So I’m a few days into the iPhone adventure. First things first. If you want one right now? Tough. It seems that most of the Apple stores are now sold out (most of the AT&T stores were sold out the first day or two). Your only choice now is the online Apple store, and that’s showing a period of time before they start to ship. It is unknown when the stores will get more stock, but if you are wanting to look and not be tempted to buy, now is your chance since they don’t have any in stock!

As for my experience, I find I’m using the device between three and five hours a day based on the usage meter. I think I could probably go maybe two days on my current usage level before the battery is depleted. I finally disabled WiFi scanning and that seemed to help a bit when using it on EDGE. The end bandwidth test showed me an average of around 178 kbps, which doesn’t suck. It’s certainly not even close to the 1176 kbps I get over WiFi at home. So I’m happy with the life of the device.

Some things that actually suck. The lack of a “New Mail” indicator in the status area while the phone is locked is sort of lame. I’d like to see if I have any mail messages without unlocking the phone. I’d also like the option to show an SMS waiting indicator without displaying the full SMS on the locked screen. Mind you, I don’t really care about the SMS I think it’s okay, but the option would be nice. The lack of iChat is also weak. I’d like a Jabber/SSL client really bad, but I can certainly understand if it is only on when I’m using the phone. SMS is certainly more battery friendly as far as chat clients are concerned, running the chat client on my BlackBerry also meant getting about 50% of the battery life I expected.

A surprise (well, not really, but a reminder) item that I had completely forgotten about. When surfing on EDGE, you can’t get voice calls. I remembered this from before, but didn’t actually remember it until I missed a call. Then it came back to me. You still get calls when surfing on WiFi, just not when transferring data via EDGE. This really makes some of the AJAX-based sites somewhat questionable if you want to have a AJAX-style chat client up and still expect to get voice calls. More testing is needed here for sure.

As for WiFi, word is that AT&T is going to open up all 10,000+ hot spots to iPhone users. This is only rumored, but it has already happened for AT&T broadband customers and press release mentioned that iPhone users as well would get free access. If this happens, the 3G fanboys can go suck it down. 3G sucks compared to WiFi, and you can get AT&T hot spot WiFi almost anywhere. Piled on top of the free WiFi you can get all over town anyway, and 3G will be a complete non-issue for all but the most dedicated 3G freaks. Enjoy your 18-20 hour battery life on the Blackjack.

I’m still very satisfied with the purchase, I love the phone. I’m still 50/50 on a case, I need to find something better. I bought the iSee from Contour Designs and it is OK, but there are some weaknesses to the design. I’m hoping to find a wallet/folio style horizontal belt case, but the search continues. At least I have another reason to visit our Apple store this week!