Is it time to subscribe to a printer service from HP?

Ever since my dad brought home an...

What’s the best way of buying a phone today?

How did you buy your latest phone?...

MWC: What device highlights did you miss?

So, early last week I predicted that...

Self imposed living with the iPhone 3G

I drove back to my London place on Thursday evening leaving my main handset — the +44 7769 658 104 number — sat somewhere, slowly draining its battery.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought I had it with me. I discovered it was missing on Friday morning.

And I’ve — perhaps rather obviously — not been returning calls from it. SpinVox is proving rather useful though. If you phone the number, it’ll ring (I think, if it’s still got battery) and then it’ll go to SpinVox and I will get your message in email format pretty soon after.

What an arse!

The one phone I did have with me was my new iPhone 3G. I charged it up on Friday morning and deployed it as my live handset that morning. I used the handset’s Exchange support to immediately over-the-air sync it with my calendar, contacts and whatnot. That function is brilliant. Just brilliant.

I then began my day. Fridays are busy. Filled with meetings. (Incidentally, if you’d like to meet so I can do a profile about you, mail me and let’s set a time.) I was using my Google Maps like no tomorrow and the email. During my meeting with Ilja Laurs, CEO of GetJar, I noticed an issue. I’d used half the battery. I was taking regular notes as Ilja spoke across the hour and I could more or less see the battery indicator reducing.

Piece of rubbish!

I got through Ilja’s interview then by the time I met Shaun Barriball, MD of MobileIQ, I was on some paltry 30% level of battery power.

As I walked to another meeting, I started to formally worry about the lack of battery power.

I took a 10 minute phone call, strolling through St James’ Park and, at the end of this, found that nearly all of my green ‘juice’ had gone.

Piece of shit!

There was no way the handset was going to survive until well into the evening.

I managed to charge it up when I got back, temporarily, to the office. That helped. But I have now spent Friday and the whole weekend with the iPhone 3G as my primary handset. And it’s OK.

OK.

They’ve done a Nokia.

They’ve shipped it out, not quite ready. The applications are crashing. The push pull bollocks that Mr Jobs was so proud of, during his presentation, doesn’t work. It’s not been activated. GOODNESS knows what that will do to the sodding battery power.

I really can’t stand using a device when you can SEE the battery power leeching from it. Just take a photo and then upload it with ShoZu and woosh, that’s got to be 1-2% of the power gone. You can see it going. For someone used to the power of an N95 or E90, this is worrying. I’ve spent the weekend hoping no one phones me because, er, that’ll use up battery power that I need to just keep the device operational across the day.

And I’m not carrying some sodding power charger for it. What’s the point of that?

Rubbish.

I’m content with the device. I’m making pained faces at o2’s network which… well, it’s either the iPhone screwing up or it’s the o2 network. Or both. Actually, forget that, it’ll be the iPhone arsing up.

I actually walked all the way down Piccadilly like a total PLUM trying to get the maps to work. Restarted the device eventually. That worked. After I’d found the street.

Get it working Mr Jobs.

43 COMMENTS

  1. I clicked through to this story expecting another 'We're going to get James to do this, we haven't told him yet though' story…

    …can you change the battery on this version of the iPhone? Are there no portable/USB chargers for it etc?

  2. You do know you're supposed to buy and carry a second iPhone around with you if you are out of the normal phone usage range? It's your fault for not being compatible with the iPhone!

  3. more importantly is the incredibly bad battery
    it was dead this morning despite being over half full last night.

    my n95 – i took about 10 photos – uploaded 3 to flickr at full 5mp, watched some video, listened to mp3s
    checked email/twitter via web. sent some sms's made one short call.

    and its still on full charge.

    and the n95 isnt exactly the best battery in the world

  4. Yes – 2g iPhones that have been upgraded are also experiencing the same problem when there hadnt previously been an issue.

    This also happened last year with one of the firmware updates – 1.1.3 or 1.1.4 fixed it.

  5. currently in apple store trying to return iPhone
    you need a genius bar appointment to return it!!!

    so i have a probably 30 min wait on standby to return the bloody thing
    will take longer to return than it did to buy.

    they got me away from the queue waiting to buy – very quickly though 🙂

  6. was about 15 mins wait, then about 10 mins to process me.

    someone sitting next to me was getting a white iPhone replaced because of 'cracks'
    though the apple staff member did seem to think it was damage
    he replaced it no questions.

  7. yep – thankfully i didnt do the pac thing on signing up or it would be painful.

    back to n95 classic.

    i think if new iPod touches come out – ill get one of those for my slick fix.
    i cant have a phone that dies on me midday.

  8. I do believe it will be sorted with firmware.

    Fundamentally, you should get the same performance out of an i3g as an N95 doing the same things at the same time on the same networks. Chipset power consumption is not radically different.

    Early i2G weren't that flash either, but over the 1.0.1-1.1.4 development things improved a lot. Now they are playing with not only a new radio platform but a bunch of new services and a changed OS, I'm not surprised the experience is sub-optimal.

    Life at the (b)leading edge eh?

  9. My experience is exactly the same, put the O2 SIM in any other phone sitting on my desk and get a strong 3G signal, put it in the iPhone 3G and get a very low signal or “No Service”.

    🙁

  10. Is it worth posting iPhone success stories? Yea, there's a couple of quibbles, mainly battery life, but compared to my 950i (who's manufacturing name I dare not mention), it's brilliant. I use it all the time, and it's a replacement for needing a bag, at all.. No pen, no notepad, no book, no laptop, no ipod, no psp… All of which I used to carry to work.

    I live in Wimbledon, and 3g coverage is scarce on the phone, but I have WiFi. Outside my office window, there's a Cloud aerial stuck to a lampost. I don't need 3G for calling, and the only browsing I do on the iphone is usually reading blogs/articles to and from work, which don't take long to load on Edge anyway… The wordpress app is great for blogging on the go, and all the sites i look at work really well, even smstextnews has a great iphone theme… So much so, I added it to my blog.

    I have a dock on my desk, and the charger at home. Heavy usage, I charge it every night, and for an hour or so at my desk. It's just a different way of doing things, and with all the stuff I use it for, and all the things it replaces, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a battery more powerful, and of similar size, that can last as long.

    Anyway, just my thoughts…

  11. I pretty much seem to get what Apple said I could get.

    It's not bad. I can't really knock it's performance, seeing as it's running 10 recievers. (One thing I didn't know, but just found out looking up that number is did u know the iPhone's built-in receivers use metal surrounds on the headphone jack and camera lens as antennas? how cool…)

    I do use my iPhone heavily. I listen to music for just under an hour each way commuting to work, check weather on the met website before going out, browse the net reading my usual blogs through iGoogle (google.com/ig/i – works really nice), have push/exchange email set up with work, check stocks, write notes, twitter on the way home, play games on the waterloo and city line, and more.

    Admitedly, longer battery life would be a wonderful luxury, but for all it replaces and does, the shorter-than-usual-for-a-phone battery life to me is justafiable because it replaces everything else I used to carry to work. At weekends, when I don't have the ability to dump it in my dock infront of me, I turn off the push features (because no-one wants work email on a weekend), turn off 3G unless I'm browsing, and generally use it less, so it tends to last through till Sunday..

    I never had the first iPhone. It was missing 3G, the feature I use the least. hmm… but so far so good. I woke up at 2am to pick my 16GB in black, even bought a chair just for the occasion, and I don't regret it just yet…

  12. Ewan

    I feel your pain!!
    Can I recommend you splash out on a proporta battery? It's not ideal (Apple should have made things ideal) but it does mean that you can carry around an extra few hours of juice with you. It's saved my fat arse plenty of times already. Just wish it could charge up the Segway too 🙂

    Have fun

    marc

  13. I pretty much seem to get what Apple said I could get.

    It's not bad. I can't really knock it's performance, seeing as it's running 10 recievers. (One thing I didn't know, but just found out looking up that number is did u know the iPhone's built-in receivers use metal surrounds on the headphone jack and camera lens as antennas? how cool…)

    I do use my iPhone heavily. I listen to music for just under an hour each way commuting to work, check weather on the met website before going out, browse the net reading my usual blogs through iGoogle (google.com/ig/i – works really nice), have push/exchange email set up with work, check stocks, write notes, twitter on the way home, play games on the waterloo and city line, and more.

    Admitedly, longer battery life would be a wonderful luxury, but for all it replaces and does, the shorter-than-usual-for-a-phone battery life to me is justafiable because it replaces everything else I used to carry to work. At weekends, when I don't have the ability to dump it in my dock infront of me, I turn off the push features (because no-one wants work email on a weekend), turn off 3G unless I'm browsing, and generally use it less, so it tends to last through till Sunday..

    I never had the first iPhone. It was missing 3G, the feature I use the least. hmm… but so far so good. I woke up at 2am to pick my 16GB in black, even bought a chair just for the occasion, and I don't regret it just yet…

  14. Ewan

    I feel your pain!!
    Can I recommend you splash out on a proporta battery? It's not ideal (Apple should have made things ideal) but it does mean that you can carry around an extra few hours of juice with you. It's saved my fat arse plenty of times already. Just wish it could charge up the Segway too 🙂

    Have fun

    marc

  15. currently in apple store trying to return iPhone
    you need a genius bar appointment to return it!!!

    so i have a probably 30 min wait on standby to return the bloody thing
    will take longer to return than it did to buy.

    they got me away from the queue waiting to buy – very quickly though 🙂

  16. was about 15 mins wait, then about 10 mins to process me.

    someone sitting next to me was getting a white iPhone replaced because of 'cracks'
    though the apple staff member did seem to think it was damage
    he replaced it no questions.

  17. yep – thankfully i didnt do the pac thing on signing up or it would be painful.

    back to n95 classic.

    i think if new iPod touches come out – ill get one of those for my slick fix.
    i cant have a phone that dies on me midday.

  18. I do believe it will be sorted with firmware.

    Fundamentally, you should get the same performance out of an i3g as an N95 doing the same things at the same time on the same networks. Chipset power consumption is not radically different.

    Early i2G weren't that flash either, but over the 1.0.1-1.1.4 development things improved a lot. Now they are playing with not only a new radio platform but a bunch of new services and a changed OS, I'm not surprised the experience is sub-optimal.

    Life at the (b)leading edge eh?

  19. My experience is exactly the same, put the O2 SIM in any other phone sitting on my desk and get a strong 3G signal, put it in the iPhone 3G and get a very low signal or “No Service”.

    🙁

  20. Is it worth posting iPhone success stories? Yea, there's a couple of quibbles, mainly battery life, but compared to my 950i (who's manufacturing name I dare not mention), it's brilliant. I use it all the time, and it's a replacement for needing a bag, at all.. No pen, no notepad, no book, no laptop, no ipod, no psp… All of which I used to carry to work.

    I live in Wimbledon, and 3g coverage is scarce on the phone, but I have WiFi. Outside my office window, there's a Cloud aerial stuck to a lampost. I don't need 3G for calling, and the only browsing I do on the iphone is usually reading blogs/articles to and from work, which don't take long to load on Edge anyway… The wordpress app is great for blogging on the go, and all the sites i look at work really well, even smstextnews has a great iphone theme… So much so, I added it to my blog.

    I have a dock on my desk, and the charger at home. Heavy usage, I charge it every night, and for an hour or so at my desk. It's just a different way of doing things, and with all the stuff I use it for, and all the things it replaces, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a battery more powerful, and of similar size, that can last as long.

    Anyway, just my thoughts…

  21. I pretty much seem to get what Apple said I could get.

    It's not bad. I can't really knock it's performance, seeing as it's running 10 recievers. (One thing I didn't know, but just found out looking up that number is did u know the iPhone's built-in receivers use metal surrounds on the headphone jack and camera lens as antennas? how cool…)

    I do use my iPhone heavily. I listen to music for just under an hour each way commuting to work, check weather on the met website before going out, browse the net reading my usual blogs through iGoogle (google.com/ig/i – works really nice), have push/exchange email set up with work, check stocks, write notes, twitter on the way home, play games on the waterloo and city line, and more.

    Admitedly, longer battery life would be a wonderful luxury, but for all it replaces and does, the shorter-than-usual-for-a-phone battery life to me is justafiable because it replaces everything else I used to carry to work. At weekends, when I don't have the ability to dump it in my dock infront of me, I turn off the push features (because no-one wants work email on a weekend), turn off 3G unless I'm browsing, and generally use it less, so it tends to last through till Sunday..

    I never had the first iPhone. It was missing 3G, the feature I use the least. hmm… but so far so good. I woke up at 2am to pick my 16GB in black, even bought a chair just for the occasion, and I don't regret it just yet…

  22. Ewan

    I feel your pain!!
    Can I recommend you splash out on a proporta battery? It's not ideal (Apple should have made things ideal) but it does mean that you can carry around an extra few hours of juice with you. It's saved my fat arse plenty of times already. Just wish it could charge up the Segway too 🙂

    Have fun

    marc

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recently Published

Is it time to subscribe to a printer service from HP?

Ever since my dad brought home an HP LaserJet printer (version 3, if memory serves), I have been printing with an HP. Over the...

What’s the best way of buying a phone today?

How did you buy your latest phone? I'm asking because I'm thinking about what I should be doing. When I was living in Oman, I...

MWC: What device highlights did you miss?

So, early last week I predicted that next to nothing from Mobile World Congress would break through into the mainstream media. I was right,...

How Wireless Will Pave the Path to Neobank Profitability

I'm delighted to bring you an opinion piece from Rafa Plantier at Gigs.com. I think it's particularly relevant given the recent eSIM news from...

An end of an era: Vodafone UK turns off 3G services

I thought it was worthwhile highlighting this one from the Vodafone UK team. For so long - for what feels like years, seeing the...

Mobile World Congress: Did the mainstream media notice?

I resolved this year to make sure I wrote something - anything - about Mobile World Congress, the huge mobile industry trade show taking...