I’ve had my iPhone for about 8 months now and there was an issue with the side buttons on the phone that controlled the volumne and the mute.  They stopped working one day for reasons unknown. So I headed down to San Diego to the Apple store fearing the worst. I’d figure I’d have to fight to get them to fix it.  Well I got into the store, talked the Genious Bar dude.  He took a look, told me hold on a second and came out with a new iPhone and put my SIM chip into the new phone!  Wow. I thought they were going to send it in, I’d be out without a phone a while. Nope. Brand new phone!  Now that’s what I like.

I remember having an issue with my phone when I was with Sprint and they would find any excuse not to replace the phone. I had a minor scratch on the phone (normal wear and tear) and the guy said I must have damaged it on purpose so they are not going to replacement. My wife also had an issue and they would not replace it for free because they said she had split Coke on it.  WTF. She does not even drink Soda!  That is why the phone carriers should be very worried about Apple getting into their market because the days of screwing over the consumer are over.  Now the ultimate would be for them to get off of AT&T and become their own provider!! (one can only dream)

The last couple of days my iPhone has been locking up to the point where I would have to hard reset it every 10 minutes.  I’ve been planning on going to the Apple store but I’ve been working at home all week.

 Being a software dork, I was beginning to notice patterns with the phone. It did not work well at home, but if I went down to Starbucks, to the movies or hockey my iphone would work!  

What is the one thing that is different about being at home beside AT&T service sucking and having 2 bars if I’m lucky, was that I have wifi at home.   I turned off the wifi on the iphone and guess what, it started working again!

WTF? Why would that be?  I then realized that I had changed the wifi keys on the wireless routers at the home because my teenage daughter has been grounded from the internet.  I thought all was good because I had changed the passwords on the computers but she was caught using her PSP and Wii to browse the net.  Instead of worrying about every wifi enabled device in the house (which is plenty), I changed the keys.

What would you know,  the iPhone has a bug if you change the key of an existing router without reseting the key on the phone. It would be interesting to see if others have had the same problem.

This week I went to down to the Apple Store and purchased myself a new iPhone! I know everyone has been talking about how great the iPhone is but I really had no idea how good it was until I had it in my hands for a couple of days. The user interface is amazingly easy to use and beautiful. There is no way in hell I could use a Microsoft smart phone after having an iPhone in my possession.

If one thing that I wish it had was full integration with Exchange. However, I ‘m able to get my work emails via IMAP to our Exchange server. Sure, I don’t get calendar support but I’m not away from my computer that often during working hours. I keep all of my personal calendar information in iCal, which tends to be the events that I miss because its when I’m not working is when I’m notified.

The setup had to be the best and quickest experience I’ve ever had in activating phone service. I unpacked the phone and inserted the cradle’s USB cable into my Mac. iTunes then came up and I answered a couple of very simple questions. I had switched over to AT&T last month because I knew I wanted to have an iPhone. After I tell them some security questions with my phone number and then pick a data package my phone is literally activated in 5 minutes! I was now able to make and receive calls.

The integration with iLife is to me is the best feature. I picked my music,videos and photos I want to have on the iPhone. The software detected my email configurations on my mac and asked me if I want to use these accounts! Finally, my iCal and Address book were synced to the phone. The camera takes really good photos (not as good as my regular camera but these photos are good!) and to my surprise, when I docked the iPhone to charge it, the camera photos were automatically added to iPhoto! The hand gestures to use the iPhone are extremly simple and intitive! No complicated menus (God, I hated the interface on my Razor) and within minutes you know where everything is.

The iPhone will detect if there is a wireless connection available to use instead of the AT&T data network. So when I come home, the iPhone automatically uses the wi-fi connection!

Instead of sitting with my notebook on the couch when watching tv, I found my self the last couple days using my iPhone instead. This is the best browser for any mobile device. It’s a REAL browser and looks exactly like the web page that I see on my computer.� The hand gestures allows you to zoom in or zoom out by either moving your fingers out or in.

I know a person who complained that it did not support Flash and that is why he’s not getting one. Personally I don’t give a shit about Flash support and there is not that many sites I go to that use Flash. You know however Apple is working with ADOBE to have a Flash version . If this is the only reason he’s not getting it then I have a feeling its more that he does not want to spend the money!

Others in the blogosphere have complained that it does not have IM support (not an issue for me), a video camera (I have a Hi Def Video cam so why would I want to have it my phone?), you can’t add multiple people to same text message(this is a feature I want, but I can live without it), no active sync with Exchange (my biggest “Want/Wish”) and finally no flash support (which I could care less but I bet this is one of the new additions before the end of the year).

Overall the iPhone rocks and I can’t find any reason why I would ever want to go back to the using a “Cell” phone or even a smartphone!