iPhone Watch: Cross-Country with iPhone on T-Mobile

Posted on Friday, September 21, 2007
by Noah Kravitz , Senior Editor, Follow me on Twitter

Along the train, two-flights and a layover way to DC, I used iPhone to check Email and surf the Web via EDGE (en route to the airport), watch two tv show episodes (first flight), check EMail and surf the Web via WiFI (at the Phoenix airport), and watch a third tv show and listen to an hour or two of music (second flight).  When I got to DC I checked email again via EDGE, sent/received a few text messages, and made a few voice calls.  By the end of the night my battery was down below 10% but it hadn't given out on me.  Not bad for a full day's work.

Watching videos on iPhone was a joy.  The screen is gorgeous - crisp, bright, and a surprisingly good size for viewing in the close confines of coach class.  My Etymotic er-6i earphones fit the phone's funny recessed audio jack and are perfect for flying - their canalphone design blocks out noise as well as those noise cancelling Bose jobs, but at a fraction of the size.

While in DC I downloaded another tv show, and on the way home I watched that along with an 80+ minute movie (A documentary about The Police made by the band's drummer, Stewart Copeland).  I also listened to music, surfed, and made some calls.  Again, no battery issues.

I did run into a few crashes when running Safari and one or two other applications - reports have surfaced regarding occasional Safari crashes, in particular.  The nice thing about an iPhone crash is that the application suddenly closes itself and then everything's back to normal at the Home screen.  The first time something crashed, I thought I'd hit the Home button by accident, actually.  Crashes are never good, but at least iPhone handles them gracefully.

Surfing via T-Mobile's EDGE network generally worked well (if sometimes slowly), though I did find sometimes that I had to manually refresh a page to get it to load. Generally this happened when I first connected to EDGE - it seemed as though the phone was having trouble making that initial connection to the data network.  Once I got one page to load, everything else (including Email) worked fine for the rest of that session.  And I didn't always have to connect and refresh to initiate a session - just some of the time.

I had the phone in my pocket for most of the trip and didn't use any sort of case or screen protector.  The screen is perfect (though I did have to clean fingerprints and smudges off of it regularly) and the body is just about perfect, as well.  Not bad at all, especially considering that I dropped the thing once or twice.

Ringtones are definitely a bit quieter than I'd like them to be.  And today I experienced an odd five minute period during which I couldn't place any outgoing calls.  I don't know if that was the phone or the network or what.  If it happens again, I'll have to look into it.

But for now I've got the phone loaded up with a few new tv shows for tomorrow's flight.  And I spent all of a buck fifty (plus shipping) on a headphone adapter from monoprice.com so I can try my Ultimate Ears earphones with the handset.  The adapters at the Apple Store sell for around ten bucks, which is absurd. 

Actually, I think I'm also going to bring a headphone splitter so my wife and I can watch together.  Watching Monday's "Weeds" together on Friday morning in coach class - you gotta love it.