  Technically this isn’t a brand spanking new function, it was released a version or two of iTunes ago, but I’m just using it for the 1st time now.
  2. Breaks iTunes Playcounts.  I’ve had a 100% hands-off playlist for all my podcasts that completely managed itself for several years, automatically deleting podcasts after I had listened to them and always syncing up my iPod and computer perfectly. . .until now.  
  3.  Geotagging has unacceptable glitches.  Around one out of three photos I take is tagged on the wrong side of the prime meridian.  If I stand outside and take five photos in a row, one or two of them, in no particular order, will be tagged with an inverse latitude.  By reading these comments it sounds like other people are having all or none of their latitudes transposed, but I’m getting just some of them goofed up (with seemingly no correlation between how/where I’m taking the picture. 
  • Gripes:
  1. Battery life does indeed blow, multiple recharges a day will be needed if you want to have any fun and/or usefulness. . .It’s at least as poor as the battery life on the Nokia N95-4 I tested.  
  2. Cool iTunes Remote app but no Airtunes support?
  3. I’d like the Maps app to have a screen orientation lock/unlock switch so I can either rotate 360 degrees as freely spin the iPhone and have it rotate like a compass, or have it lock the orientation.  Maybe this will solve itself with 3rd party GPS/mapping programs. . .but has anyone else actually tried to follow directions on foot using the maps app in a dense urban area?  It’s really awkward to not have the screen properly orient itself NSEW.
  4. The hard reset (holding down the menu button and lock button for 10 seconds) should be mentioned in the short instructions that come with the phone.  Having it do a hard lock, constantly repeating 2.5 seconds of a youtube video over and over (with no way to stop or control volume) - then having to run to a computer and google that problem, made for a rather embarrassing demo that I was trying to give to a friend.
  5. Google Reader: it would be *awesome* to have it work just like the real version and mark things as read as I scan over them (even when condensed).  I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds, and as best I can see this forces me to actually open every one I want to mark as read.  Otherwise, this is so close to being a bullseye I am hesitant to go to 3rd party readers.
  • Accolades:
  1. Apps store rocks (favorites so far are Facebook, Twitterific, Speed Dial, Chopper, CBNK 3D, Tetris).  
  2. Look forward to trying “Quick Voice” memo recorder. . .I’ve been looking for this kind of thing for a long time.  It would be nice if their companion Mac app could manage and/or sync these notes better. As a pseudo journalist I’ve yearned for a one trick pony that would eliminate the need for other devices to do voice recording for a long time (and not need external mics, etc).
  3. Location Aware: for places I’ve played around w/ Yelp & iWant. . .I slightly prefer iWant’s cleaner interface.  3-4 clicks to locate and call a restaurant is amazing  (60 seconds total).  The social networking location aware features are all over the place. . .as of right now I am not seeing a stand out winner screaming out at me that it will get enough critical mass to make it actually useful.  There needs to be a really simple app for you to locate another friend, in an on-demand sort of way, integrated with the maps app. . .  In real usage so far I think 50%+ of my location aware inquiries could be satisfied by justing having the ability to “push” a thumbtack of myself on to someone else’s map app, saying “hey, I’m here, come find me.”
  4. Plain old “non-push” email, setup w/ my Gmail account, works like a champ.
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