It was Monday.
Allow me to warn you, faithful reader, that no story that ever begins with the phrase, “It was Monday.” can possibly end well.
On Monday, the cable company sent a technician to our home to check out some problems we’d been having with our connectivity since Saturday night. The guy was here for a solid two hours checking over things before he finally concluded that it was our cable modem, and replaced it. But during this time, he needed to talk to my husband, so I called my husband on my precious 1st gen iPhone, that was less than a year old, and handed it to the cable guy. The cable guy gave it back to me when he was done, and thought it was in my grasp so he let go.
My baby, my iPhone, which is my entire life, hit the floor with a loud crack.
Come to find out, the cracking sound was the case that was on the phone. The screen was undamaged. The case was toast, but the screen was not broken, the aluminum back was unharmed, and it was not the first time I’d dropped the phone on ceramic tile before, so I thought everything would be fine. Then, I hit the home button.
Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
The home button is supposed to take you back to the home screen when you hit it. It’s how you close apps, access your apps during a call and it’s how you reboot the phone, without shutting it down completely.
I began to panic.
By the time all was said and done, I’d called Apple care and was told “We can either charge you 199$ to fix the iPhone you have. Charge you 199$ for a refurbished 1st gen iPhone, or you can go to your local Apple store and pay 199$ for a new iPhone 3g.” I almost told the tech on the phone that we didn’t have an Apple store, and in all reality, very few places that are not the top 20 major cities in this country actually do.
So I went to the AT&T store, the techs there looked at my phone and were amazed at the condition it was in. A guy in the store offered me to buy it off of me, even though I told him it was broken, because other than the home button not working, the phone was in pristine condition. He said he’d open it up and fix it somehow.
So in the end, I got an iPhone 3g and I have to say… I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
The previous iPhone was heavier, it felt like you’d spent a decent amount of money on this thing. There was something about that that was just, right. Especially when those of us that bought them, spent 300$ or more on these phones. The weight of the 3g makes it feel chintzy and cheap and not at all unique from any other cell phone that I’ve ever owned.
The plastic back is a fingerprint magnet. I’d wanted to get the white one, but to be honest, I don’t need 16 gig of storage, I only wanted the white one because it didn’t show fingerprints as badly. This has always been one of my beefs with Apple’s electronics too. So let me get this off my chest:
Apple, quit making color choices cost your customers a premium!
The white iPhone simply made more sense for someone like me who can’t stand smudges on her phone, but was not worth the additional price tag, and if I hadn’t had a first gen iPhone, I would have skipped this one based on that distinction alone. Black is boring, and I want to be able to choose what color I want without having to pay for the privilege.
The internet speeds are quick on 3g, but I never cared about that. People who want to tether their phones to their laptops may care, but I don’t see the need to pay an additional 10$ premium for 3g service, then a 5$ premium to add text messages (which were included as part of the old phone plan) and then spend an additional 30$ a month on TOP of those increases, to have the ability to tether my phone on the 3 or 4 occasions a year that I would actually use it. It’d be cheaper for me to pay a 30$ flat fee every time I used it.
Further complaints include the fact that I hate the cases that are currently available for the 3g. I do not blame the phone for this though, and that’s really something to write about in another article. It is larger than the first gen phone, noticeably. It feels bigger in your hand and in my hands, it feels less secure because I am not able to grip it as easily.
My biggest beef with the 3g though, is this:
It has the crappiest battery life of any cell phone I have ever owned.
I’m getting about 2 hours of talk time before the battery is drained to 20%, and then I can open a couple of apps once or twice before I have to charge the phone. Yesterday, my phone didn’t even make it to 6 pm before it complained about only having 20% battery life remaining.
After the joy of owning a first gen iPhone, this thing… to me, is really a huge disappointment.
The 3rd gen phone had better be nicer than this, because otherwise, I think I’ll skip it, get an iPod Touch and run of the mill Nokia phone. Then I will have everything I need, a great phone that gets decent battery life and the internet in my pocket at any WiFi hotspot.
