The staff at SFC Design Group got an email from apple regarding pre-orders for the new iPhone. The last thing any of us wanted to do was to wait in line at 6am again, but don’t tempt us! We knew that getting the 3Gs would be easier than the 3G, but didn’t want to chance it so we placed the pre-order.
Sure enough, we had a delivery on Friday morning, the day of the release and got our phones. We all went with the 32GB model to carry files, music, photos, and hold a good amount of video.
The pre-order price was set at $499 for the 32GB with a new contract. That doesn’t sound right, but we went ahead and secured a few anyways. A few days later, an announcement was made that we would be getting a credit of $200 to bring the price to $299 for the 32GB. That sounds more like it and a refund we did receive shortly after.
Due to the high volume of phone activations we had to wait a few hours for the activation, but our 3G phone were still work in the mean time.
Here we are 3 weeks later and are very happy with the upgrade. The best part about the upgrade is the SPEED. A huge difference when viewing email, web, applications, etc. When we upgraded our 3G to the new 3.0 OS, you can see that the 3Gs was designed to support the 3.0 OS much better.
From a business standpoint, this phone goes beyond anything we need. When we are on the road, we feel very comfortable not having the laptops at arms length. We can check on our servers, client’s websites, e-mail, calendar, etc. and do it very well.
AT&T still needs to step up and give us tethering and MMS. I expect to see the tethering available shortly, but you can count on paying for it. As a heavy business user, we would consider paying for tethering depending on the price. So let’s hope that they price it right.
Don’t want to spend the money on the new 3Gs? Upgrading your phone every year can seem ridiculous to some, but awesome to others. If you kept your box and your phone is in decent condition, than you can expect to get a great price on eBay. Most auctions we have seen have covered the cost totally for the upgrade.
As for an Iphone case and screen protection. We all installed the ZAGG invisibleSHIELD. While scratches on the screen are usually the main concern when shopping for a screen protector, the ZAGG | invisibleSHIELD does much more. I personally love that it protects well from fingerprints and I don’t have to constantly wipe down the screen. It was very easy to install and a bit worrisome as you have to spray a liquid on your screen, much like tinting a cars windows. But once in place this screen protector is awesome. You can have the mobile crew at Best Buy install it for you for a small fee if you’d like.
That’s our review for now. Next time we will go into some business applications that we like.
