Reprint: Apple’s iPhone 4 Review: A Roller Coaster First Week

Editor's Note: this article originally appeared on Rob Simons Says

by Rob Simons

Wow. What a first week! For all the people that were waiting for my review of Apple’s new iPhone 4, here it is – get ready for a roller coaster ride.

Before we start this journey, let me give the option to step out of line now. It has not been an enjoyable journey. Actually, it’s been very ugly in several places, with more twists and turns than I expected. And for an Apple diehard like me that’s experienced just about every Apple product since the Apple ][+, I didn’t see this ride coming. So if you’re still up for it, sit back and relax while we climb the first hill.

(Just to give you a sense of the tome I could have written, I was 2,000 words into the first half of the initial ordering experience when I decided to reboot.)

Ordering Experience

To keep this short, I’ll just say that the pre-ordering experience started out great, then quickly descended into hell. My first stop was the AT&T web site, but it was extremely unresponsive. So I decided to call 611 from my phone and order the three iPhone 4 upgrades directly from AT&T on the morning of June 17. The first AT&T rep was wonderful. If only that call had been the end of the AT&T experience.

Unfortunately, I needed to call back and make a minor modification to the order. What should have been a simple process evolved into 4+ hours of phone calls; several blatant lies from AT&T; an incorrectly canceled order; an AT&T manager that never called me back; a mysteriously re-instated order after I was told it wasn’t possible to get a new order; then the miraculous “early” delivery of my iPhone 4.

Yes. For some reason, I was one of the few that received my iPhone 4 via FedEx the day BEFORE it was released to the public. This later turned out to be a blessing and a curse.

Installation & Activation

After going from being told I wouldn’t get my iPhone 4 for several weeks, to receiving it a day early, I thought this was a sign from above that I need to... 

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