…and wow, that means that you actually GOT the text message they were sending you. Since last June I made the jump over to AT&T, with the only reason being the iPhone. I went despite the rumors about dropped calls, bad reception, and shoddy call quality. I have in fact experienced all of these, especially the dropped calls. I had for at least a while screen captured every “Call Failed” I received on the device, but quickly gave up, realizing it would consume my time and device storage space. My coworker, Andy, today received an SMS message from AT&T that they have added two cell towers in his neighborhood in NOVA (Northern Virginia for those outside the beltway). The message reads, “Great News! We’ve added 2 new cell sites in Alexandria, enhancing coverage in the areas of Mt. Vernon Ave & Glebe Rd as well as W Braddock Rd.” AT&T is going to have to increase its capacity to handle the amount of bandwidth that is going to crop up from the new iPad launched today – in addition to the hoardes of iPhone users that are already overwhelming their circuits (yes, this means you New York and San Francisco).

The question remains – will new towers help congestion and lack of coverage? Of course they will – but the real question remains how many iPhone users are going to be pleasantly surprised with text messages like these going forward? Hopefully a lot – then Luke Wilson will really have something to brag about and Verizon can stop airing those commercials with the transparent AT&T 3G map.

So the question stands – have you received one of these lately? If so please leave a comment and let us know where you are. We’re really very interested to see in the next few months how many new cell sites pop up to support all of these new fan-dangled 3G devices.

I’d been putting it off from the get-go. I knew I wanted an iPhone but I had run screaming from AT&T/Cingular years ago. Billing was confusing, customer service was shoddy, roaming charges would pop up causing exorbitant bills in places where no roaming charges should’ve been applicable; but, hey, that was the early 2k’s. It’s 2009, right? Time to let bygone phone carriers be bygones and jump on board…

…and it’s not like I had much of a choice. I had been following blogs, forums, news sites – the works – in hopes that another phone would emerge that has piqued my attention as much as the iPhone, but to no avail. Android is interesting. Samsung OMNIA, HTC, interesting. To me, they seemed unproven without the application base that the iPhone has; sure, it’s a matter of time. It was a matter of time until the iPhone was available on Verizon as well, my carrier of choice – especially in Washington, DC where they are the only carrier that has repeaters in the metro stations and tunnels.

After hearing countless accounts of dropped calls, shoddy reception, and full-on outages at major events (inauguration in DC, SXSW, etc.) I was leaning, leaning, leaning away from AT&T. On a bi-weekly basis I would build my plan, throw an iPhone in my virtual shopping cart and stare at it for 15-20 minutes, and then subsequently close the tab. “Not today. I can wait. Have patience.” And then…I bit the bullet.

I was excited. I had been rocking the employer provided Blackberry for three, count them, three years. Don’t get me wrong I like the Blackberry. I like, no love, Verizon. But it was time. My social media connectivity needs, creative and curious nature, tech-geek-video-ness all demanded the iPhone. This begins a series of posts regarding my iPhone experience.

DAY 1 I received the iPhone just 2 days after ordering it. Sweet! I’ve got it – now let’s get rockin’ and rollin’ with this thing. Oooh shiny! Wait for it…wait for it…NO DATA. So, of course, I go the route of geekery and Google the issue. I find a solution that only requires getting the iPhone on a wireless connection and visiting the site www.unlockit.co.nz. I make it sound instantaneous and simple, but frankly, it took me about 3 hours to come to this conclusion. But, nonetheless, it worked. I was data-fied, downloading apps, and on my way to…

Day 3 I receive a text message from AT&T indicating that my data charges are through the roof. This is peculiar to me, because I, of course, have HAD to sign up for a data plan since I purchased an iPhone. A 20 minute phone call with AT&T got this sorted out pretty quickly. It turns out that they DID NOT somehow sign me up for a data plan and I was being charged per MB. The woman on the other end was very helpful, got me sorted out, put notes on file regarding the situation and sorted it out. Nuff’ said… In hindsight I should’ve called AT&T when my phone would not connect to their data network. I essentially circumvented the system and turned it on myself with the APN hack – but in the long run didn’t do myself any favors – lesson learned.

Day 4 – Present I’ve only run into one bug since I’ve started using the 3GS. It involves some kind of corruption in the phone database which displays the wrong icons for various applications (see image). There was no definitive fix for this in version 3.0.1 – but since I’ve recently installed 3.1 – it appears to have fixed itself.

All in all – I want to say that my experience has been a positive one. A few dropped calls here and there but nothing off-the-charts. Has the iPhone added to my productivity? Not sure. Has it increased my connectivity one-hundred fold? Yes. Can it turn into a time-suck? Definitely. There are applications that have taken up hours of my time – albeit a game, or a sketch app – the iPhone can be a lot of fun. In the next edition of the iPhone diaries I’m going to write up some post-age on my favorite applications – but I’ll give you a short one off of screen caps of all of the apps that have currently made the cut on my iPhone.

Page 1 Every Day, Easy Access Apps

Page 2 Location Sensitive/Smart Applications

Page 3 Information Overload: News, Sports, Stocks and Weather

Page 4 Geekery, Web Apps

Page 5 Music, Games, Art

Page 6 Scratch Pad: Will they make the cut?