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Rogers iPhone 3G Owners discussion and review thread

54K views 159 replies 57 participants last post by  canabiz 
#1 ·
Well it arrives July 11th and I know many of us would love to have one of these babies. I for one can't afford one but hope to someday!

If you have get one, please tell the Digital Forum members what you think and your review!

Thanks in advance

Signed,
Sad in Toronto

(Folks wishing to discuss whether they should buy one or pricing please post on other threads. This thread is strictly for the lucky ones that have one!)
 
#32 ·
Here's my quick review:

iPhone is great... nice screen, nice apps, so far Fido network seems to be fine. For sure if you use it a lot (email, phone, ipod), the battery is very so-so... i know for a 3G phone it'S great... but be prepare to charge it every 1-2-3 day :( It'S ok, because if you use it a lot, you're iphone will be often connected on your Mac.

The app store is nice but not very Canadian friendly yet.... too much stuff only for the US yet :(

My little question.... we all have local minutes plans (no national like AT&T), but for the data... how does it work ? i know about roaming like in the US... but if i travel in Canada, all the data is included in my 6Gb / 30$ ?


quick note also:
I always find that so funny when the news or people said that the iPhone will cost you 3000-4000$ at the end of the 3 year contract. It's maybe true... but this number need to be put in a context.... you need to compare that number with something... compare with a someone who will have a 3 yr contract with a basic plan (30-45$) for a total of 1300-1400$ at the end of the 3 yrs... so after all, it'S not that bad to be able to get all the stuff with the iPhone...
 
#33 ·
The discussion on how to retrieve email from Shaw / Telus email accounts on the iPhone 3G has been moved to a new thread to make it easier for people having that specific issue to get answers. In future, I will hive off any problem specific discussions where it makes sense.

See How to retrieve Shaw / Telus and Hotmail on iPhone 3G
 
#34 ·
I just ordered one, but I'm on a waitlist so it might be awhile before I get it in my hands...

I always find that so funny when the news or people said that the iPhone will cost you 3000-4000$ at the end of the 3 year contract. It's maybe true... but this number need to be put in a context.... you need to compare that number with something... compare with a someone who will have a 3 yr contract with a basic plan (30-45$) for a total of 1300-1400$ at the end of the 3 yrs... so after all, it'S not that bad to be able to get all the stuff with the iPhone...
You are absolutely right. I really did my homework (and some negotiating) and if my math is correct, the iPhone will end up costing me ~$500 more than my current non-smartphone over the course of 3 years. Not a significant difference, all things considered.
 
#35 ·
I'm amazed that well over a day after the fact, no one has reported that Pwnage Tool 2.0 has been released for upgrading (to iPhone 2.0), unlocking, and activating the first generation iPhone.

One thing I discovered (thankfully very early on) after upgrading was that EDGE was turned ON :eek:, and that there was no way to turn it off. Only when I went to look at my email, then remembering that I hadn't set up the WiFi yet, only to see email coming in, did I realize that I now had a data plan ?!?! (ouch!!) 200KB - what do we think that's gonna cost me....$20?

In any event, if you're one of the few, the proud, without a data plan (even on the new 3G, I think) walking around with your iPhone switched on, and doing any kind of unattended "Fetching", there's a decent chance you're racking up data charges (and not the friendly $30 for 6GB variety!). Look under SETTINGS - GENERAL - USAGE to see where you're at. As far as I can tell, that's EDGE or 3G only - no WiFi usage is tracked there (at least it wasn't back in the 1.1.4 days).

For a workaround, you can install a dummy data "APN" profile, as outlined by this guy here.
 
#37 ·
2 weeks with an iphone

I have had my IPHONE for almost 2 weeks now (still no bill from Rogers) but I figured I would share my story.

Pick up day 7am out the front of Dixie and Queen Brampton. Number 17 in the queue. Notice in paper was doors open at select stores 9am they opened at 10:05am

2 people went inside the rest told wait outsite. Rogers computers were down. The problem was the servers were sized with the assumption that only a small percentage of the terminals would be handling transactions at a time.

11am still no phones activated. I went inside and spoke to the sales reps. No support from head office or tech support. The obvious solution was for every store to only turn on one terminal. I told the sales rep who said out of her control.

11:05am number 5 in queue and I swapped numbers he had to go to work still no iphones sold

1:25 pm swapped number 5 for number 15 and then number 15 for number 19 (rumour was there were only 30 phones in the store but two per customer limit had me worrried.

3:10pm returned to pick up phone everyone had left except a few people they had finally taken our names and numbers. The computers were sort of working only get sql errors every minute so I figured I would try and get one. Still none had been succesfully sold in that store.

3:50 first person leaves with an activated iphone (The itunes issue was a non event now and never affected us).

5:30pm I got the second iphone out the door and made it just in time to pick my son up from daycare.

I had to pay $415 and was handed a $50 rebate form (still on my desk). I was told I would get more off when I called rogers and renegotiated my plan. $30 data option was not in the computer.

Next day called rogers 1 hour on the phone and finally got a $150 rebate (still have my form I will wait till I see the bill don't want to risk $150 for $50). My plan is 100 normal 1000 minutes after 9pm. I have a blackberry 8300 so I will keep both until work switches mail and apps over.

Issues
There is no good GPS software (I use GPS NAV on blackberry and gives me turn by turn) but the IPHONE maps app is useless.

Lots of memory leaks and you have to reset every day as a lot of the apps need all the ram and just won't start or crash.



2 weeks later
I love my phone although I am almost at the 148 apps limit (9 pages of 16 apps plus four on the bottom). Not a lot of data usage yet as most times I get WI-FI although it has trouble switching and I have to enable disable airplane modet to make work.

The app store is addictave (you install straight from your phone) and I have purchased most the games and lots of the business tools.


Apps I am waiting for 1) Slingbox 2) Camera barcode reader (price checker compare, shopping list more info etc) 3) decent GPS prog TOM TOM ? 4) skype 5) secondlife
 
#38 ·
You will find that having 148 apps is the cause of your memory problems.

Software will have bugs. Bugs that conflict with other apps, or even the OS at times and cause memory leaks or crashes. Palm OS, Windows Mobile both have this problems and there is no reason for the iPhone OS to not have it also.

I suggest just having your core apps on the device once you have figured out what those are. It might just be one poorly made app causing all your problems, but with 148 apps you may never figure out which one it is.

I have nearly 4 pages of apps, for example, and dont notice many stability issues but there are some bugs in the OS for sure.
 
#39 ·
"You will find that having 148 apps is the cause of your memory problems."

Hi Polaris not sure I understand why the number of applications installed on the device should have a relationship to the amount of RAM consumed. Does the device shrink available ram and convert that into graphics ram to display the icons/pages. If this is the case I would have assumed when you launch an application it would then reset the graphics display ram and free it up for the application. I am sure they may also have some type of VRAM memory manager that shuffles ram in and out of the flash ram but I have about 10gb free (2 gb more than the 8gb phone with no apps installed so not sure that is the problem.

I would have assumed it's not the OS or the memory manager at fault but some teenager writing an application that leaves TSR's running in the background or doesn't release all the memory when you exit.
 
#40 ·
I did not explain fully, but the more applications you have, the greater chances are you have one that is poorly made/had bugs/causes a memory leak. That is what I was getting at.

I am pulling on my several years of experience of messing around with Palm OS, where there was a slew of good and bad apps, and you have to trouble shoot to figure out which apps were causing instabilities.

The quality control process is a concern right now with Apple, and developers are complaining. http://gizmodo.com/5028374/iphone-a...+disclosure-agreement-mad-as-fn-hell-about-it

Also,
http://gizmodo.com/5027790/why-we-still-need-the-iphone-app-black-market
"Apple limits app testing to five devices, so there is basically is no beta testing.
Casualties: Us. We’re the beta testers. Aurora Feint’s developers told us that for app testing, “Apple requires special signing to be done that binds each app to a specific device for debugging purposes,” and it’s limited to five, so they "definitely had some people camping out in our offices" to test. Twitterific creator Craig Hockenberry notes that the iPhone app's crash report come to a dev in a form barely more comprehensible than Swahili, on top of lacking info about what's going on in the phone outside their app. And then, if you do have a fix, there's no way to test it, other than to release it out into the wild through the App Store, "the developer equivalent of playing Russian roulette."

On the upside, Apple appears to be launching a beta testing program soon that'll let devs test apps on up to 100 devices, which jibes with what Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem alluded to in a conversation with us. Hopefully it does roll out in the next couple days, as expected. But even then, putting beta software on a device will require the iPhone or iPod serial number, and will still have to snagged through the App Store."


I expect all this to improve, as growing pains are to be expected. Overall IMO the apps are pretty good compared to what I have been using on Palm OS. It easy to spot a turd, and the reviews seem to be a good indication of what is worth trying. I havent actually bought an app yet, just using the free ones for now.
 
#41 ·
Firmware update expected soon.

iPhone 2.1 Firmware Currently In Beta, More GPS Features On The Way
http://gizmodo.com/5028933/iphone-21-firmware-currently-in-beta-more-gps-features-on-the-way

Again, IMO wait for the 2.1 dust to settle before you jailbreak unless you really like messing around with things. I didnt with the iPod touch a few times but it gets old prett quickly when you get the device working how you like, only to have an update come and result in changing everything. The updates were required IMO because it made the browser more stable.
 
#42 ·
Mine was delievered yesterday, so I'm still getting accustomed to it. Overall, I love it, but I have found some glitches/flaws/quirks in my short experience:

-Maps/GPS has a tendency to freeze up
-haven't found a way to get to a certain part of a sentence/word using SMS or keyboard (like the L/R arrows on a computer keyboard)
-Accelerometer isn't as quick to react as I would have expected
-my Home button is super inconsistent, to the point that I think it needs repair. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it only responds to double-clicking. If I don't see any improvement in the next day or so I'll be speaking with Fido/Apple.

Unlike TVJunkie, I find the Maps/GPS function to be very useful. Before buying the iPhone I was debating whether to get a dedicated car GPS unit, but this will do me just fine.

The Remote app might be the best thing ever invented, especially considering it's free! Sitting outdoors on the patio and controlling my iTunes is just awesome :)

I have a Griffin Wave Case on the way, so I might report back in a few weeks with an update on how everything is going.
 
#47 ·
2.01 IPhone Update

So I took the initiative and udpated to 2.01. My Iphone crashed during update so I put it in recovery mode and tried again. This time it worked. Yippee. Well almost at first glance I though oh wow they have added more pages for applications but I was sadly mistaking 2 pages of applications just vanished. (several paid ones have not quite got a handle on what was there versus missing). OK into ipod Where have all my songs gone, where have all my videos digital books gone...

Gone off searching and rebuilding. Brings back memories of the days I used to use a treo..

I think it will be a while before enterprises swap out the blackberries for iphones cause the Rims actually work and don't lock up or reboot in the middle of a call.
 
#51 ·
picked up a pair of iphone's yesterday in Orangeville ON...

On the whole, I am reasonably impressed, but I've had an iPod touch for over a year so the wow factor is long since gone.

One thing I really notice is that the memory leaks requiring reboot are far more frequent on the iPhone...at least daily. That needs to me fixed!

Other than that, the 3G network is great and the EDGE network is painfully slow.
 
#52 ·
Indeed, I'm a very very heavy apps user on the phone (no, not just games. :p ) and i've noticed the phone needs to be rebooted AT LEAST daily in order to clear the memory. Otherwise it starts crashing apps almost as soon as you launch them.

Very dissapointing, but I guess it's to be expecting with third party apps.

BTW - Those of you waiting for the White phones, pretty much every store now has a huge stock of them now, they started getting large shipments of them this week (I think due to the cracking issues being fixed).
 
#53 ·
REBOOT DAILY

I wish it was that easy I find I have to reinstall daily. The backup corrupts the backup so you end up restoring a corrupt backup so then you end up having to put into recovery mode and start the whole process again.

I have installed the max number of apps as well and this is frustrating now everytime I download an app I first have to pick what one of the 3 flashlight apps cow bell/mooing apps or US location guides that don't have resturants or movies in Canada I have to delete first.


Today it is not a worry as most apps are junk but 148 apps needs to be fixed and a select restore from backup list (ie Tuesday) needs to be added. Oh and make this thing stable fix the line drop outs and the switching between network problem (you have to put it in and out of airplane mode a lot.
 
#54 ·
Hello,

I have now had my iPhone 3G for just about a week now and for the most part I am very happy with it. I do have some questions/concerns that maybe someone can help me with.

Firstly I have tried a few times now to use the web (WiFi) while on a call (G3 is OFF). I can see the WiFi signal in my house is excellent and web pages load quickly at first bet then suddenly the signal drops to near zero (only the dot at the bottom of the signal meter is green) and pages stop loading or load very slowly. Has any one else tried this with the same results? It is very handy when I'm on a call to be able to access the web or maps.

Second I can't understand why I can't use a ring tone as a SMS alert. I mean my old Nokia flip would use any mp3 I loaded as either a ring tone or SMS tone. I can see the SMS tones when configuring my ring tone but I can't see ring tones when I'm configuring my SMS tones. A small annoyance but I want to make a tone I can actually hear.

Other than that I can say that my initial experience has been great. I've uploaded music and movies and the playback is great for both. While the biggest complaint I had read before I got the phone was the lack of turn-by-turn GPS. I can say for myself it hasn't been a problem. Just the other day I did a search in maps for a business I had never been to and google maps found the business, popped a red pin where I wanted to be (and I could click on the business name for phone numbers and web page) and dropped a blue pin where I was and it was fast simple to find where I wanted to be.

The lack of a real ToDo list that would sync with outlook is unfortunate.

After the phone has been on for a while the contact list seems to hang up when I load it for 5 seconds or so, after a reboot all is fine.

I like the conversational layout of the SMS program.

I like that you are able to save an image from a website or an e-mail by holding your finger on the image for a second then choose save image. The curious thing tho, is it puts that image on the camera roll so when you connect to your computer the phone shows up as a digital camera where you can copy the images to your computer sans iTunes just like any digital point and shoot.

I do have a question about the "whocalled" feature. I get a text message every single time I miss a call whether the phone is on or off. I was under the impression it was only supposed to notify you if someone called while your phone was off or outside the service area. So with visual voicemail I get all of the following when I miss a call:

1. Phone notification of a missed call and who it was (name and Number)
2. An SMS from Fido with who called (just a number)
3. Phone notification of a new voicemail in Visual Voicemail
4. an SMS from Fido saying I have a voicemail.

This is a bit ridiculous as I have to take care of 4 warnings for a missed call. I tried to remove the who called feature but it was bundled with the visual voicemail and can't be removed. That is annoying but it's an annoyance with Fido rather than the iPhone.

I really haven't played around with too many apps but i really enjoy last.fm streaming radio.

I wish I had a home PC so I could use Simplify Media to stream my library to my iPhone. I've seen it in action and it's pretty cool.

Well that's my thoughts for now. I just wanted to say I really enoy reading the posts and have learned a great deal. Thanks

Darren
 
#56 ·
Hello,

Second I can't understand why I can't use a ring tone as a SMS alert. I mean my old Nokia flip would use any mp3 I loaded as either a ring tone or SMS tone. I can see the SMS tones when configuring my ring tone but I can't see ring tones when I'm configuring my SMS tones. A small annoyance but I want to make a tone I can actually hear.

The lack of a real ToDo list that would sync with outlook is unfortunate.
They need to fix the SMS tone bug first! the one where the alert wont even play after one play. after a reboot it works once, then not at all.

ToDo and Notes sync with Outlook is badly needed, yes.
 
#58 ·
Yeah, I had just seen the video touting the virtues of Mac OSx Leopard and the new notes and to do was one of the highlights. Strange, my little nokia flip could sync my todo list from Outlook. I really hope that a future SW release will address the todo list (especially if the new ads are targeting the iPhone 3G for business use).

I noticed today another strange feature about the iPhone 3G. I noticed that the keyboard 'clicks' are tied to ringer volume. As far as all the phones I have used keypad tones are a different setting from the ringer so you can turn them off if you wish. I noticed this today as I had to increase my ring tone volume so I can hear the phone ring, but now my phone sounds like a Geiger counter when I'm typing.

I installed 2.0.2 and as far as my experience has been I haven't noticed anything better or worse.
 
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