So, the 31 iPhone posts didn’t exactly pan out as planned.  My husband and I had some real life stuff crop up that was just more important than the Internet, and I’ve been on a big project at work that has required a lot of time dedicated to it.  But despite the lack of posting, the countdown to iPhone was still going on.  We sent each other emails throughout the month of August…”25 days until iPhone!”  “Two weeks until we get our iPhones!”  “OMG We get our iPhones next week!”  The level of geek was pretty high, and the anticipation was killing us, but we made it to August 30th (iPhone Eve) before we caved and just bought the damn things already.

We catch up with our heroes at the mall, of course!

My husband and I were out having dinner and then intended to see a movie.  Since we happened to be at one of the big fancy malls here in Dallas that has nice restaurants, a stellar movie theater, AND lots of great shops, we swung by the Apple Store to see if they might just happen to have 2 iPhones left over at the end of the day.  No luck, but no worries either–we (individually) got the brilliant idea to check the AT&T store on our way out of the mall when our movie excursion didn’t pan out.  They happened to have a few left, and they were MORE than happy to sell them to us.  I have to give the AT&T store major props…they pushed for the hard sell right away when they found out we were interested buyers, but not in an overbearing, annoying way.  The saleslady was very helpful and answered our questions, and in return we were probably the easiest sale she’d made all day.

We discovered from AT&T that our T-Mobile contract didn’t actually expire until midnight on 8/31 (so, technically 9/1) and that AT&T would be closed for Labor Day.  Since we weren’t able to port our number over until Tuesday 9/2, we went ahead and got them and had temporary numbers put on our SIM cards.  I called on Tuesday and it took about 5 minutes on the phone with a rep to get the numbers ported–very fast, very easy.

I think we may have broken speed limits on our way home from the mall that night.  We walked out with the iPhones in our hand (hubby used his to take the pic of yours truly, right outside the store) and busted ass to get back to the apartment and set them up in iTunes.  I got mine registered and all loaded up with apps first, but much to my disappointment I discovered 3 dead pixels!  So it was back to the Apple Store Sunday morning, where I made a Genius Bar appointment to exchange it per Apple’s 1-pixel exchange policy on their iPhones and iPods.  We ate lunch next door, came back, exchanged the iPhone and I was on my way with a pristine, pixel-perfect model.  We also bought cases while we were there (more on that in another post) and all was right with my world.

So what’s the verdict?

I absolutely LOVE my iPhone so far.  The user experience is vastly superior to any phone I’ve owned.  It’s surprisingly small and sturdy, which makes me happy on a number of levels.  I can slip it into my smallest clutch purse with no problem, and it has a satisfying heft to it that makes it easy to hold on to–so easy that I’ve hardly put it down since I purchased it!

The screen is utterly gorgeous (especially with all the pixels working!) and bright.  I keep my brightness turned down to a lower level because at full-throttle, it actually hurts my eyes.  This also helps with battery  life a little bit.

I knew what to expect with the battery life of a 3G device going into the purchase, since I have worked with quite a few of them in the past while writing documentation and marketing materials for phone manufacturers and carriers.  I wish the battery life was a little better, but I just plug it in during the day while I’m at my desk, and make sure to charge it in full every night.  I keep wi-fi off unless I need it.

My biggest disappointment is the lack of support for older iPod accessories.  We have a small portable boombox with an iPod dock in it that will not charge the iPhone (even though it said iPhone compatible on the box–must be original iPhone only!), and my husband’s iTrip works despite an error message that it’s not compatible, but he gets a great deal of interference on it.  This is really annoying, but not a total dealbreaker.

My biggest surprise was how easy it was to get used to the on-screen keyboard.  I’m not 100% with it yet by any means, but it was my biggest concern when moving from a phone with a full QWERTY hardware keyboard.  The recognition and correction feature on the iPhone is superb, and I like that the character zooms out as you type it so that you know what you’re hitting.

I’m loving the apps–my most used apps at the moment are probably Stanza, Twitteriffic, Pandora, and Tris, plus the iPhone-optimized Google Reader page and the built-in Mail app.  I’m using Nueva Sync’s services to sync my Google Calendar and my Google Contacts to the phone, which has worked flawlessly so far.

Next up, I’ll review Stanza, talk about Nueva Sync, review my new iPhone case, and more!