Cindy and Greg

While traveling back from Denver Friday evening, I had the pleasure of being caught in the airport for an additional hour or two. I took some time to grab some water and stop in the mens room. While in the mens room, I heard a cell phone ring, not unusual, but this time the guy answered the phone and continued to have a conversation despite random “sounds” going on around him. No sooner then his conversation ended, did another cell phone ring and you guessed it that person answered the phone and proceeded to have a conversation.

Now I am all for connectivity, but for the love of god, take a few minutes from your busy schedule and allow yourself a few minutes without answering the phone, if not for yourself, for the sanity of those in the bathroom with you.

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It started at about 6:30pm on Friday, June 29. I finally made it to the cash register at the Apple Store Richmond to pay my $599 for the 8GB Apple iPhone. It was elegantly packaged like ever Apple product and presented in a special iPhone bag. Once we got through the line we decided to get of the craziness and head to find some place to eat, all the while, I am thinking about the boxed up iPhone in the back of the car. On the way back down to Williamsburg, I opened up the box and was just amazed at how well this phone was put together. It was solid, like no other phone I have ever owned (and that my friends is saying something). Once I made it down to Williamsburg and back to the house, I quickly went to activate the phone with the AT&T service. The activation was slick, done all through iTunes, not a single problem and I was up and running in about 5 minutes. There were wide spread reports of activation issues, but I didn’t see any. I was glued to the iPhone for the next couple of days, playing with all the features. The visual appearance of everything was great, e-mail was nice, the keyboard was good, though took a little getting use to for this Treo boy. The ability to use WiFi was particularly helpful because of the less then optimal (read crappy) signal from AT&T in Williamsburg. I have been told there was a new tower being turned up in my area on July 5, so I decided to wait it out and see how it went.

Everywhere I went for the week people were excited to see the iPhone, they were all impressed with its features and again, so was I. The touch screen was really a nice feature to have.

I had the opportunity to travel to DC Thursday (July 5), so I figured this would be a good test of the AT&T signal and how I liked the phone in an optimal signal strength area. I have to say, it just did not measure up. I know I may sound like a Verizon Wireless commercial, but there is nothing like a Verizon Wireless signal. With the iPhone and AT&T, my signal would go from full to nothing while sitting on the table. The sound quality with AT&T was just not as consistant as it is with Verizon. To add insult to injury, I returned home yesterday morning the signal was no better then the day I left.

So to summarize, the device is wonderful and really does live up to the hype, despite some of the missing features (Exchange support, copy/paste, etc). The network it is on, just a bad experience, whether we are in the DC metro area, or tiny little Williamsburg. So as much as it pains me to say so, the iPhone is going back, I will eat the $59.90 restocking fee from Apple.

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