If you read my last article about the iPhone 3G, you’d understand that I haven’t had a WHOLE lot of time to play around with it just yet. I have had enough time to form some pretty good first impressions about it though, and I’d figure I’d give my thoughts on the iPhone 3G from the perspective of someone who never had the first iPhone.

The first thing I noticed when I picked up the phone was how heavy it felt in comparison to how heavy it looks. They pack this phone with quite a bit cause it feels really solid. I was told by someone at work that they thought the iPhone 3G actually felt lighter than the old iPhone, but in my comparison (one in each hand) I didn’t notice much difference. I might have just been tired. I just know that the iPhone feels like it will last a while. The phone also does feel really good in your hand when you hold it.

The battery life kind of stinks. Again, no scientific tests here. Just me using the phone. I used it about an hour or an hour and a half this morning and saw the battery fall about a quarter. I’m sure I’ll live. I’m not away from a computer or USB jack long enough to not be able to just charge her up when she starts running low, but it’s something to think about. I think I’m lucky in that my home is the 1 dead spot as far as 3G is concerned in my area, so I don’t have to worry about that sucking up battery life while I’m at home.

The GPS is pretty neat. On my way to work yesterday, I opened up the Map application and followed my little dot as I drove to work. It worked pretty well. Every once and a while, the dot that was supposed to be me would turn a transparent blue tint and it seemed that during this time, the movement was a little more choppy, but it still worked very well. I also jumped in to a few of the applications that use the location aware API’s and didn’t find any problems with finding where I was. I tried out the Map at work last night too, but (as I expected) didn’t get a GPS lock (or any lock). This isn’t surprising to me at all because my whole work is an AT&T dead zone. We’re kind of in a basement.

Signal seems to be very decent. Like I said earlier, my house isn’t covered in 3G, but on my trip to and from work, everything in between there (before I got into work) was all 3G. Full bars and everything. Also mentioned earlier is that my work is an AT&T dead zone. I use that term loosely because it’s not completely dead. Just mostly. My old Sony Ericsson had a ton of places where I couldn’t get a signal at all, but I was actually impressed that I was able to maintain at least 1 bar pretty much everywhere at work.

I haven’t taken many pictures with my new iPhone yet, but I’ve taken/seen pictures from other iPhones and it doesn’t look any different here.

The UI is pretty damned nice. Mind you, this is still a first impression so “pretty damned nice” could be a lot better if I was more “used to” it. But even saying that, it’s becoming very easy to get “used to”. I’ve already gotten down the process of hitting the home button quite a bit. Typing has come a lot easier than I thought it would be. Actually extremely easy. I even got the 2 thumbs a try and was able to type pretty well. Made more mistakes that way though so I’m going to perfect the 1 finger first. Everything is just very intuitive and ‘just works’ the way it should. The only surprises are things that you have to think about them even being there. Like the proximity sensor that turns off the screen when you have the phone to your ear. The only reason I even noticed it at all was because I took the phone away from my head pretty quick and noticed it was totally black for about a quarter of a second and then just sprung back to life. Just like it should have.

I could go on forever but this is supposed to be a ‘first impression’ post so I’ll cut it a little short to give my self some more time to play. When I get it all down and get more time with all the features and applications, I’m sure I’ll have a few more iPhone 3G posts in the near future.. Bottom line, here? Get one.