Yesterday, I posted that we received some new toys—iPhone 5’s, and were about to start setting them up. Here are few quick notes on the phones and our experience:

1. Getting them set up and activated took about an hour and forty five minutes total (per phone, working in parallel). Most of that time was doing the restore and sync from iTunes of our old phones, but I did have to spend about 35 minutes on the phone with AT&T Customer Support trying to fix some issues with our contract.
2. AT&T support has been great—they were very polite and worked with me until everything was right… and then even contacted me again this morning when someone else noticed another problem with the way our messaging was set up. That took another 25 minutes to clear up, but most of that was them working on their side. I had to do very little. I should note that both of these issues were caused because I grandfathered in my messaging plan from the old days, and the new ordering/billing system apparently doesn’t like that… but it is possible to keep your old plan, so do it if it makes sense.
3. The screens on the phones are absolutely gorgeous when it comes to resolution—almost shockingly so.
4. It’s going to take a while to get used to the shape of the phone. Yes, it’s a bit longer, but that’s not what’s throwing me off. I grew so used to the shape of the 3GS phone that when I pulled it out of my pocket, I knew immediately which way to rotate so the screen was facing me. I haven’t got that touch-feel-know down yet for the iPhone 5, and I invariably end up looking at the back of the phone at first glance.
5. The iPhone 5 is definitely lighter than the 3GS, so much so that I almost don’t know it’s in my pocket at times.
6. One of my big concerns pre-upgrade was that I was going to have to replace my old speaker dock at my desk because of the change in adapters from 30 pin to Lightning. I worried that even with the Lighting to 30 pin adapter plugged in to the phone, the speakers still wouldn’t work. Well, the speakers do work, but unfortunately the phone still doesn’t charge on this speaker system (neither did my 3GS after the iOS 4 upgrade a couple of years back). The $30 adapter is a lot cheaper than buying a new Bluetooth audio system for my office.
7. The new phone is rocket-fast compared to the 3GS. I haven’t been out and about with it yet to test the LTE signal, but starting and stopping apps is sub second, not 3-5 seconds like on the 3GS.
8. One of the things to remember after you restore your phone is that passwords are not brought over. If you are like me, and keep different passwords for each and every account you have on-line, and store those in an encrypted vault type program, you’ll want to cycle through and access all of those accounts once before you leave your PC. Otherwise you may find yourself with only the ability to check the weather forecast or, you know, make a phone call.
9. I did have one issue this morning, where all my emails said “This message has no content” when accessed via the phone. Restarting the phone fixed the problem. I hope this isn’t a frequent issue.

Overall, we’re pretty happy with the phones. I expected the transition to take a couple of hours, and it did. Had it not been for the issue with the messaging plan, most of that transition time would have been unattended time. As it was, I was still able to get things done on my computer while I waited on-hold and waited for the sync to finish. Overall, it was pretty painless, and didn’t put me into any kind of bad mood (which is my measuring stick for a successful implementation of any new technology these days).

Here’s hoping these phones last another 3.5 years (or more). I’d really like to get my money’s worth out of these bad boys.