Cindy and Greg

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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