So today we took the plunge along with thousands of other people and bought the iPhone 3G. As we mentioned earlier today, we did this only because we were able to sell our original iPhones that we bought in January for $399, on eBay for $425. We sold them three days before the WWDC Keynote, so we’ve been without our phones for about a month. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t excited about the launch today, because we were.
The Waiting Game…
Last year when the iPhone originally launched, we didn’t jump on the bandwagon because we were still locked into a contract and we really didn’t want fork out the required $599. With this launch we decided we wanted the full experience, so we decided to get there a few hours before launch.
This morning the alarm went off at 3:30 AM and we pulled into the AT&T store at 4:00 AM, so four hours before launch. We were about 8th in line, and we have to believe that the line wasn’t quite as long as some of the other stores out there because of the weather we were having. We had strong thunderstorms all night- lots of lightning, thunder, and heavy rain and winds, so it was quite the waiting experience.
We’ve sat in lines before and this one was definitely friendly despite the poor weather. After talking to the other people in line (who were soaked!), we found that about 2 of the 7 people in front of us weren’t even there to get an iPhone. They were just there with friends to hang-out and help them pass the time. Surprisingly there wasn’t a mob-like mentality like what we’ve experienced at Best Buy on a few occasions.
AT&T employees showed up about an hour before opening, and we have to give them credit for making sure everybody was prepared. They came out to the line asking if anybody had questions, or if there were new AT&T subscribers signing up for the first time. They also handed out bottles of water to everyone which was a nice touch.
By the time 8:00 rolled around, everybody was waiting for the store to open, but no such luck! We were trying to figure out why things were running behind, and once we got inside, we found out.
Inside the Store
At about 8:05, the manager came to un-lock the doors and they finally opened. AT&T had about 8 stations available where customers could go to set-up phones, so they only allowed 8 people in at a time. Thankfully we were in the first group of people. Once we got to our station we realized that what had been holding up the store from opening on-time was iTunes. No one in the store could get iTunes to work which meant phones couldn’t be activated!
As we were waiting for the associate that was working with us to get things going, we took a minute to glance around the room to see what everybody was buying. White seemed way more popular than we ever expected. They didn’t have a white iPhone on display but we saw one somebody purchased and we didn’t think it looked nearly as classy as the black. We ended up going with the 16GB black version. Out of the 7 other people checking-out in the store when we were there, at least 4 had white ones. An amusing sidenote: The AT&T employee was going to swap out the new sim cards and put in our old ones and he searched the box but couldn’t find the “Sim Ejector” tool. Apparently he didn’t view some of the “un-boxing” videos floating around the Internet. 
Good thing we did, because we told him where to find it.
Remember all that talk about leaving the store with the phone activated? Well that went out the window when iTunes didn’t work. They gave us the instructions to go home and “un-brick” the phones. That was literally the wording they used and one of the customers looked so confused as to what “un-brick” meant.
We walked out of the store at about 8:35 and looked to see a line about 50 deep. After being in the store for as long as we were, we felt bad for what the people at the end of the line were going to have to endure. But then again, most didn’t get in line until right before the store opened.
Activation
Once we got home, iTunes still wouldn’t work. You would have thought that Apple would be prepared for this, but they weren’t. Ryan eventually got his to activate about an hour after we got home, and mine finally activated after about two hours.
In case you were wondering
We’re not going to go into a full review yet because we’d like to use the phone for about a week so that we can give you an accurate review. A few things you may be wondering though:
- Ringer is definitely louder
- Searching for Apps is nice because you can install them right there without needing iTunes
- Some people were wondering if the GPS would even be able to work in a car. We managed to get it to work in our house, so there should be no issues in your car. It seems to work pretty good too…
- Roundedness on the back seems to make it fit to the hand better. We were originally disappointed it didn’t have the aluminum backing but we like it and it seems less prone to slipping out
The Speeds
One of the other things I’m sure you’re wondering about is how fast the Internet actually is on this thing. We happen to be lucky enough where we fall into an area that has 3G speeds on AT&T’s network, but for us we weren’t able to get the “twice as fast” claim that Apple is making. Nope, not even close… in a good way that is. I used testmy.net to test my connection, and the results were rather impressive. With 3G disabled I got 147Kbps for the download speed, and with 3G enabled I got 820Kbps. That works out to being 5.5x faster. And that was when I only had two bars for a signal! We’re definitely satisfied with the speed increase.
Is YouTube working for you guys, though? I’m one of the lucky ones who got to upgrade my iPod (even weirder, iTunes didn’t charge me anything), and YouTube won’t work. Not that I can’t do without YouTube, its just annoying to know that its not working.
I wrote a blog on whether I should get the iPhone 3G at [techxture.com.] I was pretty convinced not to get one until I read your blog. I think it was pretty smart of you both to sell your first gen iPhones for $425 which meant a total of $850. Then you both got the new iPhone 3G 16 GB for a total of $600. This left you both $250 which pays for the lowest monthly plan ($75) for the next 1.5 months.
Imagine if you both got the 8GB for a total of $400. That would have left you with $450 which could have paid both monthly plan for the next 3 months!
Wow what an experience I’d love to go to a launch!
Also since they couldn’t activate it did you have to pay the $18 dollar fee?>
Seems like you guys had an exciting experience with the iPhone launch. Your report is great, I read it twice to absorb the details.
The iPhone is not ready for Panama yet, however after reading your post, we plan to be in the waiting line as soon as the iPhone hits the streets in this part of the world. I understand Spanish Telefónica will market the gadget down here.
Thanks for a very professional report.
@Googler: $36.
I also got the iPhone 3G today. I went to an AT&T store bright and early (read: 7am) and expected to see like 20 people there. But I was 53rd on line! The manager said there were 60 units (20 8gb, 40 16gb half black half white) and I thought for sure I wouldn’t get the 16gb black like I wanted. But 7 1/2 hours (!) later, I was the proud owner of a black 16gb iPhone 3G. Good times… And also, I got sunburned like crazy. Now my neck hurts
Apple really needs to get their act together! Their website says for current iPhone users to get the 2.0 firmware to just sync in iTunes and it will update. What a load of shit! It still says my 1.1.4 is the most recent firmware. I even downloaded iTunes 7.7, but it still says the same thing.
Apple so far in my opinion is still way too controlling and does not show that it gives a crap about it’s customers.
I for on can not wait for the android platform devices to show up. I will definitely be getting rid of the iCrap phone at that time.
You betch-ya! $18 per line to be exact. We did have to re-sign our two year contract while we were there, so I guess the $18 covers the “handling” fee for that.
Ryan just called the Apple store close to us to see if they had any of the docks left because we’ll be driving by it tomorrow when we leave for our trip and we wanted to pick one up. While he had them on the phone (this was at 5 PM) he asked if they had iPhone’s still in-stock (out of curiosity) and he said they sold out of the 16GB Black, but still the 8GB and White ones available. Here’s the thing though, THEY STILL HAD A LINE! Yikes!
YouTube works just fine for us. Kinda funny because that’s one of the things that we hardly use on our iPhone, and yet we’re the ones that it works for.
It’s not actually an activation fee that the $18 is for. They call it an “upgrade” fee. That’s also known as a “we charge you because we can” fee.
They have been having severe troubles all day long with the activation process, and I suspect they temporarily pulled the download for that reason. So many people were trying to upgrade to the iPhone 2.0 software that it brought their activation servers down (you have to reactivate after upgrading the firmware).
AT&T has screwed up not only my wife’s new iPhone 3G, but almost my first-gen one too.
It finally showed up later that night and I was able to get it. It did take a little for the activation.
I will say that I am so glad that they have the AppStore and actual apps and games for the iPhone now. It has made it that much better. It will be interesting to see what comes out now. I went through all the games and got some that I was interested in. I do have to say that Super Monkey Ball really shows how well the accelerometer works.
I am waiting to see your guys review of the GPS after your trip to see if it may be worth the extra $10 per month for the new 3G phone. I was thinking about it last night with the people balking about the data plan being $10 higher and fir any other phone through AT&T with GPS, it is $9.99 per month for the GPS anyways.
We’ll be posting our review within a week or two but I’ll just give you some quick insight on the GPS. First of all, from experience, it definitely drains the battery. We kinda expected this, so it really wasn’t a surprise, but if you were going to use it for a long trip, you’d definitely need a car-charger. What was nice about it though was using it for things like remembering where we parked. We were in an unfamiliar city and parked several blocks away from an event that was going on. When we parked, we pulled up the map and dropped a pin and then when we were ready to head back to the car, we just had the GPS guide us back. There were a couple of other nice things about it which we’ll mention in our review…
Thanks for that little insight. I am waiting to see your review to see if whatever improvements there are, are worth the extra $10.00 per month in the plan fee.