It’s been one month since my iPhone 3G has served me. All I can say is this device has allowed me to use the internet on the go. There are also some features of the iPhone 3G that I like in particular:
For example, I really, really love the intelligent auto-correction thing. It has allowed me to type fast without worrying that I am going to produce a typo. However, this only works if you are typing non-offensive dictionary words. So make sure you double-check what you have typed before sending the SMS/email. Trying to type “f**k you man” will produce “duck you man” and will make you look stupid. Be warned.
Another thing that I really like is the ability to send and receive emails on the go. As you can see, my fellow friends are having fun comment raiding on a particular picture on Facebook.
Apps, lots of them. I love having the ability to install apps that can help me identify songs (Shazam and Midomi) or allowing me to kill time (or as my friends describe it “looking like a retard”) by playing accelerometer-controlled games like Super Monkey Ball, Cube Runner etc (These games are controlled by tilting the iPhone itself).
One last thing that I also liked is the ability to write chinese characters with handwriting recognition. On the above screenshot, you can see that I have typed my chinese name using handwriting recognition. Pretty neat.
Now… Like I said, nothing is perfect. iPhone 3G has lots of bugs and problems even with the latest firmware. Here’s hoping that the next firmware will fix all these issues:
Keyboard lag: Sometimes your keyboard will suddenly feel the force of the vortex and go into 1 character per second mode. This bug is really, really annoying. Some people has suggested that activating the “magnifying glass” a.k.a hold your finger onto the screen will temporarily fix the issue. I usually just quit the offending app (usually SMS or email) and relaunch it.
Various lags: Contacts take up to 3 seconds before you can smoothly scroll and sometimes certain parts of the iPhone system suffer from abnormal lags.
Installing apps using App Store: If you’ve got an iPhone running the latest 2.0 firmware, AVOID installing apps using the App Store on the iPhone itself. I have run into numerous problems that has caused my iPhone to get stuck at the apple boot screen and I was also required to restore my iPhone several times.
App crashes: This one is also quite annoying especially when you’re trying to show your friend some cool apps you’ve just installed. You launch the app and then, boom, it goes back to the home screen. This will never stop until you restart your iPhone.
Insanely long backup times: This is one of the most annoying thing to happen especially when your iPhone needs to get restored due to some stupid problems. My backup takes at least an hour and this does not even include the sync process. Some dude over the internet posted a video that showed his iPhone backup taking as long as 8 hours! How ridiculous is that.
Horrible 3G performance: Ok, I don’t really know who to blame for this. But Optus 3G performance is freaking horrible in Australia. Some dude even did both ping and bandwidth tests on all carriers and Optus has a staggering 1200++ ms ping while the others only have 200++ ms ping. Also, the bandwidth on Optus 3G is between 5 to 7 times lower than its competitors. Cmon Optus, fix this please.
As you can see there are a lot of problems plaguing the iPhone 3G now. The stability of this device is horrible, so horrible that it’s giving a bad image to the Mac platform. Please Apple, fix them soon! /endrant
