As the guy that bought the second iPhone from the Glasgow AppleStore on launch day I’ve been happy to let Steve get all the glory - but when he asked me to do an update to his post about using an iPhone in the US, I was happy to accept - the difference ? - I am using my UK iPhone over here just a few days after its launch …
I am currently in the heart of Silicon Valley staying with friends in San Jose - Cupertino is a few miles down the freeway - and my iPhone experiences so far have been good. Before I left I checked that international roaming was switched on with O2 (it should be by default), that the roaming discounts through ITS apply (comes free with all iPhone tariffs) and the last thing I did was to switch off data roaming - as I’m going to wifi nirvana I thought I could get by and with data charged at £ per Gb when roaming didn’t fancy a huge bill on my return … I was ready to go.
On the plane I switched on ‘Flight mode’ and watched some tv shows, music videos and listened to some music. I was going to use my airplane charger lead but my BA seat didn’t have the standard socket to plug it in to - however I still got around 6 hours of playback. On getting off the plane at San Francisco the iPhone immediately found the AT&T network and I made the “I’m here - where are you call?” to my friend who was picking me up.
While waiting I sent a few texts home (beware when roaming a single text uses four out of your monthly allowance). With this in mind I was grateful for the amazing BeeJive IM web-application (iphone.beejive.com) to keep in touch with friends on iChat or MSN over the course of the next few days. This pulls up buddy lists from each account and shows their on/offline status, it has a speech bubble for each conversation so you can have more than one on the go at once - although to avoid embarassment try to remember which one is which! It also shows how many new messages there are in the conversation. The only bug appears to be that the screen doesn’t scroll vertically when full so if your friend sends a few messages at at time you might lose some of the text.
As my friends have wifi in their home, using mail and safari was quick and easy. I used the map app to locate a few shopping destinations and routes. The phone worked well - it’s handy to make sure you have all your UK contacts set up as +44- numbers. With the data roaming switched off the visual voicemail doesn’t work, but the recent calls log allows you to see if you have any missed calls, though it would be nice to be able to delete calls individually like to you can in mail.
Earlier in the week I got an email saying they had switched on the Starbucks iTunes music service across San Francisco and the Bay area and was keen to try it out. I went to the local Starbucks and switched on - excitedly I got the icon on the bottom of my itunes screen and then … nothing … apart from a message saying ‘cannot connect to iTunes Store’. It appears that the iPhone remembers the iTunes Store setting from the last sync. So if you were browsing the UK store you can only get the UK store away from your mac. Slightly embarassing as I have both a UK and a US store account. However what’s worse is if you hadn’t actually signed in to the store at the time of your last sync, there is no facility to enter your account details on the iPhone - so I couldn’t even have bought a track even if I could have got the store. My friends iPhone worked fine though and the list of ‘now playing’ and ‘recently played’ tracks with the simple ‘click to buy’ worked well.
The Apple-supplied earphones/microphone works well as long as your ears fit it ! Being able to use the microphone button to pause/play/ff music while it is playing is very useful. If, like myself, you don’t have Jonathan Ive-designed ears then a few of the accessory manufacturers have released in-line microphone cords to fit their existing earphones/headphones - Shure and Bose are the first ones I’ve seen on the racks at the local AppleStore - and I have bought one for my Bose noise-cancelling headphones.
I also bought an InvisiShield for my iPhone. It’s a Blue Peter-style clear stickyback plastic designed to protect the edges of helicopter blades. The one I have wraps around the whole phone and is thin and scratchproof and should make the phone less bulky than a silicone or polycarbonate case. I have a similar cover on my 5G iPod and that has survived all sorts.
Wandering around San Jose over the last few days I have been surprised by the number of free wi-fi spots so checking mail, directions and websites really has been very easy. I know people have lamented the lack of MMS but snapping a photo and hitting email really hasn’t been that much of an issue - and even better it’s free over wifi! The number of iPhones around is possibly disproportionate given my proximity to Apple and the nature of many Silicon Valley residents, but the people I have been speaking to about how they have found their iPhone seems to indicate that it is a great product that can only get better …
Jon
