iPhone Review Part Deux

Comment

Do some research. At between 300 and 400 charges, the battery will be at 80% of its original capacity. Poor journalism.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

Posted by bng | 8:02 PM

I was going to put this as a comment to one that was posted but thought I would include the comment and my remarks in a new post.

From:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html


Maximum Battery Life

iPhone offers up to 8 hours of talk time,(1) 6 hours of Internet use,(2) 7 hours of video playback,(3) or 24 hours of audio playback(4) on a full charge at original capacity. In addition, iPhone features up to 250 hours of standby time.(5)
Charge Cycles

A properly maintained iPhone battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity after 400 full charge and discharge cycles. You may choose to replace your battery when it no longer holds sufficient charge to meet your needs.
Let It Breathe

Charging your iPhone while in certain carrying cases may generate excess heat, which can affect battery capacity. If you notice that your iPhone gets hot when you charge it, take it out of its case first.


I don't recall making a statement that anything I post should be even remotely associated with journalism at all but thanks anyway.

In any case. The maximum battery life must surely be "best case scenario" and of course there is no way to prove this at this point in time and only time will tell. I stated right off that I am not an apple fan...so I am biased.

However, with a slight note (I did say slight) of objectivity, there will be a group of people who will discover that they need to replace their battery at some point prior to the ending of their contract.

I have had my RAZR since it first came to the market. I have not lost any noticable amount of battery power but then again I don't use it even remotely close to what is hoped for with the iphone. Even so, should I lose acceptable battery power a replacement costs under $20 and I do not lose my phone for any period of time....assuming it is still functioning.

Now of course my product is 2+ years old and the iPhone being new to the market a battery would cost more than mine at $20....perhaps $40?? ok, even an initial $50 I don't have a problem with but let the battery be replaceable....even at an AT&T or Apple store, not at the factory. I suspect that in 1.5 years or so or definately within the 2 year period we will see this issue come up again and the more real world use these phones get with internet, video, etc we'll see how this plays out.



On another note



Shelly had over 440 songs on her iPod. This is her second iPod and of these songs there are 40 or so that she does not have backed up anywhere.

With a little help from a $29 software purchased from Amazon.com she was able to not only recover all her itunes purchased music but transfer them over to REAL player which supports many many brands of mp3 players.

http://www.valusoft.com/products/tunetoolsmm.html

in part...

You love your iPod, but it comes with built-in limitations. Get quick and easy access to all your owned content and more. Tune Tools™ allows you to transfer songs between iPods, make instant back-ups, recover missing files and even create podcasts!

Transfer - Move songs, videos, podcasts and other files
easily from your iPod to a computer or another iPod.

File Recovery - Restore files that occasionally disappear
from the iPod database with the click of a mouse.

Detect & Fix - Find your iPod’s problems before they
find you and correct them with a click of a mouse.

Create - Easily import sound files, edit them, and
combine them with other files or new recordings
for personalized podcasts.

Clean Up - Remove duplicate songs, correct incorrect
tags and detect inconsistencies between your library
and your iPod.

Protect - With instant back-ups, your songs, videos and podcasts are safe!

You may be asking yourself....since Shelly is a die hard iPod devotee, what is she doing?

Well my friends to steal a phrase from the Dokken song she is "Breaking The Chains" and is switching to Creative 30GB Vision M which won two awards in 2006 from CNET.

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=14331

iPhone media blitz missed battery 'fee'

Red Tape Chronicles is MSNBC.com's effort to unmask government bureaucracy, corporate sneakiness and outright scam artists.

Bob Sullivan covers Internet scams and consumer fraud for MSNBC.com. He is the winner of multiple journalism awards for his coverage of online crime and is the author of the book Your Evil Twin: Behind the Identity Theft Epidemic.

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/07/why-was-iphones.html

iPhone media blitz missed battery 'fee'
Posted: Monday, July 9 at 06:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan

While hundreds of thousands of eager consumers waited anxiously for the iPhone last week, most probably didn’t know about the hidden fee attached to their purchase.

Now the obvious question is this: With all the words spoken and written about the iPhone prior to launch, why didn't someone tell them?

The iPhone battery will only survive about 300-400 recharges, the company says. Because the unit is sealed, consumers can't swap out dead batteries. Instead, dead phones must be sent to Apple, where battery replacement will take three business days and cost $79 plus a $6.95 shipping charge. Those who can't live without their cell phones for those three days can rent a spare iPhone for $29.

This pricey, and apparently inevitable, aftercharge never made it into any of the voluminous news stories written and filmed about the iPhone prior to its launch on June 29. Why not?

According to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, Apple's Web site made no mention of the battery fee on the morning of June 29, when thousands of Apple faithful lined up all around the country to buy the phone, which costs $500 or $600, depending on model.

Harvey Rosenfield, director of the foundation, is calling on Apple to promise free battery replacements to the estimated half a million iPhone buyers who may have purchased the phone without knowing its true costs.

"This was insensitive, inappropriate and possibly illegal," he said. "We're going to monitor their response carefully."

Explanation of the fee now appears on Apple's Web site, although it's not clear when that was posted. Published reports indicate the notice was posted as early as the evening of June 29, though it was not easy to find.

Apple didn't immediately respond to requests for an interview for this story.

One week later
Blogs began mentioning the battery replacement fee early last week, after the launch. The first prominent reference to it seems to be in a Wall Street Journal column written by Walt Mossberg, which appeared in the newspaper on July 5.




Hmmm, Lets see.....I included this bit of info in my post on July 6th.

To iPhone or Not To iPhone

Being a gadget family we...um, or should I say Shelly was looking at getting the iPhone when it came out. I say Shelly cause I am not a big fan of Apple in general and in specific....the iPod.

Show me the money.

The first concern I had was that it was not going to run on the 3G or "third generation" network. That is mainly because for Cingular, 3G is only available in very limited areas. I'll steal a term I have read and will consider the network the iPhone will work on as 2.7G. The past several months AT&T was busy "tweaking" their infrastructure to make it run a bit faster.

I have a Motorola RZR phone and have at times...well in extreme cases of boredom when I am away from home, have accessed the Internet. It is undeniably pathetically slow. It's like waiting for ice to melt, water to evaporate, something like that. I did not buy the phone to surf the web so that was not and is not an issue with my current phone.

I think a salesman would have to show me exactly how fast this baby is for internet if that is one of their selling points. I mean don't show me in the store where you are obviously working with Wi Fi...no, take me into the parking lot and bring up a favorite web page of mine, then some click throughs, etc etc. Let's see how it works in the real world.

I have WiFi in my home as both computers are wirelessly connected so the connectivity issue is moot in my home but if I am out and about whether walking or a passenger in an auto (I wouldn't encourage driving while texting) and feel the urge to check on a hot stock or see what the latest damage Hamas has done in Gaza I should be able to, not because I necessarily want to but because I can and they said so. I should be able to do this without running to the nearest hotspot to make it happen at a reasonable and prudent speed.

The second issue I had was that AT&T was going to charge you for the wireless data plan. I admit I have no clue as to how many of us actually use our phones to surf the internet aside from the occasional ring tone download. Considering the issues above, what if I just want the two features that make the phone??? You know....combining the iPod with the phone... a la iPhone??

You can't do it. You had to purchase the unlimited iphone data package that adds another $20 to your bill. Considering I now pay roughly $100/mo for two phones and minutes I never use up in a month I think I don't want to pay for more services that I will not use thank you very much. Maybe its the "build it and they will come" mentality or in this case make it available and they will use it but I am skeptical. Most people have internet available to them at home or the office or both so I don't see a big mobile internet on demand amongst the working folk. I may be wrong. In any case, why not offer the phone without a data plan would you please?

I won't go on to list the activation delays or the inability for the owner to swap out the battery which are temporary although painful when it happens.

My main issue with this device is...well, apple.

Now don't get me wrong. I am all for the David vs Goliath (Apple vs Microsoft) but Apple is very highly proprietary and so much so its almost to the point of monopolistic. Take the iPod. You buy from iTunes and transfer to iPod but you can't buy from iTunes and download to any other mp3 device than from Apple.

You cannot buy music from another service other than iTunes and put on the iPod easily. You have to jump through hoops...meaning there are 2-3 steps you need to take to place songs from others services onto the iPod or from iTunes onto foreign devices.

You might suggest converting to Apple.

I like a little competition in the market place and I don't want to pay for the privelege in owning an Apple product down the road. Meaning, if the battery dies, I don't want to be without my product while it gets shiped to Apple, repaired/replaced and shipped back. That is likely the time you would want to use the product the most.

So, in the end this gadget was not bought. Not due to any of the reasons above but because Shelly couldn't justify the price. So, it was price alone.

To have an 4GB or 8GB mp3 playing phone with that screen size I would have given some amount of consideration to if it were lower in price.