It has been a couple of weeks now since I picked up my iPhone3G. I believe this to be an incredible piece of equipment. I never owned a phone like this before so all the neat features and functions are awesome. I love the design.
3G? Really?
I’m experiencing numerous problems with my 3G iPhone though. First, the calls are constantly dropped. It took my 5-6 attempts to call out to a local number the other day from an area which has full coverage. I’ve had several “call failed” issues. The call quality has sucked too. I’ve found myself hearing half of what people are saying and constantly asking them to repeat because they’re cutting in and out.
GPS only works with 3G turned off
From the day I owned my 3G the GPS never worked. I hit the locate button in the maps section but just got the never ending spinning wheel. The GPS feature was one I’d looked forward to using.
After browsing the Apple iPhone message boards, I found a solution to my GPS problems. As soon as I turned off the 3G capability of my phone, the GPS worked like a champ. Great, so I can’t use 3G and GPS at the same time? WTF?
Better call quality with 3G turned off
After turning off the 3G I noticed something. No more “call failed.” No more dropped calls. No more poor quality. So the phone component of my 3G works the best without 3G turned on.
3X the battery life with 3G turned off
I’ve been concerned about how short a battery life my phone has had. I turned off the bluetooth and wifi to save power and dimmed my screen. Still, my 3G would be just about dead after 1-1.5 days of minimal talk time. I mean minimal, like 10 minutes.
Voila! As soon as I turned off the 3G, my phone now is lasting 2-3 days. My non scientific conclusion is that the battery lasts about 2-3x as long with 3G turned off.
More solid since the 2.01 update
The 3G is new and I expect bugs to be there. I have found that the app performance of the phone is much better since the 2.01 update. My apps do not crash as often now, or is that because I turned off 3G? Perhaps I need to research that more.
Conclusion
With 3G turned on my iPhone doesn’t work well at all. The GPS doesn’t work, period. The battery life is poor. With 3G off the phone works much better.
I really hope that these issues can be resolved with upcoming software updates and that they’re not hardware related.
It is unfortunate that I bought this phone for it’s “3G speed” and capabilities, yet I have to turn that function off to get reasonable performance and functionality. I’m resigned to only turning on 3G when I need to use the browser.
