I am in heaven! over 3 years ago when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, I was SO jealous of AT&T users. I work for a company that only uses Verizon, so I would hear those hopeful rumors of iPhone going to Verizon and just believed that it would never come to be after awhile.
So I picked up the iPod Touch to have an iPhone experience without the phone, and have upgraded as the Touch Generations improved. It had me wanting the idea of having just one device on one platform, rather than a Smartphone AND my Touch which was capable of the same PDA functions. It has felt redundant for the longest time, and a bit annoying to check for 2 devices before I left for the day.
Then the rumors picked up BIGTIME a couple months ago, CES came and went, followed by Verizon's event for an announcement......and then it came to be
So I found myself less on Android Central, and more on TiPb looking for more news, seeking answers to unanswered questions in regards to the pre-order, and used these forums as a support group as we all waited for 3AM Feb 3rd. I had my gameplan all set up that night
I was going to come home, eat dinner, spend time with the family, and when everyone went to sleep, watch some TV, and wait......
So 2:55AM arrived, I went into my office to go to Verizon to anxiously await the countdown clock they had to wind down, and it wasn't there
I could order immediately. I clicked on the link to take me to the order screen, and it consistently took me to a server error screen. In panic, I went to Apple's site to preorder there instead. It let me get all the way to the payment, and it crashed as well. Now getting impatient, I went back to Verizon's site and tried to get to an order screen, and over and over it gave me the server crashed screen. Thinking I stayed up THAT long for nothing, I went back to Apple's site, put all the information in there again, and hit the pay now button....it went through and I printed my confirmation as I gasped a HUGE sigh of relief, but I was still not completely comfortable until I received that reassuring confirmation email telling me my 32GB Black Verizon iPhone is purchased
.
I was a bit bothered by the fact that while ordering I could edit my billing information, but not my shipping information, which showed my Boss's name, and the building address, but I could not add the company name, suite number, nor change the ATTN to name
I called Apple, they said I couldn't make any changes until it arrived at the delivery facility, they would have to make an attempt and then they could correct the address and deliver it the next day. I was a bit disappointed about this, but for my "inconvenience" the guy on the line said they would be happy to send me a free case. That definitely made the wait a bit more forgiving as they saved me some money, I chose the Black Bumper case. So the week went by as many guessed at when we would receive our prized treasures. Will it come on the 10th? Before the 10th? Would they hold it or send it?
Then the email arrived allowing me to track it from China, to Alaska, to Kentucky, to NJ, to yesterday morning seeing my coworker signed for it and it would be sitting on my desk awaiting me to free it from that box
The funny thing about all this is, all the excitement, anxiety, impatience, the spectrum of desire for this product was all kept inside as people would think I was NUTS being THIS excited for a phone
So I arrived at my job yesterday at around 11AM, opened up the UPS box, you would think there would had been a glow coming out of that box like the diner scene in Pulp Fiction
I removed the shrinkwrap, opened the box and just held it and admired it. Just nothing but incredible quality and so well worth the money spent. Those 2 pieces of dark glass with the steel center just ooze elegance. I pressed the power button as the Apple logo booted, and the plug in screen appreared. I plugged it into my laptop and activated everything through iTunes. The screen appeared and I was so impressed with that screen. This device is one of a kind. I chose to start as a new device rather than recover from the Touch as I enjoy the setting up process on a new device with a new platform. So I loaded the apps into it, and held off synching the music as I knew that would be an all night process.
Like I said earlier, I was very familar with IOS from using the Touch, but there was something nice about being able to rely completely on it as opposed to carrying the second device. I messaged a couple people to see how it worked, I made a couple of phonecalls and truly enjoyed the crystal clear clarity of the voice. I didn't expect it to be that great. I customized the screens with my wallpapers, and icons. Moving from screen to screen appeared so smooth, and a little bit snappier than the Touch for some reason....I am guessing the increased RAM.
The camera is almost good enough to replace my point and shoot, it's that good, and extremely functional. I took some regular test photos around my office as well as some stellar Macro shots. I shot some simple HD movies just to see how they turned out, if you haven't updated your camera recently, no need to at this point.
The setup process to get the iPhone to be "Yours" is so simple. Apple really knows how to create. IOS is gorgeous, the interface removes so many steps to set it up that you tend to have to deal with when setting up a smartphone. All the menu options are laid out in one area. If you are looking for something, it isn't hard to find it.
The full music collection syncing was a bit long. I have well over 5,000 songs in my collection. I used the iTunes option to down convert the music to 128kbps to fit as much as I could. I had 4,172 songs to synch along with 4 videos. I plugged it in at around 11 last night, it didn't complete until around 9:30 this morning as it individually converts each song before moving them to the iPhone.
Part of the love of having the iPhone and being able to count on it is Calendar notifications. I probably could had gone with a dumb phone for years and used the Touch for my PDA if it had a vibrate feature. (And data for email of course) The only negative I have found on it though is the vibrate is a tad weak, and that and lack of notification light would be the only complaints.
Coming from an Android, it is nice to see that just about all the apps I downloaded on the Droid are also available on the iPhone. Even better is a lot of those apps look better on the iPhone.
One other thing about what I like about moving to one device is, in my car, I have a cable that comes out of the console with the iPod connector. So I had the mini USB charger coming out of the console that would go to the cradle for the Droid X, and then I had the other wire often crossing and that would go for the iPod. I also dont have any way to connect the Droid to my car, so great services like Pandora could not be enjoyed.....until now
So to me, this is much more than the iPod Touch, it is SO much better having data along with Verizons reliable network. I guess it is a plus that I haven't had AT&T on the iPhone, because the complaints I have heard about in regards to it being a slower data network aren't slow at all to me, they are just as fast, or slightly faster than the Droid. So far this has exceeded my expectations. What could they possibly do to top this? Oh yes, add a 64GB to the lineup