121 Responses for "Fail of the Week: My New iPhone"

1. Teslanaut July 18th, 2008 at 9:05 am 1

   If it’s sucha pain in the rear for you. Why not take it out of your back pocket and put it in your front picket? Or your Purse? Side Bag? Fanny Pack? Plastic Bag? Duffel Bag? Swinging it around with it tied to some kind of String like apparatus? Have a dog act as a carrying pack mule like… Pet.

2. GilbertErik July 18th, 2008 at 9:06 am 2

   Sorry to hear about yer iPhone. It’s horror stories like these that make me glad I haven’t (yet) drank the iPhone kool-aid.

3. Ben Kessler July 18th, 2008 at 9:06 am 3

   Sighhh… I thought the battery issues were blown out of proportion but after reading this I’m worried. I went into an AT&T store on Saturday and they were all sold out so I threw down money to get my iPhone when the next shipment comes in. Now I obviously can’t get a refund.

   Let’s just hope 2.0.1 fixes this…

4. wom July 18th, 2008 at 9:07 am 4

   it just works?

5. Sheriff July 18th, 2008 at 9:07 am 5

   The battery on the 3g is woeful. It’s the most the impractical phone I have ever owned, power wise. It essentially needs to be mains powered to have any kind of use. However like a partner in an abusive relationship, I still love it.

6. Sam R July 18th, 2008 at 9:08 am 6

   Bummer. Hopefully they get all those bugs worked out quickly since it looks like others are having those problems also.

7. Tom July 18th, 2008 at 9:08 am 7

   I don’t think it is just the phone. I have the 1.0 iPhone and experience the same keyboard lag with the 2.0 version of the firmware. I have also noticed shorter battery life but I it’s because I’m using the phone now since there is Exchange support.

8. dug July 18th, 2008 at 9:08 am 8

   I have the keyboard issue with safari on my old iphone. I always happens when loading a graphic heavy site. Maybe with the 2.0 software there are more processes going on in the background?

9. cheapsuits July 18th, 2008 at 9:08 am 9

   Thanks for the heads up I will hold on to my 1st gen iPhone awhile longer

10. Jason D July 18th, 2008 at 9:08 am 10

    Here here. Exactly all the same issues. Makes me wish I could just revert to my iPnone 1.0 until it’s worked out. Will try a restore then just re-configure to see if that helps but I did experience a lot of the lag with 2.0 firmware on my old iPhone so I think it’s mainly buggy firmware. Again! Grrrr. And what’s up with the Camera asking me to use my location every single time I take a photo? Can you say preference? Or allow always? Something but it’s annoying in so many ways. Enuff ranting. Time for Batman!

11. Eric Haddock July 18th, 2008 at 9:08 am 11

    I experience the battery life but not the keyboard issue, not ever. I had an iPhone before this one and so I guess I “restored” too, but the battery life is the only major issue I’ve encountered.

    And it doesn’t seem like turning off Bluetooth and wi-fi helps in any measurable way.

    –Eric
    http://twitter.com/abashima

12. dave July 18th, 2008 at 9:09 am 12

    Try turning off Settings > Fetch New Data > Push. If you don’t need push services, this will save lots of battery life.

13. Calvin Robinson July 18th, 2008 at 9:10 am 13

    Well being as this is my first iPhone, I’m probably much more excited about it. I have only experience the lagging keyboard problem once – but the battery leakage really is a bitch, and the 3G reception on this phone is so weak.

    I do hope they tweak the firmware a little. But all in all I’m really enjoying the iPhone 3G. Loving the App Store, and sleak design of -everything- on the phone, and the touch-screen usage in so nice, coming from a Nokia N82.

14. Bryan Brooks July 18th, 2008 at 9:11 am 14

    I am very unhappy with the battery life. After 3 hours of being off the charger i’m down by 25% after moderate usage. My iPhone 1.0 would take 5 to 6 hours before experiencing the same loss of charge.

    My phone crashes quite often too. It’s gone from being the most stable phone I’ve ever had to the most unstable. I really hope some of these issues can be worked out soon. However, I don’t see them improving battery life. I’m thinking of picking one of these up when it comes out for the 3g : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0010WRV6S

    -b

15. DanBowe July 18th, 2008 at 9:11 am 15

    makes me glad I stuck with my Edge iPhone

16. 6-3-2 July 18th, 2008 at 9:12 am 16

    I haven’t had any of those issues. In fact I haven’t had any issues at all; I was even given Smart Water by the Apple Store employees while I waited in line, which was an appreciated and clever touch. Maybe the metro Detroit area in an iPhone haven, it even stops hardware and software issues. Plus it has, from what I can tell, really fast 3G.

17. fearcake July 18th, 2008 at 9:12 am 17

    the keyboard thing is definately a 2.0 thing as my gen 1 iphone does it too occasionally. I have to hold down the home button until it resets the app I’m in and takes me back to the home screen then relaunch the app and it is fine. Only happened a few ttlimes so far but very frustrating. I have to say this has been the worst experience i’ve had with apple as of yet. I’m used to much better products from then. Hopefully the update will fix some oF the issues. Now the battery drain has to be the 3g or GPS cause my gen 1 hasn’t had that…except for when using apps. Have to say them not allowing background procceses was probably a good thing otherwise our batteries would last an hour if we were lucky.

18. Christopher July 18th, 2008 at 9:13 am 18

    According to Engadget, 2.0.1 may already be in the works. I’m experiencing the exact same thing as you, not sure if I mentioned that to you on Twitter or not. But yeah, keyboard lag, app lag, general shitty battery life. I’ve resorted to turning off wi-fi/3g/location services when not in use, and obviously I get great battery life then.

19. dug July 18th, 2008 at 9:14 am 19

    Are there more processes running in the background with 3G than the old iPhone?

20. Michael Narciso July 18th, 2008 at 9:14 am 20

    I do not have the symptoms you have but everyone is complaining about the battery. The battery is actually much better than the last phone and any current 3G phone so we can’t really complain about it. I tend to just leave it on Edge and I feel like my phone lasts forever. I only use 3G for heavy browsing but for email and twitter edge works almost just as fast. My big complaint is they need a quick way to turn off 3G. Going through menus to get to it is annoying.

    As far as your battery leak I believe what might have happened is you were using a program that constantly updates from the internet such as Twitterific.

    I believe if you are in an app that uses the Internet and you just put it to sleep as in hitting the top button. The app is still running in the background. However, if you hit the home button (the big button at the bottom of the phone) it will completely quit the app.

    Go ahead and try it, open up twitterific and put the phone to sleep by hitting the top button. You’ll notice when you come back to your phone the app is still running as soon as you unlock it.

    While, I don’t have your symptoms of keyboard lag, I’ve had 4 restarts from trying to open apps so far.

21. Oscar Cortez July 18th, 2008 at 9:15 am 21

    I am not really having the keyboard problem you are, but I definitely agree about the battery. My wife (using a 16gb) is getting great battery life because her use is limited, but my 8gb is constantly running low. Between 3G, camera, and GPS … it is kinda the suck.

    I also notice that after installing a few more apps in the past couple of days, my “Current Location” feature wasn’t work as intended … would just search and search and search. This morning I cleared off a couple of apps I wasn’t using and updated all of those Apps that had updates and my GPS is now working again.

    Apple putting out a 2.1 update will hopefully resolve some of these issues.

22. alan July 18th, 2008 at 9:15 am 22

    Most of the issues are across the board with the 2.0 firmware, they need to release 2.1 and soon. You can turn 3G off in the prefs and drop down to EDGE if you want to save on battery life. though my new 16gb white hasn’t leaked power like that. The other day I wasn’t on it much and when I went to charge it for the night I could hardly see where the charge had gone down.

    I had chalked up needing to charge it more to increased use with more useful apps and ones that required the screen be on all the time for use (games and aim, vs thing like the iPod or SMS)

23. Brian Partridge July 18th, 2008 at 9:15 am 23

    I totally agree. It doesn’t take quite 30 seconds for my keyboard to respond, but probably 4 or 5 seconds.

    And I had issues with applications restarting my phone (we’re talking black screen, white Apple logo restart). Genius Bar suggested installing apps from iTunes instead of over the air. However, it was restarting when opening the App Store itself! Not exactly a 3rd-party app… I ended up restoring to a clean 2.0 and starting everything over.

    Now I haven’t had restarting issues, but it does freeze for a couple of seconds (10+) here and there.

    Totally agree about the battery. Biggest letdown, even with the issues I listed above. I carry two external Black & Decker batteries around, which provide a full charge to the iPhone. Normally I’m at around 50% by the time I get to work. Some of this I attribute to using the phone so much because it’s new and I want to use all of the new features / apps.

24. Jesper Persson July 18th, 2008 at 9:16 am 24

    Don’t know if you already tried it, but if you restore your iPhone you will get a later build of the 2.0 version. This has solved my keybord lagging, but not my contacts…there still lagging SO bad.

25. Brian July 18th, 2008 at 9:16 am 25

    I hear ya Veronica. I am in the process of restoring my 3g iPhone for the 2nd time since I got I got it. The issue I have is it just resets on it’s own and gets stuck on the apple logo. Very frustrating for sure. Hope apple releases an update soon.

26. Adam July 18th, 2008 at 9:17 am 26

    Same issue with the keyboard lag here – it’s usually only apparent when launching 3rd party apps. It’s like a 10-15 second delay before the app becomes responsive to any kind of interaction (typing, tapping, or otherwise)

    Not sure if this is ‘loading’ or this is an actual hang in the OS, but I think I’ve seen it in Apple’s native phone apps too (SMS, contacts, maps).

    I’m going to try a restore tonight and will try from fresh since I did restore a backup from my first iPhone to this one. We’ll see if that does the trick.

27. Veronica July 18th, 2008 at 9:17 am 27

    Yeah, I’ve been turning off the 3G too, just to try and save some juice. Not optimal, for sure.

28. Al Degutis July 18th, 2008 at 9:18 am 28

    I’ve seen the keyboard lag problem twice in the last 7 days and both times it has been when doing SMS. Going back to the Home screen and then back to SMS cleared it right up for me. I haven’t seen this problem on any other app. The only other problem I’ve had is once it seemed to hang trying to send a tweet with a pic via AirMe but that could have been due to poor cell signal.

29. Michael Rowe July 18th, 2008 at 9:18 am 29

    Veronica,

    I’ve been seeing this same keyboard lag on an upgraded Rel 1 iPhone. It appears to be happening based on running other apps. I hate to say that it appears that I had the same problem on my old Treo 750 when I loaded lost of Apps on a Windoze mobile device.

    Michael

30. bamatrojan July 18th, 2008 at 9:19 am 30

    darn – I’ve been impatiently waiting for my Verizon contract to expire on July 22nd so I could promptly purchase a new iPhone — now, not so much – maybe I’ll wait for the bugs to be worked out

31. Lionel July 18th, 2008 at 9:20 am 31

    I cannot risk my business on a shaddy phone. I just want a ipod touch to have the apps, but my phone NEEDS to work. I hope it is solved for you soon, let us know please.
    Have a good weekend V.

32. Noah July 18th, 2008 at 9:20 am 32

    I had an original iPhone that I upgraded to 2.0 and I did see the keyboard lag issue once, but it went away after rebooting the phone. Battery life feels like it’s less on 2.0, but maybe it’s just the apps making me use it more?

    During the upgrade to 2.0 the backup mysteriously disappeared, so I had no choice but to do a clean sync of all my music and contacts the first time. Maybe that ended up helping in the long run?

    I also heard someone that the build of the 2.0 firmware that shipped on the new 3G was not as new as the build that went out to the old iPhones through iTunes. I don’t know how true this is. All I know is that (under Settings > General > About) I have 2.0 build 5A347 and I’ve only seen a small fraction of the problems most 3G owners have been having. Perhaps you could use iTunes to manually restore a 3G phone to 2.0 version 347 by way of the firmware update that everyone downloaded early?

33. Maxim Shevertalov July 18th, 2008 at 9:20 am 33

    I haven’t had the problems you are talking about. The battery life is not great, but I can get by on for a day of two, depending on how I use it. If I use it like a phone it last for about two days, but with amy app use I drain it in about a day and have to remember to recharge at night. Never had the keyboard issue though. Btw: typing this ok the iPhone, still enjoing it.

34. Tim Castro July 18th, 2008 at 9:21 am 34

    Thanks for the heads up about the Power Drain. I was on the fence about the iPhone, but now I think I’m definitely going for one of the other Smartphones.

35. Nicole Gustas July 18th, 2008 at 9:21 am 35

    I thought about getting the new iPhone the day it launched, but decided to hold off (since I was moving three days later and want my new phone to be in my new area code). I wondered at the beginning of the week if I’d regret the decision, but between what you have to say and what others have said, I’m starting to think I’ll hold off until September, or maybe even Christmas.

36. Tsaot July 18th, 2008 at 9:22 am 36

    Wow. I haven’t really heard anything good about the new 2.0 software/hardware. Not even the apps sound appealing right now (no background apps, turn by turn is forbidden, pricing seems to be absurd…). Has Apple been hiring Microsoft consultants?

37. IanN July 18th, 2008 at 9:22 am 37

    Have seen the keyboard lag, but not the battery issues. Not using push is def helping me out. Also, leaving wi-fi on…just like the ‘old’ iphone. Good luck. Hope everything sorts itself out soon.

38. Rico July 18th, 2008 at 9:25 am 38

    I’m glad I’ve just stuck with my free Razr work phone. It works – and it’s free! Hard to beat that!

39. Casey McKinnon July 18th, 2008 at 9:26 am 39

    I’m sporting the iPhone Classic and it also suffers from slow-type syndrome. I’ve restarted the phone thinking perhaps it was just in need of a reboot, but it still happens. Very. Annoying.

40. Martti July 18th, 2008 at 9:26 am 40

    As Michael pointed out – If you’re suffering from severe battery drain, try going to the home screen before switching off – Internet apps, such as twitterriffic will continue to run in the background and burn battery.

    The BIGGEST drain, by far, is the maps application if you’ve switched on GPS. I left my iPhone on the maps app with GPS active and my battery lasted (from a full charge) about 4-5 hours.

    Also, and I know that this may be slightly controversial – Switch off 3G unless you’re doing some heavy lifting. Your battery will thank you.

    HTH

41. Pat Lathrop July 18th, 2008 at 9:27 am 41

    I have the original 4 gig from the first day of sale. The battery life has always been an issue. I haven’t noticed any difference with 2.0 or the use of Push for Exchange. However, I learned to set the fetch for Gmail to manual and it makes a big difference. Also turning off WIFI is a big help (wish there was a switch on the side for that).

    Got the Mopie case/charger and love it. Hope it fits the 3G.
    http://www.mophie.com/

    This one works well too but not as elegant
    http://richardsolo.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=264

    Having none of the keyboard problems??

    Good luck.
    foundbypat.com

42. Casey McKinnon July 18th, 2008 at 9:27 am 42

    PS: I should mention that the keyboard lag on my iPhone Classic is in 1.1.4, not 2.0.

43. Matt V July 18th, 2008 at 9:28 am 43

    Yeah, the battery life is lousy. I haven’t had the keyboard issues, but I don’t answer much e-mail on the phone.

    I hope the 2.0.1 update helps things.

44. JasonV July 18th, 2008 at 9:28 am 44

    Experiencing the same issues as everyone else. Keyboard lag and battery life. Turning off 3G and only using it when I want that extra kick does help.

    Today I am going to test using the phone and not starting any app, keeping location off and 3G off. I am assuming my battery life will be much better. With only txt msgs and phone use, I should get a good full day. Obviously this is not a solution, but I figured it would be a good test.

45. Ricardo Zamora July 18th, 2008 at 9:28 am 45

    Just turn off the 3G radio when you don´t need it… and it works like a charm!.

46. mtcrutch July 18th, 2008 at 9:28 am 46

    so far, i haven’t really had any keyboard issues.. other than apps crashing or hanging up, everything has been running fairly smoothly. battery-wise – if i charge mine overnight, by around 3pm it needs to be hooked back up.

    when it’s hooked up, itunes likes to do a complete backup of the phone every time.. kind of annoying.

47. Mike Myers July 18th, 2008 at 9:31 am 47

    The battery woes are on more than just the new 3G iphone. I have the original phone with 2.0 installed and since I installed the battery life is horrible. I have to charge it in the middle of the day now. I used to be able to use it all day and still more than half of batter when I went to bed.

    It is freezing up alot more now. Not just on keyboard for me. It pauses alot. Seems a reboot fixes the problem for a little while.

48. Huggy.B July 18th, 2008 at 9:31 am 48

    My co-worker bought a Treo 3G before the iPhone 3G came out and he said the same thing about battery drainage. He couldn’t believe how fast it drained and was really disappointed. I was just setting up another coworkers iPhone 3G (16gb) yesterday for exchange support and didn’t notice any keyboard lags, but did notice lag getting into the settings control panel, which was weird.

49. Thomas Alley July 18th, 2008 at 9:32 am 49

    Disabling push, fetch, and WiFi (in that order) will save you loads of battery life. Also, turning down the brightness to as low as you can manage to live with helps noticeably.

    Also, if you don’t *really* need your location for a given app, don’t give it. Polling the GPS is going to take battery, too. And switching from 3G to EDGE will give you a pretty big bump.

    Restoring from backups was causing me problems. Sometimes I couldn’t answer calls because, even though the slider looked like it was working, the phone wouldn’t unlock! After doing a clean restore and starting fresh all my crashes and other problems have gone away.

50. Jim Kirks July 18th, 2008 at 9:32 am 50

    loving the keyboard lag. I hope the work this out soon!!

51. Nicholas July 18th, 2008 at 9:33 am 51

    I have the first-gen iPhone, and software 2.0 is killing my battery life too (though not as bad as yours!). The push feature sucks the life out of my iPhone, along with the applications.

    Reading and hearing all the negatives with the latest toy from Apple, I’m glad I didn’t upgrade to 3G.

52. Jorge July 18th, 2008 at 9:39 am 52

    Ok, so i guess i will be buying a N95 or some other phone to have a back up one when i get my iphone.

53. faddah yuetsu July 18th, 2008 at 9:39 am 53

    i concur – battery seems to drain just by looking at it. but i keep in mind there [u]five[/u], count ‘em, [u][i]five[/i][/u] chipsets with antennaes that keep this thing humming all day long — 3G, Edge (dual mode when it can’t find 3G), GPS, 802.11g Wifi, and Bluetooth. i’m surprised i’m not seeing eggs fry on the smooth-backed body surface.

    i’ve seen the keyboard lag a bit, but mostly i’m noticing if you fill the thing up with the new 3rd party apps (and i’m just guessing this is the cause), and leave not much space on it, it becomes ag-go-niz-ing-ly sloooooow in doing anything. plus, prone to a full system crash and getting to see the black screen with the silver apple again and again. is anyone qa’ing these apps, or is software qa of any sort a thing of the past with most companies now?

    worse was the cluster-*F!* that was friday’s 2.0 update that bricked my old iPhone for half a day while apple’s iTunes servers went down for the count. sheez. they’re releasing a new iPhone, they have a 4 – 6 million iPhone user base for the first gen. iPhones already, ya think apple & akamai (who servers up all of apple’s downloads) might have done some IT work and gotten beefier servers, more fibre connections and done some load balancing before july 11th?? ya think?!?!

    and don’t get me started on mobileme. wotta nightmare. first, their servers are up and down and none of the real new “push” services are to be seen for 3 or 4 days from release. as of monday, my iPhone, even when connected and syncing with my macbook iTunes, [u]still[/u] wasn’t getting any of the contacts put in its address book. do you get that? i had an iPhone with [i][u]no[/u][/i] contacts in it, rendering it useless for anything but receiving calls. finally, somehow, the contacts got pushed to it. but since then, if i create calendar items on the iPhone, they don’t get pushed/sync’d up to “the cloud” on the mobileme web site or back down to my iCal on my macbook. wotta crock.

    between bricking my iPhone for half a day friday and having no contacts all of monday, i believe apple or at&t or [i][u]somebody[/u][/i] owes me one full day of standard cell phone charges. word.

    it has been a release marred by a lack of thinking ahead of time. but that seems to be the american way these days. i gladly would have waited 2 more weeks for both the software update and the 3G iPhone if a bit more QA had been done on the 2.0 firmware, the apps, and the apple mobileme site to make the damn things mostly work from the get-go. they are already into their 3rd quarter on this release, so waiting 2 more weeks would not have mattered for their numbers this quarter that much. and i’d much rather have a far more stable release than this horse-puckey i’ve been put through.

    plus, it mars the fact that there are a lot of things to love about the new 2.0 firmware and yes, the 3G iPhone. i [u]love[/u] the AP News app., including it geo-locating me to give me local news stories. there is last.fm for it, but also pandora squeaks ahead with connectivity as it will load and stream play songs on 3G, not just Wifi (last.fm doesn’t do well on 3G, it seems). there are so many apps to play with, i almost lose site of the fact that the device also has a bevy of extra storage podcasts, vids & music for me to listen to. oh, and it’s my phone too! i keep forgetting that the more i play with the apps and browser.

    just wish these basic functionalities would get resolved … soon!

    my grumbly 2 cents review on a friday morn. i’m waiting for mobileme support chat to start working so i can give those fine fellows a piece of my mind … grumble rumble grumble …

54. Doc July 18th, 2008 at 9:41 am 54

    Check your push settings and or just restore your phone there is already a minor firmware upgrade. There is (2.0)5a347 ann (2.0)5a345 make sure you have the right stuff.

    Its early people don’t give up on the apple machine.

    My phone is great and yes I never fully migrate data from an old machine to a new one, it’s lazy and like all things lazy will give you trouble later. Since the Mail, Cals, and Contacts all come by automatically there is no need to bring the backup over. Start with a clean phone sync the music, books and videos and push the first few times then turn it off if you don’t need push.

    The same reasons you don’t migrate PPC data to an Intel Mac just reinstall. Laziness will get you sooner or later.

    Aloha

55. tammylee July 18th, 2008 at 9:47 am 55

    She is so right about the battery plan on contantanly charging it. I would also recomend buying it from Apple I bought mine at AT&T having a horrible time at getting it replaced. It is defective speaker is bad. At&t stores are not helping at all had to call AT&T thy are calling the store and having them replace it without any fees… Still waiting for my new phone.

56. Ryan July 18th, 2008 at 9:49 am 56

    yeah…I have taken a big hit in battery life after jumping to the 2.o firmware on my 1st gen iPhone. Was using push email and it was guzzling battery so I switched to fetch data every 30min and it still is worse than 1.0.

57. Robert Nelson July 18th, 2008 at 9:51 am 57

    The battery life is the main issue for me. I can further confirm that the battery drains quickly even without regular use.

    I use mine as an alarm from time to time and will go to sleep with a nearly charged battery, only to wake up with a nearly drained battery.

    The only use my phone is getting during my sleep time is receiving a few text messages and checking email (a few accounts once per hour) which is a lot on the email checking but seriously, that should not drain it that much.

    I did the same with my old iPhone and never had batter drain like that, and I had that iPhone checking email every 15 minutes even through the night.

    Sad, I bought a new iPhone for the 3G and GPS, but in order to get any worthwhile amount of time from my battery, I have to keep those services turned off.

58. MardeeT July 18th, 2008 at 9:52 am 58

    I have the old Iphone upgraded to 2.0, it was never jailbroken, and I purchased it only 3 months ago. Since the upgrade yes, I am having the same issues with the lag on emails, and sometimes just selections in general. I find myself tapping numerous times, and then it catches up, and its open, and closed again. ARG! Some of the new apps, and even old (maps) just die and close sometimes. My battery life on the old one seems to be less now with 2.0 with same usage, maybe its doing some location based stuff in the background? Could be one of the new apps? Who knows, but my bet is that its the firmware that has the issue and not the hardware of the new or old Iphone. Lets hope anyway.

59. Felipe July 18th, 2008 at 9:54 am 59

    “Disabling push, fetch, and WiFi (in that order) will save you loads of battery life. Also, turning down the brightness to as low as you can manage to live with helps noticeably.”

    Unfortunately, doing this turns it into a pretty ordinary phone with a bad screen.

60. Kypeli July 18th, 2008 at 9:55 am 60

    Did you already listen to this week’s MacBreak Weekly from Twit? They did bash the phone (and MobileMe) quite heavily. Didn’t frankly see it coming from Merlin and Scott…

61. M Chan July 18th, 2008 at 10:03 am 61

    I been having the slow keyboard issues too when texting… Though i find if you go back to the home screen and then back to SMS, the keyboard works fine again… I hope they fix it in the next release…

    Battery life, i have the same problem too…. Have to bring a apc battery pack to keep it alive … Turning off 3G does make it last a lot longer… Just can’t surf as fast.. sigh..

    Mike

62. TJ July 18th, 2008 at 10:04 am 62

    From what I’ve heard, the keyboard lag is a known issue. I had the same problem, but have found that doing a few things have helped (mind you not entirely).

    When I upgraded from the original iPhone to the 3G flavored one, I used the restore from back up feature, went about using it, and noticed, that along with a few others, I was having issues with the keyboard, searching contacts, GPS sometimes not linking up, etc. etc. It got me thinking, one of the first things I do with a new Mac is reinstall the OS. So that’s what I did with the iPhone, and it seems to have improved the overall usability of the phone.

    And as far as battery life is concerned. It will get better. Obviously, it’s a new gadget so it people are “playing” with it more than they are “using” it. Secondly, I’ve heard from a lot of people that say lithium ion batteries are not at their prime until they’ve been through a few charge cycles. I’ve noticed, that after a week, the overnight charge is lasting the whole day.

63. I thought the iPhone just works? - BlackBerryForums.com : Your Number One BlackBerry Community July 18th, 2008 at 10:06 am 63

    [...] thought the iPhone just works? – Today, 01:06 PM hmmm…. one poster suggested to disable push, fetch, and wifi. WTF? What good is a smartphone with … I’m guessing the iPhone fanbois are finally realizing what real push email is since the iPhone [...]

64. Zaz July 18th, 2008 at 10:12 am 64

    Eek! I put my order in but my phone hasn’t arrived yet. I guess I’ll just be sure to put the brand spankiest new build of the firmware on it and be conservative with push, 3G, GPS, x, y, and z. Weee, technology!

    My phone is about five years old though and randomly turns off so I have a feeling I’ll be pretty thrilled even if I have to charge it every day, since I have to do that now.

65. Lars H July 18th, 2008 at 10:13 am 65

    You americans seems to have no experience with 3G-phones

    They really sucks your battery dry in no time if youre to far from the base station.

    I have had a SonyEricsson Z1010 almost burning a hole in my shirt pocket trying to find a non-existing 3G base station once during a train ride in Switzerland and emptying the fully loaded battery in one hour!

    I am on my third 3G phone now (a N95 with multicrashing) in about four years they all have needed daily charging, and using 3G-data really drains the battery.

    I have used both the Nokia N70 (Symbian 2 sucks more than the 3rd edition) and the N95 with GPS and navigation software which loads maps over GPRS/EDGE/3G-network and without the car charger you drain them in no time ( < 1/2 hour).

    I ordeded my 16Gb iPhone 3G on July the 12th but here in Sweden they are sold out and back-orded, expecting delivery in late august

    Hopefully they have fixed most of the bugs by then…
    ( on the other hand i’m used to daily crashing of my 3G-phones)

    /Lars H

66. Dave July 18th, 2008 at 10:18 am 66

    I’ve had the EXACT same issues that you’ve described above. I have the 8gb and got it the day after it came out. Battery life is terrible, i have to charge it twice a day… when i was using the GPS and it was plugged into the car charger, it just maintained the life it already had, didnt charge the phone at all.

    Turn off the 3g if you’re not using it, that will help you get through the day… i mean we all dealt with the edge network before a week ago, its worth it to preserve battery life…

67. Scott c July 18th, 2008 at 10:30 am 67

    I’ve had similar problems recntly with my 1.1.4 iPhone. Dent bother to update yet. I’ve also had moments of a frozen iPhone and the keyboard lag

68. Christopher Spera July 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am 68

    I’ve had much the same problems; and I pulled down the one ROM upgrade they did sorta release. (connect the device, back it up, hit restore, follow that process; and it installs the one kinda-sorta ROM upgrade they did release, kinda…sorta…)

    Even then, I’ve still had problems with app crashes, keyboard stutters and slowness, etc. Its all code optimization/memory management related. After 11 years with Windows Mobile, I’ve sung this song before and know the words by heart.

    @TJ is right about the battery life. It will get better as the battery gets conditioned. However, it still would have been better if the battery was user replaceable; but don’t get me started on that.

    Apple should be addressing this fairly quickly (I would think), as they likely want to keep the $330M in revenue that has been reported they made from their 1M iPhone 3G’s sold. Without some much needed updates, quickly, there are going to be a number of people returning their devices, me included.

    The behavior and experiences I’ve been having with this thing are reminiscent of early Pocket PC Phones/Windows Mobile Phones, and I am SO over going through that again just for a cool device.

    Kind Regards,

    Chris Spera
    Gear Diary Review Team
    http://www.geardiary.com

69. shafiu July 18th, 2008 at 10:56 am 69

    This makes me so want to hang on to my treo750 till apple release a complete version of iPhone.

    And I am just getting tired of explaining to people that they can’t buy an iPhone just for $199

70. Jeffrey Johnson July 18th, 2008 at 10:58 am 70

    This is my first iPhone experience so can not compare to the original but I do know what you mean about the typing slowness, though it only happens every once in awhile. I did not have a smart phone before so really don’t know what to expect for battery life but I have only needed to charge at night which seems better then I thought it would.

    The only other issue that I have is the GPS seems to stop working. Seems to work after I restart the phone, plan to run by the Apple store to see if they can do anything.

71. Jeremy July 18th, 2008 at 11:41 am 71

    My iPhone 2G with the new firmware is having all of the same problems, and it’s really frustrating after being used to a solid experience with the phone before.

72. JakeInPro July 18th, 2008 at 11:42 am 72

    I had similar issues when I restored from a backup of my previous iPhone to my brand-spankin new 3G. I ended up doing a wipe and setting things back up without a restore and have been much happier since. I do encounter issues with the UI being laggy (i.e., the slider not moving smoothly, if at all, when unlocking the phone). I’m also not surprised with the battery life of the phone as it is a 3G device; having push enabled definitely makes a difference as I was playing with the 2.0 update on my iPhone 1G and noticed that it was using more juice than in the past.

73. kominetz.com - My iPhone Ultimatum July 18th, 2008 at 11:52 am 73

    [...] the platform, I must chastise Apple for one of the worst product launches in memory.  Given Veronica Belmont’s experience, maybe I should be grateful for the delay.  To avoid my inevitable agonizing over buying it or not [...]

74. faddah yuetsu July 18th, 2008 at 12:04 pm 74

    doc – if the “check your push settings,” etc., was to me, then yes, i’ve done all that, done the minor firmware upgrade & restore (should be, restore, then resync your whole music/vid library, but wotevah), followed all of apple’s instructions about calendar sycning on the mobileme support pages, i’ve done everything but take the damn thing out for chinese food, push/sync of new calendar items from iPhone to cloud & computer are just *not* working. trust me, i’ve tried.

    still waiting in queue for mobileme support chat. 5 min. left in queue …

75. Lewis July 18th, 2008 at 12:20 pm 75

    This is definitely a problem with the 2.0 firmware. I have it on my iPod touch and it’s exhibiting the same symptoms that you’re experiencing. I unplugged my iPod from my Mac to go downstairs to do some work. After 2 hrs, I went to plug my ipod back into my Mac and the battery was at 20%. When I left it, it was charged 100%. What the hell.

    Maybe this is karma for all the trash talking of Windows in the Apple commercials.

76. AlexW July 18th, 2008 at 12:25 pm 76

    I’m having the exact same problem with the keyboard lag! I’m on 2.0 on the iPod Touch and the update has made it really buggy. It seems like my iPod heats up a lit faster with the update.

77. Adrian July 18th, 2008 at 12:28 pm 77

    I have the older iPhone and upgraded to 2.0 firmware. My battery life immediately tanked. I turned off location services, and my battery life went back to what it used to be.

    I suspect that the bulk of the sucky battery life is location services. It’s a nice feature to have, but it really steals battery power right now.

78. deter3 July 18th, 2008 at 12:29 pm 78

    Apple is not even a phone company , this is their 2nd models, compared with other phone companies , this is only the start .
    They have some really good ideas for innovations , but Iphone all the time can be a fashionable toy than a real tool .

79. Simon July 18th, 2008 at 1:02 pm 79

    So now you’re allocating more time to important things, because life is short and that’s how Apple has won control over the way you manage your life.

80. photoTristan July 18th, 2008 at 1:03 pm 80

    Amen sister!

    i also notice it’s not built quite as well. Cheaper, less quality control-it was probably made faster too.

    I still love my 3G iPhone though it’s not perfect.

81. IceBurgh July 18th, 2008 at 1:17 pm 81

    It’s definitely the software. I updated my first generation phone which had great battery life and noticed the lagginess and poor battery performance.

    Rebooting the phone seemed to help the lag.

    I will turn off location services as advised by the commenter above and see what this does for battery life.

82. tweygant July 18th, 2008 at 1:21 pm 82

    ATT was out of iPhones when I went last Saturday. Now I’m wondering if I want one at all!

83. chanko July 18th, 2008 at 1:45 pm 83

    Like Michael Narciso, if you’re not using the internet too heavily, just turn 3g off. That makes all the difference in the world! I have experienced the laggy keyboard, but all in all I love my iPhone

84. Allister July 18th, 2008 at 2:03 pm 84

    Shock! Horror! The iPhone has bugs! If anyone is holding off buying because of this I hope you haven’t bought Windows yet. Did you know that STILL had bugs?

    I had the keyboard lag on a 1.1.4 iPod Touch, though not 30 seconds. I’ve had half a dozen crashes from third party and Apple apps and some other minor issues.

    I suggest if you want one, buy it and help fix the problems by reporting the issues you have.

85. francine hardaway July 18th, 2008 at 5:43 pm 85

    I stood in the line for five hours. I signed a two-year contract. And I traded a perfectly useful (and almost new, because Apple had just replaced it) iPhone for the new iPhone 2.0 just to be a geek. Or maybe a jerk.

    I’m not unhappy with the 3G iPhone. But I wasn’t unhappy with the other one either. On balance, I probably would have been fine with not upgrading, but I cannot resist a new toy. I singlehandedly power the consumer economy.

    Here’s the good and bad news: 3G is not that much faster than 2G. When I send photos, the best way to send them is wi-fi. I don’t think my new phone is that much faster. Does it put my life in my pocket? No. I will still take a laptop to conferences to live blog, and when I edit someone’s book, you can be sure it will be on a big screen:-) (Yes, I do that.)

    The battery life has already been commented on ad nauseum. I suppose if you turn off the GPS and wi-fi it lasts longer, but then what’s the point? I actually do turn them both off through most of the day, and I carry the charger with me as well.

    The form factor is almost the same, except my new phone has a white plastic back, which will soon be obscured by the case I ordered, because I’m sure it will scratch. It’s spiffy, though. The new phone’s a little thinner, but you wouldn’t notice it unless you weighed them with one in one hand and one in the other. Who cares about the small improvement?

    The App Store is the best part of the new launch, and I could have had that on my old phone. But I forgive Apple the whole Saturday experience because I love the App store. I have downloaded Typepad, iZenGarden, SmugMug, Brightkite, and Kyte.tv. I’m not really a gamer, so I don’t have any of those games yet. I will try them, but they’re not first on my list.

    The Brightkite app doesn’t work well, and neither does SmugMug. That’s disappointing. Typepad, which is the software I use for this blog is awesome. And IZen Garden is beautiful.

    I must admit that I also really like the GPS services, because I can type in an address on Google Maps and it will draw me a purple line from where I am to where I need to go. I’ve never had that before.

    Am I satified? Yes. Am I blown away? No. If you don’t have an iPhone, get one. If you have a first generation iPhone and you want to spend money on something else, keep it.

86. Evan July 18th, 2008 at 9:03 pm 86

    The most frustrating thing for me has been the contacts and how long it can take them to come up. Also, if you keep your MobileMe and Exchange contacts synced it seems to further exasperate this problem. I didn’t have a 1st gen iPhone so I can’t speak to their performance but I don’t think this is acceptable performance by Apple standards. Battery life, like everyone else is saying, kinda blows. When I get to where I am going I have to change my phone settings accordingly to conserve battery (i.e. turn off 3G in the office). I wish the iPhone had different power profiles you could switch between easily.

87. Jono July 18th, 2008 at 9:25 pm 87

    I have to say ive been using 3g phones in Australia for several year at present i have a N95 and the battery sux with moderate use im lucky to get a day and if i want to snap a heap of pics or take a long video forget it the power it all gone very quick. Surly you must of known about 3g battery problems having used services like Qik for live video from you Nokia that chews through the battery like nonthing else. As for GPS with Google maps about 1hour or so in the car the internal battery is dead. From what ive used so far my iPhone is way superior to my N95 in the battery department, I think it is just a case of most of you Americans arnt used to 3G phones because as they go the battery in the iPhone really isnt that bad… As for the restart and mobileme problems remember this is really 1.0 new handset, new services, new apps, im positive that Apple being Apple will have most of the lagging issues and restarting problems ironed out with new firmware update ASAP….

88. Haig July 19th, 2008 at 12:39 am 88

    Hey V! It’s confirmed…my friend has a 1st gen iPhone and he said that ever since he downloaded firnware 2.0 the battery life has been really crappy…like uber crappy! I’m guessing the new firmware is overtaxing the processors, which could in theory lead to a faster draining battery. Whatever it is, it needs to be brought into the mainstream so that Apple rectifies it. Now might be a good time to influence a certain Ryan Block and have him bang the “press” drums via Engadget. But you didn’t hear that from me my dear.

89. phil July 19th, 2008 at 1:32 am 89

    I don’t have a 3g yet but I updated my current phone. It’s not just the 3g that kills the batteries, I’d swear mine is also going down when I’m not using it.

90. steve garfield July 19th, 2008 at 3:27 am 90

    Hi Veronica,

    Some third party applications are restarting my phone too. Black screen, white Apple logo restart.

    Twinkle quits on me.

    –Steve

91. Raymond Forbes July 19th, 2008 at 8:59 am 91

    I experience the keyboard lag constantly. Not quite everytime i text message but almost. I originally thought it might just be my phone and was thinking of going to the genius bar.

    The battery does kind of suck, however it doesn’t seem as bad for me. I can leave the phone with almost full charge when I go to bed and when I wake up it seems to have the same charge.

    -Raymond

92. Josh July 19th, 2008 at 10:10 am 92

    Some co-workers of mine played with the battery life issue and the number one culprit seems to be push. Even fetch at decent intervals won’t suck the life out of the battery quite like push will, it seems. This seems true of both the 3G and classic.

    And you may have to switch it off on any “advanced” settings you have as well.

    I know a lot of developers have had some questions about how Apple would manage push without killing the battery (as apparently has occured on Windows Mobile), and they probably haven’t ironed out all the bugs.

    And yeah, with push your battery will get drained even as your not using it. WiFi and BT will obviously drain as well, but I wouldn’t bother with those unless you’re in zones where you just know they aren’t available.

    Another tip: if you are in an area where you know you can’t get a cell phone signal but have access to wifi, go into airplane mode and then turn WiFi off. This will keep the phone from trying to find non-existent towers while on the net. My phone can easily last over a weekend like that, even with decent use.

    As for stability, many apps are suffering from crash level bugs of a variety of sources, I think. A few may restart your phone. We’ve noticed this in testing of our app but not consistently, not in a reproducible way and not on every phone. My guess is that it is a mix of app performance and native OS issues, both of which should be cleared up with enough time – you can be assured it’s on both the dev community and Apple’s mind.

93. Josh July 19th, 2008 at 10:12 am 93

    Oops – sorry … in my previous post I meant to say “go into airplane mode and turn wifi on”. This will keep the cell network on but allow access to wifi.

94. Rick Webb July 19th, 2008 at 6:06 pm 94

    God, one day I woke up, looked at my phone and forgot it on my bed all day while I went to a meeting. I didn’t even touch it at all, came back at 5 PM and it was already down to ZERO battery.

    I’ve turned off location services, push email, 3G and Wi-Fi and now I have awesome battery life. Now I just don’t know why I didn’t keep my OG iPhone.

    Several of my coworkers have said that a firmware reset has helped them considerably. And I don’t find it too terrible to go turn on the 3G when I want something fast and then to turn it back off.

    I think the biggest pain is it’s SO AWESOME when it’s all working right, but then you get maybe 2 hours of use, and that’s using the word “use” very liberally.

95. John Doe July 20th, 2008 at 1:53 am 95

    Veronica, I am so sorry for you. Now maybe is time to review the material at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trsDjosYukk, read those comments and then … cry?

96. eric f. July 20th, 2008 at 4:38 am 96

    @Lars H, #65, thanks for a voice of reason, without automatic hating…

97. veronicaromm July 20th, 2008 at 10:52 pm 97

    I am not an iLover, so it doesn’t come as a surprise but it sure is a pain. You get this new IT toy and you can’t enjoy it. Brief enough. Veronica

98. Yogendra Joshi July 20th, 2008 at 11:52 pm 98

    I am so happy that they don’t sell iphone in india yet!!

99. Peter July 21st, 2008 at 6:17 am 99

    The main battery drain, in normal use, on mine was the 3G by far. Push doesn’t seem to affect it much, but then again, I get very little email through my .me address. Games are a HUGE drain. I get barely 2 hours out of the battery while playing, so rarely play much unless I’m near an outlet to plug the phone back in when I ‘m done.

    I’ve seen some apps crash… I had to do a restore on my touch 2.0 because apps wouldn’t even start up. Now it’s fine though. I don’t notice much lag myself. An occasional typing lag. Which I HATE. But I don’t do a huge amount of typing either.

    I’ll be interested to see if your restore does for your stability issues. Keep us updated!

    And happy birthday!

100. Ryan Welsh July 21st, 2008 at 7:40 am 100

     For what it’s worth, my first gen 8GB iPhone has been unstable as hell. Apps constantly crash. Even the built-in Apple ones. Just last night, my phone was just hanging when I’d load Settings to turn my WiFi off. And lately, my phone’s battery just drains super fast. And when it’s on standby, it gets warm like it’s in use. Almost like a background process is stuck on in battery drain mode.

     So I feel ya.

101. Andrew Mellenger July 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am 101

     Shutting off push made the biggest difference for me without taking away any of the functionality.

102. Davee July 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am 102

     i just upgraded my software, and my battery life with an older iphone is also reduced. in part, it’s because my .mac mail started automatically pushing to the phone with the upgrade. and it’s downloading mail more often than i ever did before. that’s the main difference i notice, and my battery life is lower.

     however, it could also be that i’m using the phone more now with a couple apps i like. so perhaps that percpetion is somewhat a blind spot bias?

103. Steven Anderson July 21st, 2008 at 11:47 am 103

     As sorry as I am to hear the iPhone isn’t living up to your expectations, but at least you have one to complain about! I’m in Canada and the only iPhone provider; “Rogers”, just kicked us all in the testicles (yes…even the ladies who didn’t know they had them until now!) when they told us we had to sign a 3 year contract and won’t even offer “unlimited” data!

     Because of Rogers, the iPhone failed before it even got out of the gates! I would rather suffer from a keyboard lag then this pair of blue balls our Canadian provider left me with! Owwww:(

104. Jamie Gray July 21st, 2008 at 2:36 pm 104

     I still haven’t been lured into the iPhone deep water. I’m not a Microsoft fanboy or anything, but I am perfectly happy with my 3G Windows Mobile 6 AT&T Tilt. Strangely, for a Microsoft powered device, it actually works. Imagine.

     One thing though for all you unhappy iPhoners…AT&T has a 15 or 30 day buyers remorse policy on all of their equipment, so…unless they specifically exclude the iPhone, you can always go back and get something else…

105. Gil July 21st, 2008 at 5:14 pm 105

     The issue I am having with the 2.0 software on my old phone is a radical slowdown in process time. Loading up my contacts seems to take 30 seconds. I hit contacts, and about 30 seconds later I can start scrolling. I have a lot of contacts, but geez!

     Apps suck battery life on the old phone too. Playing Texas Hold ‘em (even in landscape without the video) seems to suck down the battery.

106. Prologue update: A WordPress theme for the iPhone July 22nd, 2008 at 2:42 am 106

     [...] least for the sake of Veronica Belmont who had an aweful experience!   You gotta love [...]

107. Marco V. Principato July 22nd, 2008 at 5:43 am 107

     So, you’re not satisfied of your new iPhone 3G. I’ve read this and it sounds that you’re not alone:

     http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1608445&tstart=45

     Look also at this video:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE7HKFcQxoI

     Is this that you feel? Very good… I’ll wait before taking in consideration an iPhone.
     I’ve seen you via Twitter and now following you as I’m curious to see what happens at the States side with the new Apple toy.
     Goodbye from Rome,Italy
     Mark

108. eric f. July 22nd, 2008 at 5:57 am 108

     @ Gil, #105, I have 1170 contacts with push enabled from mobileme, and my contacts only take 3 seconds to load on my original iphone….

109. Rachel White July 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 am 109

     I got bricked. I have a brand new 3g 8gig and it wont’ even let me do a hard reset.

     I jailbroke it and this is what I get.

110. Sven’s Glass House » Blog Archive » Phone Fight: iPhone has arrived, other contenders (Dare & Instinct) July 22nd, 2008 at 12:37 pm 110

     [...] added 3:31 7/22/2008: Veronica Belmont has an iPhone 3G and has been having a bad go with it (link): “I had to charge my phone three times a day when I was at E3.” “Whenever I go [...]

111. joits July 23rd, 2008 at 5:30 am 111

     so glad i waited to buy this iphone again. as much as i wanted the first iphone, i managed to convince myself to wait a whole year. now that the iphone 3g is here… i also wanted to go down and get it the first day. my current contract ends in early december, hopefully they’ve got the kinks worked out by then cos i’m pretty sure i still want one.

112. Best of the Best » Prologue update: A WordPress theme for the iPhone July 24th, 2008 at 7:38 am 112

     [...] least for the sake of Veronica Belmont who had an aweful experience!   You gotta love [...]

113. Scolirk July 26th, 2008 at 2:12 pm 113

     Hey Veronica,

     Not sure if anyone posted this already, but I was having a lot of the same issues you were having with your iPhone 3G. I also have a white 16GB model, and the system would start to bog down a lot after a couple hours. Apple replaced my first one, but I continued to have issues. I realized that the Mobile Flickr app was causing the issue.

     Unfortunately it seems to be doing it again now that i’ve downloaded a few other apps. Hopefully you’ve gotten your’s working now also.

114. C. Moon Reed July 27th, 2008 at 12:18 pm 114

     I dream of one day buying an iPhone, but I think I can def. be patient now. Also, my biggest problem with the new one is their more expensive service plan.

115. Robert July 28th, 2008 at 8:48 am 115

     Veronica, so like you, I’ve owned the 3G for awhile and played with many options to lengthen the awful battery life. Here’s what I found after playing with: location services, push & fetch, 3G, screen brightness, and wi-fi.
     I leave wi-fi: ON, location services: ON, Push email, contacts, & calendar: ON, but make sure Fetch is on MANUAL or it will do both. 3G: OFF, screen brightness: AUTO. With these settings, I am getting pretty great battery life which says its the 3G that is killing the battery and its out of control. I use it only when I want to surf for a specific thing, then it goes back off. I’ve loaded up about 30 apps and even with using them my battery feels about the same as before. ….R

116. David Fell July 29th, 2008 at 5:53 am 116

     I’ve had an apparently unrecoverable crash, and went through 3 more iPhones at the Apple store when I took it back. I have the full details at http://www.fellcast.com.

117. peter harris July 31st, 2008 at 12:40 am 117

     I noticed the keyboard lag yesterday in v2 even though I upgraded the touch on day one.. ?
     Sorry to hear about the battery dream battle..
     the battery life seemed non-existent when I got the ipod touch
     in april but has began to behave better just recently but then
     I might not have such a big game as you

     belated birthday greetings

118. esc August 1st, 2008 at 1:56 pm 118

     My 1st gen phone has had a <1day battery life since I upgraded to ver2.0

     I have a feeling that the phone is searching for application updates on a regular basis and sucking all the juice down.

     I now keep the thing plugged in constantly- Kind of defeats the whole wireless/cell phone concept.

119. David August 8th, 2008 at 2:38 pm 119

     Any change since the 2.0.1 update? Just curious. I still have the old Edge ver. and am holding off until the batt life gets resolved.

120. Adam August 8th, 2008 at 11:06 pm 120

     I have occasional lag with the keyboard, but nothing like what you are experiencing. I have experienced a weird GPS bug, which is hopefully gone with the new firmware, where it just stops working until you reset your networks settings and/or mess with auto-lock.

     On another note I have about 15 cracks in my iPhone case now and I’ve seen cracks in all 4 out of the 6 I’ve checked. Anyone else? They are hard to see on the black version but they are there.

     I wrote about both issues on my blog, but I feel like if I post a link it’ll seem like I’m commenting to whore my blog

121. Gosto da Apple mas… « Artur Carvalho August 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm 121

     [...] Fail of the Week: My New iPhone [...]