I am thinking about buying an iPhone and I was wondering if users or non-users could give me their comments.  I already know about the costs of the plans, etc.  I am looking more for pros and cons of it.  Are you glad you bought it ?  Would you buy one again? Any issues or problems?  

# The Phone Sucks
When I have a reliable 3G signal the iPhone sounds great… until it drops the call. We have had to activate my dad’s phone 3 times because it just stops working. There is something up with the iPhone radio and Apple needs to figure it out quick.
# The Keypad / Keyboard Sucks
I can dial a phone number without looking on every phone I have ever owned, except the iPhone. Typing URLs and passwords, etc is a pain. Typing email is so annoying that I don’t respond to as many emails as I did when I was using my blackberry. Think about that, the iPhone is making me less responsive.
# The Battery Sucks
When I first got my iPhone the battery only lasted a couple of hours. I knew it would improve when I quit playing with it non-stop, but it hasn’t improved enough. If I am in the car, charging my phone while talking on it, the battery goes down instead of up. It takes more juice than a car charge can put out to use the iPhone as a phone. I love streaming Pandora in the car but that burns the battery faster than my Ford F150 burns gas. Speaking of burning, the iPhone gets crazy hot too.
# Restarting Sucks
I used to have to restart my Treo almost daily because it would quit working right; the iPhone is almost as bad. Every couple of days the iPhone will either lose it’s ability to connect to 3G or the GPS quits working or it just freezes while using a third party app. The only way to fix it is to turn the iPhone completely off and then turn it back on (which is a process that either involves patience, witchcraft, or both).
# Being Special Sucks
The iPhone gets a special class of service with AT&T. Unfortunately, it is “short bus” special and not “14 year old olympic gymnast” special. Before making a standard change to your AT&T plan you might hear the agent say “let me see if we can do that on the iPhone”. WTF?!?! I thought the iPhone was the most capable phone on the planet?!? Why do we have to see if the iPhone can handle it? Because AT&T hamstrings the iPhone. If I could legally tether my iPhone I would pay for that feature and use it rarely. But I can’t, so I find a way around it. Want unlimited text? “I will have to check and see if the iPhone can have unlimited text messages”. Oh, and where the hell are the turn by turn applications? I could at least buy TeleNav for my Blackberry. The iPhone is special, and that is

I think  he hates it!

Quoted from Mrhide

# The Phone Sucks
When I have a reliable 3G signal the iPhone sounds great… until it drops the call. We have had to activate my dad’s phone 3 times because it just stops working. There is something up with the iPhone radio and Apple needs to figure it out quick.
# The Keypad / Keyboard Sucks
I can dial a phone number without looking on every phone I have ever owned, except the iPhone. Typing URLs and passwords, etc is a pain. Typing email is so annoying that I don’t respond to as many emails as I did when I was using my blackberry. Think about that, the iPhone is making me less responsive.
# The Battery Sucks
When I first got my iPhone the battery only lasted a couple of hours. I knew it would improve when I quit playing with it non-stop, but it hasn’t improved enough. If I am in the car, charging my phone while talking on it, the battery goes down instead of up. It takes more juice than a car charge can put out to use the iPhone as a phone. I love streaming Pandora in the car but that burns the battery faster than my Ford F150 burns gas. Speaking of burning, the iPhone gets crazy hot too.
# Restarting Sucks
I used to have to restart my Treo almost daily because it would quit working right; the iPhone is almost as bad. Every couple of days the iPhone will either lose it’s ability to connect to 3G or the GPS quits working or it just freezes while using a third party app. The only way to fix it is to turn the iPhone completely off and then turn it back on (which is a process that either involves patience, witchcraft, or both).
# Being Special Sucks
The iPhone gets a special class of service with AT&T. Unfortunately, it is “short bus” special and not “14 year old olympic gymnast” special. Before making a standard change to your AT&T plan you might hear the agent say “let me see if we can do that on the iPhone”. WTF?!?! I thought the iPhone was the most capable phone on the planet?!? Why do we have to see if the iPhone can handle it? Because AT&T hamstrings the iPhone. If I could legally tether my iPhone I would pay for that feature and use it rarely. But I can’t, so I find a way around it. Want unlimited text? “I will have to check and see if the iPhone can have unlimited text messages”. Oh, and where the hell are the turn by turn applications? I could at least buy TeleNav for my Blackberry. The iPhone is special, and that is

I have an original iphone from the States and have had no issues with it. I did finally upgrade it to the new software and still have no problems with my battery power but I have all apps turned off that run in the background. For me (a non-blackberry user) I love the phone but I use it primarily for surfing the net while waiting at skateboarding parks, toboggan hills and snowboarding hills for my son . I never bother texting and use my phone for calling out mostly (I refuse to be one of those people talking in restaurants or stores with a phone to their head ignoring the real people in front of them )

I was lucky enough tho to grab the huge 6 GB plan for cheap when the iphone launched on Rogers otherwise I don't think I would own one due to the cost of surfing. So I love my iphone but realize that I am definitely in the minority for how I use a cellphone. Maybe it was the first 16 years of my career being on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week for vet emergencies that makes me hate being able to be tracked down by cell now. I figure unless my son is not with me, nothing else is important enough to bother carrying a phone around for all the time!

My 0.02 worth
ME

AT&T? I thought you live in Canada? Unless, you didn't write that rant.

Pros:
I own an iphone, and I'm VERY happy with it. It is by far the best phone I have ever owned. Beign able to look up driving directions or businesses using google maps on the go has saved my a** numerous times. I use it to play audiobooks, podcasts, and music, and if someone calls while I'm listening, no problem, it pauses the music/podcast/audiobook and gives me the option to answer the call.

The keyboard does have a learning curve, but you get used to it after a few days, assuming you don't have MONSTER hands. Though, I doubt you'll be writing a novel on it. I've written many maaca posts here using my iphone. It's auto-correct catches 95% of the spelling errors that crop up due to the virtual keyboard.

The battery was a problem when the phone first launched in the US, but Apple has somehow fixed the problem with their firmware updates. I use my phone A LOT during the day, and by the time I go to bed I still have lots of charge left, I charge every night just in case. If I only used it to talk, not to websurf or listen to music, it'd probably last a few days. Not having the brightness at max helps a lot.

I've NEVER had a dropped call, then again I'm not using AT&T, I'm using Fido. Some people have fixed their dropped calls problem by getting a new SIM card.

No other phone can surf the web like the iphone can. It can display practically any website. And if the site was designed for the iphone (like Google's RSS reader site is), then it's even better. Every morning I wake up and open my Google Reader page, delivering customized news to me. Better than reading the paper.

My wife uses her iphone to listen to podcasts and play games while on the bus to work every morning. She can also watch video podcasts or TV shows too.

It carries all the photos I've ever taken. If I want to show someone photos of my trip to England 3 years ago, no problem, I can pull up a slide show and zoom in to photos, or flick them to go to the next one.

It has made my nintendo DS obsolete. The games available for it are starting to get quite good. I'm playing a game on it now called Rolando, and it's one of the funnest handheld games I've ever played. And games for the iphone are orders of magnitude cheaper than for the DS or PSP, plus can be downloaded and aren't on cartridges!

It's the only phone/mp3 player that works with itunes, the defacto music/podcast/audiobook software for PCs and Macs (I own a Mac). No other phone works well with Macs, so it was a simple choice for me.

The screen is bright (even with brightness turned down to less than half), colourful, and detailed. The screen also never scratches, I never put any kind of screen on my iphone, and after 5 months of use, not a single scratch!

You'll be amazed by all the little details thought into the design and interface of the phone. If you want to go 'silent', just flick the switch on the side of the phone, and it'll make a small inaudible buzz to let you know it's now in vibrate only mode. The RAZR I used to own would make an audible beep when I wanted to make is silent, which is super lame. Also, the phone is smart enough to mute games that you start while in silent mode, genius! Every other phone will start blaring sound from a game if you decide to fire it up while in a meeting, or while on the can. There's hundreds of other really smart choices made to the design of the phone. You'll have the phone for over a month and still discover cool little things that it can do. (Like being able to skip a song by double clicking the little mic attached to the headphones, or pause it with a single click)

Cons:
The plans are expensive. But then again, so are the data plans for every other phone. And having to sign a 3 year contract sucks, but I thought it was worth it.

Careful! If you crack the screen, it'll cost ~$200 to fix it. I accidentally cracked the screen of my first iphone, had to get it fixed, and gave it to the wife. It cracked because I had the iphone in my pockets, with the screen facing outwards, and probably got smacked by something. I've kept my new one facing in, and no trouble yet. My wife is super clutsy, and she's had one for a couple months with no problem, maybe she's extra careful with it.

It's tied to itunes. This can be good or bad depending on if you like itunes. I happen to love itunes, so it's a plus for me, but there are people out there that refuse to use it. You can't really use the iphone properly without itunes, it's how you get music onto it!

Conclusion:
I bought an iphone because I wanted my phone and ipod in one device; it has provided that and sooooo much more!

Update: I forgot to mention that with Fido and Rogers, in order to use voicemail you have to buy a $15 features package. This also included call display and unlimited text messages. You shouldn't have to pay for these things separately, but I blame Rogers, not Apple.

I currently pay: $17.50 (voice) + $8 (system access fee+911) + $15 (iphone features pack) + $30 (6GB data plan, not available anymore, it's 300MB now IIRC) = $70.5 + tax per month

Considering a home phone line costs $20-30 a month, it doesn't seem so bad considering what you get for it.

/flame suit on
I didn't write it.  I'm an apple hater so I just googled " iphone sucks" and there's a bunch of sites with good reasons...

yes I'm one of the person who refuses to install quicktime now that it force feeds itunes with it and it's 12 unneeded services.  use the alternative instead. I'll never use itunes.

$70.5 + tax per month   wow man .. that's a lot of money to make a call. for 3 years? that's 2500$ ... + tax

Quoted from medvet

I never bother texting and use my phone for calling out mostly

That is refreshing.  Same here. IT'S A PHONE. CALL PEOPLE INSTEAD OF TYPING. Geez!

So, an iphone can only be used for making phone calls? You have such little imagination! I guess I'm not allowed to use my TV for watching DVDs or playing video games either, since TVs are for watching only TV!

If you only care about phone calls, I recommend this:

On the other hand, if you want one portable device that does it all, the iphone is an excellent choice!

Also, I'm sure that the original poster could have googled what you did, he was looking for the opinions of the members here.

Quoted Text

(I own a Mac) No other phone works well with Macs, so it was a simple choice for me

I rest my case.

Apples with apples and everything else away from it.

Save yourself the grief.. buy an iPod Touch and stick with your current phone (or get a Blackberry).


iPhone sure does look pretty, but I'll bet there's a new model just around the corner (and 2 more within a year)

Apple.  The choice for yuppies all across the world.    

(no offense intended for those who actually USE their Apple products, but you have to admit that 95% of owners out there own 'em because it's "cool")

Man I can't believe the attention this piece of techno bum wipe gets.

First off I would like to relate back to Diamond Dave's pager concerns. The man is feeling a distinct lack of liberty through having to carry this POS pager. IPhone, think POS pager on steroids. Who wants any of this stuff? It's a phone dammit, put a bottle opener on the side and you might have something there.

Oh I can turn the screen. Oooh look at my fake lighter. Wow it can pick out shitty music playing in a bar and try and sell you it. Look it's necro's HB pf on youtube on a two inch screen.

IPhone is the flavor of the week. When it can get up and get me a beer out of the cold cellar I will be impressed. Beyond that... who cares.

You all are voicing your opinions as opposed to giving  the original poster what he asked for. If he wants an iPhone then let him make up his own damn mind based on others experience and not on opinions.


as far as technology goes some people want it, some don't. I am ok with my little LG 6200 (a fricken tank by todays standards) and don't need an iPhone but there are those that just have to have the latest because it makes them feel cool as mentioned above or they just think they need it.

Quoted from necro_nemesis

Man I can't believe the attention this piece of techno bum wipe gets.

First off I would like to relate back to Diamond Dave's pager concerns. The man is feeling a distinct lack of liberty through having to carry this POS pager. IPhone, think POS pager on steroids. Who wants any of this stuff? It's a phone dammit, put a bottle opener on the side and you might have something there.

Oh I can turn the screen. Oooh look at my fake lighter. Wow it can pick out shitty music playing in a bar and try and sell you it. Look it's necro's HB pf on youtube on a two inch screen.

IPhone is the flavor of the week. When it can get up and get me a beer out of the cold cellar I will be impressed. Beyond that... who cares.

Amen to that, brother. I believe we as a society did just fine without cell phones. I consider them leashes. I do own a cellphone, and 98% of the time, it stays off. I have it for emergencies.

I find that with time, technologies have gotten somewhat more accessible to all, now everyone jumps on it like a bunch of junkies. Man, i couldn't believe what I saw on boxing day... people walking out all wide-eyed because they bought LCD tvs, digital cameras and all that crap. I will be honest... if I don't play pinball (one of the few technological things I do) or look on the internet, I am like Glen on this... crack open a cold one and enjoy the now. I enjoy playing with my kids, and having a long conversation with my wife or friends.

Now, like Glen said, back to Dave, yeah... work phones and pagers do take away from your daily freedom. Best advice? Look for this symbol, and press on it:




... then crack open a cold beer.


Ok OK... Dave, get a pager AND a cheap cellphone. Leave the phone off. Filter the incoming calls with the pager. WAY cheaper than an IPhone.