Jul 18
Alarm went off at 4am. I was out the door by 4:45am and at the Apple Store in Bethesda by 5am in line and waiting. I was 27th in line. There were people there, that had been there since 11pm the night before. Last year, I went in at 5pm and was out by 5:15pm. So here is my experience with my iPhone purchase, activation and usage.
At 8:00 am, Apple opened their doors letting a few in at a time. I was the 3rd group that got in. I let the Sales rep know what phone I wanted, “The 16GB black one please!” With the phone in one hand and his handheld POS he started asking me questions. He got all the way to the end when he got a red flag. Turns out that my account had a corporate account block on it. This was weird considering it an individual plan and the iPhone did not qualify for a discount on the bill through my company. So I had to call AT&T… no problem. She took the block off and the Mac Specialist tried again. Done!..well not yet. The next step was to hand me off to another Mac Specialist to activate the phone. I tore open the box, and then gave him the phone… We hooked it to the computer and iTunes started it’s activation process. while it was contacting the Music Store I noticed my other phone lost all signal and became useless as a phone. Finally after it was activated I walked out to catch a plan with time to spare. In total it took about an hour and twenty-five minutes. I was lucky, turns out about three hours in to the activation, iTunes took a dump. So all in all I had a great experience. Now for the phone…
While on my trip I noticed about 3 cosmetic issues. (1) on the top near the SIM slot there was a dimple. Like a acrew was poking through. (2) The SIM port was not flush. I started getting dirt in it. (3) the dock connector port was not straight. Plugging in the phone was very difficult.
I got back on Tuesday, called the Apple Store on Wednesday. They held me a new 16 GB iPhone and this one is pretty much perfect. I am still worried about the dock connector port but looks good for now. For now, I love the phone, love the software, love the AppStore, hate the battery life.
