Later that day, I called AT&T to remove my discount in anticipation of getting a new phone in the near future. I called a different local Apple store and asked them if they had 16gb black phones in stock and they did. When I got there, the lady at the store told me they only had white ones left so I just went for it.

After a few days of usage, I was very disappointed with the battery performance. I couldn’t believe that it was THAT bad or as bad as some on the internets were saying it was. It got so bad I started to do tests. One thing that was truly wrong was, when plugging in the phone at 10% charge in red, the phone would charge to 100% within an hour. But I was getting mixed comments from Twitterers and friends. Some say 2 hours of usage between charges was normal. Other friends were getting between 4 and 6 hours of usage with 40-50% battery left. The most I was getting was 2 hours of usage with 10% left. I knew that couldn’t be right.

Mix this with the fact that the white ones were starting to crack, I really thought it was time to get a replacement. I was able to do a retail swap for a black 16gb iPhone and the results were staggering. My usage went way up to about 6 hours of usage with 50% battery left. With this in mind it’s easy to say that the white one I was using had something wrong with it. And to the people who told me that they thought 2 hours of usage was normal should really take a look at their phone as well. When a product like this comes out to less than stellar battery reviews, it can be hard to tell if your battery is actually performing properly. I wonder how many people, like me, actually have a defective battery and think it’s normal.

I’ve had the worst luck with iPhones in general. Last generation, I had gone through two different replacements because my iPhone had the washed out black issue. I’ve actually had bad luck with Apple hardware altogether. My first Macbook Pro had a defective ambient light sensor. My current Macbook Pro had a whacked out keyboard which I just got replaced. Now, I am reading that all of the nvidia graphics cards in Penryns (mine) are defective. It never ends with me and this “luck”.

Technorati Tags:
Apple, hardware, iPhone, Macbookpro

In my car, I do not have a charger that works. I played music from my library on the way to the mall. I sent a few text messages here and there and also made a few phone calls.

To the surprise of no one, stores like Target, FYE, and the AT&T store did not have any updated 3G ready branded car chargers. On the way home I listened to Last.fm over 3G in the car. The day started around 2pm. Then, when I got home, I did my regular browsing, app, gaming on the unit before and after taking a nap. By the end of my use, it was about 6pm. At this point, I was already down below 50% battery.

With my first gen iPhone, I was very preventative with battery life and it was always a non factor. I charge overnight, I charge at work if necessary, and I charge whenever in the car. I never had to think about my battery. Now, with this new 3G version sucking down more juice, I think I just have to follow the same routine. The only missing piece is a car charger, which there seems to be a lack of and also a lack of a web page or list that states which chargers are compatible.

One positive thing I noticed is the 3G iPhone wifi signal seems to be a tad better. In a couple spots in my house, the 3g gets a bar or two more than the first gen iPhone.

On a side note, while in Radioshack looking at their iPod accessories, an employee there saw my white iPhone and said “Is that a white iPhone?” And I said “Yeah.” And he said “Oh, I never seen one of those.” I said “It’s new.” I thought everyone was at least aware of what was going on with the iPhone, especially someone who works for a store that sells competing products and accessories for the iPhone.

Technorati Tags:
Apple, hardware, iphone

1. My Belkin car charger / amplifier is not compatible. I love this charger because it plays the sound from the usb / power port which is amplified by the charger as opposed to an unamplified signal through the headphone jack. This was also SUPER convenient because I only had to plug in the charge connection and never anything into the headphone jack. I hope Belkin makes a new version or some kind of adapter to turn the FireWire juice into USB juice. Until then, I will have to get a plain jane car charger and the sound quality will be less through the headphone jack for the time being.

2. Not only is it not compatible, but the temporary case I bought, the Contour iSee, is not cut out properly so as to accommodate the Belkin charge cable. Double fail.

3. BONUS: The Contour iSee fits PERFECTLY into my Contour Showcase belt clip. That will come in handy for the time being.

4. Whatever charge the iPhone had out of the box was used up in the time it took me to get home from the Apple Store which was about 30 - 40 minutes. I was using it to listen to a podcast through Safari half the ride and then used the GPS real time for the rest with a few phone calls in between.

5. The first calls I made didn’t seem to have the echo effect when using my V-Modas which was an issue with my first gen iPhone.

6. Restoring this phone from a backup is going slower than dogshit.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, iphone3g

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, itunes, appstore, aol

“This is Matt from Contour.

The Showcase for iPhone 3G will be ready sometime in early
August.

Thanks”

Awesome. Can’t wait! If I were a famous sports star or Hollywood superstar, this would be the iPhone case I endorse. It has protected my current iPhone for the greater part of a year successfully. When holding an iPhone out of a case, it feels foreign to me because the form factor of this case is so much more comfortable to me.

5. Reception issues and rumors - I held my iPhone up with someone else’s 3g and mine had 5 bars and his 3g had 2 bars. Mix that with rumors that this could be a known issue and Apple possibly holding off on replenishing stock until “this” is fixed.

4. Peace of mind - The longer I wait, the smaller the line will be when I head into a store to buy one.

3. Protection - The case that I want for it has not been released yet. I NEVER NEVER NEVER carry my iPhone naked. I did once as an experiment and I most surely dropped it.

2. Battery performance - All kinds of reports are coming in about the battery life of the 3g not being up to snuff.

1. First Gen Quality - I can do everything I need with my first gen iPhone. The only benefit I personally see for myself in the real world is faster speeds on the 3g network.

Check it out!

Free free to blog that it has been with Apple for some time and waiting for approval. So any day now you’ll get to see it. And it will be sporting:

* a sexy new interface

* all the standard Twitter features

* some failsafe protection that your tweets/messages will be delivered to your connections that are also on Twinkle

* the ability to use Twinkle even if you are new to Twitter or not a Twitter user

Cheers,

Andrew

Co-Founder, Tapulous, Inc

Thank you Andrew. I can’t wait!

When the App Store launched on July 10th, I posted about how already felt i was sacrificing certain apps since they were not readily available in the store, but were available on jailbroken iPhones. Then, I read so many positive reviews for the Pandora app. For streaming music on the iPhone 2.0 official firmware, it’s one of the best choices. But the app itself just allows you to create and play stations. While this feature is terrific, Mobilescrobbler already does that and more. And this last.fm iPhone app was SUPERB on pre 2.0 jailbroken iphones.

I searched for the developer site of that app, what was then called Mobilescrobbler and I found their site. I found on the front page a bulletin that said the very app that I loved so much would be coming to the app store soon! There is also this video posted to show a demo of the app in action.

The jailbroken version of this app did one thing that I’m not sure is going to make it in this iteration and that is the ability to run in the background. Much like the desktop client versions of a last.fm app that would either run in your system tray or menu bar, Mobilescrobbler would leave a nice little icon in your iPhone’s menu bar and always be running. So, when you listened to any music out of the iPod app on your phone, it would send / scrobble that track right over Edge or Wi-Fi in the background. This was a huge addition to the other methods of scrobbling tracks. I think keeping track of all the songs you listen to and sharing them with everyone is an amazing thing, so much so that I really believe you should be able to scrobble from any device or service. With the jailbroken version of this iPhone app, a huge gap was filled in, namely anything I was listening to in the car or just walking around with my headphones on. So I hope they can make that happen.

Furthermore, the amount of features that were available were possibly the most features I’ve seen in an iPhone app period. Tagging, banning, loving, charts, gesture based controls, all friends info, all radio options offered on the website, lyrics, concert venue info for artist. You could actually be listening to a song in the iPod app and minimize it, tap open Mobilescrobbler and it would go out to last.fm and look up the song you were listening to automatically. It would bring up all of that artist’s info including lyrics to the song on the fly.  In a real life scenario recently, I was in Best Buy with a friend and he was telling me about the band Scars on Broadway. He wanted me to know what they sounded like because he couldn’t explain it properly. I opened Mobilescrobbler and typed in Scars on Broadway and their latest single started to stream right then and there. Situations like that are what make these apps so great.

In terms of pitting it against Pandora, it’s similar in that it also is a streaming personal radio service that is generated through what you like based on thumbs upping it in Pandora or loving it in Mobilescrobbler and/or “similar artist” suggestions for both services. Maybe some people think Pandora does a better job at that. But one limitation Pandora has is the “you can only skip a certain amount of songs per hour” much like AOL radio. Somehow, Mobilescobbler and the last.fm service as a whole gets past this, at least for now.

I have been using last.fm and clients that connect to it for the past three years so it’s obviously my music service of choice. I have been able to discover countless amounts of new music through doing so and been able to share, in some ways, “COUNTED” (23,947, to be exact) music tracks with friends and strangers.

When Mobilescrobbler hits the app store, I probably will never load Pandora ever again.

Losing - Twinkle. Awesome location based Twitter app with picture attaching.

Gaining - Twitterific. What seems to be a plain Twitter client.

Losing - Mobilescrobbler. The fantastic app that helped me scrobble more tracks than ever with super functionality. Reading lyrics to songs that the iPhone was playing was pretty damn cool.

Gaining - Pandora. Totally different service.

Losing - Mobilechat. aim/chat client with horizontal orientation.

Gaining - Official Aim client. Not sure if it gets horizontal.

Losing - iFlickr. I only took pics with this program.

Gaining - Mobile Flickr.

Losing - uSirius. I was able to go to a restaurant on lunch and listen to Howard Stern while I ate over EDGE!!

Gaining - Nothing.

Losing - Summerboard. My PRECIOUS UI! Icons and wallpaper. Some sick themes.

Gaining - Nothing. This could be the biggest loss because I don’t see an Appearance, UI, or Tweak cateogry in the App Store.

NemusSync - gCalendar sync

Gaining - Nothing

So those were my main ones. Other than that I think overall:

Losing - Fully free software, constantly updated apps, unofficial OS tweaks and fixes

Gaining - Better game selection, a “funded” development community,

In the end, I hope it’s just a matter of time before my truly favorite apps are sent to the App Store because the ones I’ve listed are the ones I will spend cash on without batting an eye. I really am not optimistic about Summerboard though.