iPhone '4' thread

Oscar_The_Grouch

Thanks Bubbles. Let me know what they say.

liubeliu

Looks like iPhone 4 will be available online from Three from tomorrow according to its official blog site

AndrewRH

bubblesmoney wrote: »

...so in about 10hours of spotify listening on 3g your monthly data limit fo 500mb would be used up. so beware of streaming on 3g connection as you might foot a costly bill.

-Is there a way to disable completely 3G data?

- Or, to tell phone to stop using 3G when you allowance is up?

- Does it show you your monthly usage so you can check periodically how you are doing so there is no bill surprise?

- Separately, any feedback on how good/bad the GPS funcationality is in the iPhone4? i.e. is it suitable for turn-by-turn navigation in the car instead of using a dedicated GPS unit?

Cheers,

~Andrew~

sqa

Just been on the phone with Apple. They're collecting my current iPhone 4 via UPS and exchanging it for a new one. Hopefully the new one's battery doesn't go from 69% to 52% with a 20 minute call! The woman said that Fedex/UPS would contact me within 24/48 hours to arrange collection... fingers crossed then..

Slickster

Hmm, I got my iPhone 4 from Three as a current customer the other day, but having called to activate the micro sim it was today still saying 'waiting for activation, this could take some time'.

So I called customer service who said that 'the wrong micro sim for my account had been sent' which is why my activation had been cancelled. They are sending out a new sim tomorrow and then I'll see if that gets activated within the 24 hours!

Anyone else had this?!?

Smithers_uk

Phoned Tesco on the off chance at 08.00 yesterday morning. The very helpful chap said they had 16gb in stock and turned up this morning at home. Just need to set it up, but so far I can't complain about Tesco's service, but I did wait for a while to come in to stock.:D

bubblesmoney

AndrewRH wrote: »

-Is there a way to disable completely 3G data?

- Or, to tell phone to stop using 3G when you allowance is up?

- Does it show you your monthly usage so you can check periodically how you are doing so there is no bill surprise?

- Separately, any feedback on how good/bad the GPS funcationality is in the iPhone4? i.e. is it suitable for turn-by-turn navigation in the car instead of using a dedicated GPS unit?

Cheers,

~Andrew~

i have an android phone, i dont have the iphone4.

on my phone i can switch off the data connection completly. i guess you should be able to do that on the iphone as well. but confirm from other iphone users to be sure.

data can use 2g / 3g / 4g / HSDPA / EDGE / GPRS / WAP etc and is not limited to 3g connection, so switching off 3g wouldnt make any difference other than making any data connection slower. and battery use might be higher if you are not using a 3g connection. (yes there are apps for switching off the 3g connection and to use the 2g connection too but i dont think they are useful but may be useful only in weak 3g signal areas to save battery but not to save on data)

to stop using data you need to switch off the data connection / mobile network connetion. i can do this on my android phone. i assume there will be something similar for the iphone as well but you can ask other iphone users to make sure. for android phones like the htc desire, you can search MSE forum posts for my posts on how to do this. but for iphone best to ask iphone users.

on android there are apps like netcounter / 3gwatchdog etc etc that show your mobile network data usage and also same for wifi network usage. there are also apps that give you periodic alerts daily/weekly/monthly when ever you breach the limits that you set on the app. there are also apps that switch off the data connection (like apndroid) when you breach those limits. there is also an option to switch of data connection when on roaming networks. i guess there will be similar options on iphone too but best to confirm with iphone users.

pcpro magazine last month had a cover page article about sat nav. they covered different types of phones (android, iphone, symbian etc) and also tomtom and then did a group test for satnav devices over various categories. android phone with google voice navigation won in all five categories and spanked even the tomtom, which wasnt a surprise to me as i have a tomtom760T with year old maps and my android phone beats it hollow for acuracy of maps and voice guidance and also for street view and accuracy is better too. just the active traffic alerts are not there on google navigation but passive alerts can be seen on the screen in colour codes. i dont know how good the iphone navigation is as i havent used that. but on my htc desire i can get sattelite lock in about 4 secs which is way faster than even my tomtom. you can buy maps from the likes of copilot etc too for 26£ for uk and ireland. i guess they have a version for iphone too like they do for android. it has got good reviews too and will be cheaper if you dont want to use the data connection like google navigation or are travelling abroad etc. try to see the review on pcpro magazine about satnav last month.

ps: oscar will let you know what anandtech say about my comment. but for now there is no response from them. anand of anandtech is an apple fan (nothing wrong with that btw) and has for a long while written a lot of apple products and next to nothing about symbian products which is saying a lot since they have been writing on tech stuff for about a decade! so a surprise they havent written much about symbian (i know symbian is crap but all the same a surprise they havent written much about it anyway)

jonthedog

Slickster wrote: »

Hmm, I got my iPhone 4 from Three as a current customer the other day, but having called to activate the micro sim it was today still saying 'waiting for activation, this could take some time'.

So I called customer service who said that 'the wrong micro sim for my account had been sent' which is why my activation had been cancelled. They are sending out a new sim tomorrow and then I'll see if that gets activated within the 24 hours!

Anyone else had this?!?

Yes, is very similar to my situation, but I don't really understand why you have been told what you have been told. I was told that the micro SIM provided isn't activated until you phone up to transfer over your old number to it from your old contract (normal sized) SIM. I didn't want to do this straight away as I wanted to test it before commiting, so I went to a 3 store to get a PAG micro SIM...they didn't have any so I got a normal sized PAG SIM instead and cut it down with a pair of sissors (using the unactivated micro SIM 3 provided as a tempate). Works a treat.
I don't understand why 3 didn't tell you you can simply transfer over your old number to the unactivated SIM, but if you are desparate to try out the iphone you could cut your old contract SIM down to size. The extra plastic around the micro SIM card makes for a useful 'adaptor' should you want to put it back in your old phone.

jonthedog

bubblesmoney wrote: »

even music can be data intensive. for example spotify streaming on 3g connection, just for 30mins will set you back and average of 25mb, so in about 10hours of spotify listening on 3g your monthly data limit fo 500mb would be used up. so beware of streaming on 3g connection as you might foot a costly bill.

Tend to listen catch up radio 4 programmes more often than music, 3 mobile's data limit is 1GB, so 10hrs of music is not even remotely a problem. I found on my old 'unlimited' contract I would rarely get above 300Mb anyway.
It is really frustrating to get a brand shiny new phone to find out it can't do something you've come to rely on, especially when it obviously has the hardware specs to do so...curse Apple for deliberately hobbling this phone; why can't it just read the same data streams as even 2 year old Nokias/Blackberrys/Sonys/Samsungs?

jonthedog

AndrewRH wrote: »

-Is there a way to disable completely 3G data?

- Or, to tell phone to stop using 3G when you allowance is up?

- Does it show you your monthly usage so you can check periodically how you are doing so there is no bill surprise?

- Separately, any feedback on how good/bad the GPS funcationality is in the iPhone4? i.e. is it suitable for turn-by-turn navigation in the car instead of using a dedicated GPS unit?

Cheers,

~Andrew~

Yes; you can turn off 'mobile data' (and separately data roaming whilst abroad) by going to Settings: General: Network and flicking the Mobile Data switch.

Most applications seem to have the option to disable 3G data for that individual application.
The iphone should default to using wifi in all circumstances, however, so depending on what contract you are on you really shouldn't worry about this too much when doing normal stuff, just be aware when you are downloading/streaming where the data is coming from.

The iphone collects your usage stats under Settings: General: Usage, which will tell you how much mobile data, minutes, etc, you have used, but you would have to manually reset this every month if you want to know how close you are to the limit. 3 mobile has the 'Planet 3' mobile site that will tell you all of your allowances and how much you have left (which thankfully doesn't come out of your data allowance), and I presume all the other networks would have similar mobile web sites.

As wonderful as the Google maps/GPS is that comes with the iphone is, it is not Sat Nav and does not provide turn by turn navigation (unlike the Nokia Ovi maps application and Google maps on Android). You can buy third party apps to do this though, and some are even free now. Co pilot is meant to be a good compromise between price and usuability, but you will obviously need some sort of separate holder and in car charger. I have yet to attempt a journey with mine, but if it's anything like the GPS in my nokia, it'll work fine in the UK using networks with 'assisted' GPS (i.e. it roughly gets your location from the mobile transmitters and uses it to work out where the satellites are), but not so well abroad where they don't have assisted GPS networks, for which having a separate GPS receiver stuck to the window is preferable.