I have been using my iPhone since the day it was released, and I have to say it is the best phone I have had to date. I am not saying it is perfect, but coming from Nextel, and then using multiple Treos on Sprint, the iPhone is a life saver. Many of my Treo’s were replacements for faulty Treos.

Of my family, friends, and clients that have iPhones, everyone likes them. Some have had problems which seem to be quickly resolved by stopping by an Apple store. They pretty much give you a replacement on the spot. I would avoid the AT&T stores as the reps just don’t see to have the turn around or the knowledge that the Apple stores have.

Currently my only pet peeve is wanting to be able to search the contacts by touch typing. I find the scrolling counter intuitive. I am hoping an update from Apple will resolve the issue. Oh and the other thing is I would like my iPod games to work on the iPhone.

The iPhone on occasion, about once every couple weeks will need to turned off and then on to resolve a lockup.

My only current problem is when I have multiple calls coming in and I try to switch back and forth. Most of the time I can’t get back to the original caller and I then have to drop all calls and start over.

Other than that it is better than any other cell phone I have had to date as well as any mobile web browser based on cellular or WiFi.

Thats it for now.

As such, users are exploring other options for protecting their iPhone purchases. There are three viable options we’ve seen so far:

AppleCare The AppleCare Protection Plan for iPhone will be available this month, according to Apple — it will extend the hardware repair coverage to up to two years from the original purchase date of the iPhone, and must be purchased covered under Apple’s One-Year Limited Warranty for iPhone. AppleCare won’t cover against liquid damage, theft and accidental physical damage, however — only against “defects.” Essentially it simply extends the standard one-year warranty.

In fact, the AppleCare terms and conditions state specifically that the plan does not apply to:

“Damage to the Covered Equipment caused by accident, abuse, neglect, misuse (including faulty installation, repair, or maintenance by anyone other than Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider), unauthorized modification, extreme environment (including extreme temperature or humidity), extreme physical or electrical stress or interference, fluctuation or surges of electrical power, lightning, static electricity, fire, acts of God or other external causes.”

SquareTrade This company is currently offering a “CarePlan” for the iPhone that mimics AppleCare and costs 10% of item price - $49.99 - $59.99 for the iPhone. The company says “If something does happen, we’ll either fix it, or pay you the full $499-$599 that you spent on the phone – All within 5 days. Guaranteed.” Like AppleCare, this plan does not protect against accidental physical damage.

However, SquareTrade says it will soon be offering a plan that does protect against the same type of damage as AT&T’s wireless phone insurance:

“We’ll also be providing consumers with an enhanced CarePlan with accidental damage coverage (something that an AppleCare warranty doesn’t offer) in a few short weeks. […] check back with us in a few weeks and protect your iPhone from drops and other minor accidents, i.e. coffee is not a friend of the iPhone.”

Homeowners/renters’ insurance extension Some insurance companies, like State Farm, offer a “floater” policy that, for ~$30 annually, will protect items like the iPhone from accidental damage, theft and similar occurrences. Generally these plans require that you already have home or renters insurance. Policies vary from state to state and by carrier, so check with your insurance company for details.

If you know of any other options for protecting the iPhone, please let us know.

Christina ; )

1. You have to go to a AT&T Corporate store.
2. Customer Service can do that over the phone.
3. Customer Service pre-paid division can’t do it, but the customer service for posted accounts can.
4. A customer service rep at a store told me, they have the ability, BUT there systems have been down for the last 2 weeks ever since a service update on their computers, so they wouldn’t be able to handle it for me.

Luckily for AT&T they have the iPhone so people are sticking it out!

[LINK]

Late afternoon all was backup and running and has been since. AT&T may have attempted to ramp up to provide these services, but the load on the system was obvioulsy too much.

With all that going on yesterday, the iPhone experience is just that, an experiance that all cell phone users should have. A phone that does it all.

Lets hope the serivice holds up and just gets better.

So I decided it is time to migrate to iCal. It is the closest product to Now Calendar besides DayLite. If you sync with multiple calendars/persons then Spanning Sync’s software may be a solutions for you. I will be reporting back my hopeful success in the next few days.

The first question is how to get my calendar data to iCal. Well iCal will import from Entourage. Since Entourage comes with Office 2004 and I used to use Entourage as my email client it was already installed on my Powerbook.

In Office as of Office v.X you can use the Microsoft handheld conduit. Which is available for download on the Microsoft site, expect for those using Microsoft Office 2004. Office 2004 has a “Handheld Sync Installer” located in the Additional Tools folder in the Office 2004 application folder.

I just finished completely migrating my Now Up-To-Date/Palm calendar to iCal and synced with my iPhone. Worked first try. So here is what I did.

#1 Synced my Palm treo for the second to the last time to make sure you have a backup in Now Up-To-Date.
#2 Backed up my Palm preferences
#3 Backed up the Now Calendar file
#4 Installed the Handheld Sync Installer
#5 Synced my Palm Treo for the last time
#6 Checked that all my data was in the Entourage calendar. It was
#7 Ran iCal and imported my Entourage Data.

After a few minutes all my calendar events were in iCal. Then I set up some new calendars and changed some colors and Synced my iPhone.

All is good!!

As a disclaimer; the list above is an overview of the process I took to transfer my data to my new iPhone. These are not step by step instructions as this is not the scope of this blog. I welcome any questions, but this is not a support forum.

Another case we tested was the “clear” hard shell. This also works well, but I like the feel of the spect personally.

The downfall with both are the cheap plastic belt clips. I tried both and each one does not securely hold the iPhone in place while on a belt. If I find an adequate belt case I will post a message.

“Congratulations, AT&T has successfully transferred your existing mobile number.”

Almost all of the other states still have stock.

One report in Vegas that they had plenty in stock of the 4GB but only 4 left of the 8GB as of 9AM Saturday morning. Sounds like the 8GB is the hot ticket.

Understandably so $100 for double the memory!!! Mine’s an 8GB!!