Hi Guys.
Great forum you've got here.

I need some inside information from those in the know.

I pick up my iphone 3GS on 4th January 10.

I intend to buy it from the Orange shop. I'm already with Orange and have been for a few years. I am upgrading my Nokia 6300.

Here's what I'm after. What tips or advice regarding registration, activation, purchase and set up would you like to have known in advance that I will find useful.

So for example, how important are screen protectors and which ones should I look for and which to avoid?

Which handsfree car kit is best?

What accessories are a must and what should I steer clear of?

What about email and registration and stuff.. anything I NEED to know...

Thanks in advance and I hope the answers help others as well as me..

Regards,
Gary

Not exactly inundated with replies and responses...

Nevermind, I thought this place had a bit more ooomph to it..

Sorry to have wasted your/my time.

It may be because the only folk who can answer your questions are new Orange customers like you. Most of us already on here are either with O2 or unlocked and jailbroken so we are not sure how much you will need to do with a brand new Orange contract.

Screen protectors, personal choice some do others trust the glass. Mine is just O2 one I bought on the day I got mine and one on has been fine for 5 months.

All the best with your new phone.

brendan002 wrote:It may be because the only folk who can answer your questions are new Orange customers like you. Most of us already on here are either with O2 or unlocked and jailbroken so we are not sure how much you will need to do with a brand new Orange contract.

Screen protectors, personal choice some do others trust the glass. Mine is just O2 one I bought on the day I got mine and one on has been fine for 5 months.

All the best with your new phone.

Thanks.

Yeah, I suppose you're right regarding the contract.

To be honest, though, I was more interested in views and opinions and tips on getting started..

Stuff like "Don't buy THIS case/cover as you can't get to the buttons"... or "don't bother getting a Jawbone earpiece as they are terrible". Or "Buy this handbook, it's great".

Or remember to invest in this battery, as it'll give you 20 more hours runtime etc..

That sort of stuff mate.

Trouble is that with this phone everyone has differing opinions, I use screen protector and case when going to work as I do it on a motorbike and don't want it getting wet or broken if the worst happens. But as soon as I get to work the case comes straight off as much prefer it in its naked glory, that what I mean by different opinions. I couldn't stand using a case all the time.

Car kits no idea about, I just use some sony in ear headphones and listen to radio on way to work with them inside my helmet. Works fine.

I recently moved to Orange for the 3GS, and they connected it to iTunes in the store and activated it. Not sure whether that was because I was a new customer.

As for cases, just avoid the silycrilic (spelling?) ones on Ebay. They look fine and protect well, but you have to really squeeze the volume and on/off buttons (which are covered) and you've no chance of getting to the mute switch.

There are some good cases out there. You generally get what you pay for, but those from Griffin, Speck, SwitchEasy and Case-Mate seem to be popular.

My favourite is the Griffin elan leather one.

As for screen protectors, I always think it best to be on the safe side. Given that the screen is so important on the iPhone, you're taking a risk leaving it unprotected. Personally I just use fairly inexpensive ones from ebay, which are easy to put on and just change it every couple of months.

I've just got my shiny new 32gb 3GS and It's a dream...
I cracked the other one at work, cracked the back near where you plug it in. And have a tiny scratch on the front, it's hardly noticable.
So best advice to you is get insurance. Get a screen cover, And a case. I have all three for my new one. The screen cover is a mirror one. It's a pain to see properly in day light, but I'd rather that than scratch it. The cover doubles as a wallet holding three cards. It's rigid enough. Bulks my pocket out, but again, it is protected.

Also, I hear that Orange have a poor signal in the iPhone. Not sure how true that is, But there you go.

stinker wrote:Also, I hear that Orange have a poor signal in the iPhone. Not sure how true that is, But there you go.

Depends where you live I suppose. When I got my last iPhone unlocked by o2 I tried SIMs from Vodafone, T-Mobile & Orange. Orange were by far the best at home and work for me (which is where I use it 99% of the time).

T-Mobile were just awful here, 3G so slow as to be unusable (slower than GPRS). Vodafone was OK (my wife's using my old 3G with her Vod SIM and it works OK but no 3G signal in the house so she has to use wifi). o2 were fine at work, but GPRS only at home.

Glad I moved to Orange, but as I say, it pays to test these things out in your main locations before committing.

I am a bit of a gadge geek and have always had cases for my PDA's and phones. Personally I go for Griffin accessories as I have always found them to be good quality and reasonably priced. I have the Wave case which has a good feel to it and not too bulky, but have stupidly bought nice shiny ones off E-Bay and been hugely disappointed.

I have used screen protectors but they really bother me -( more so than having finger prints in the screen!) so I don't use them now.

I live in a rural area and have found most fm transmitters/chargers work really well most of the time, although don't fare so well when I drive through built up areas etc. The iTrip is my preferred one, simple, cheap and works fine for me. I bought a hands free suction holder from ebay for a few quid - the ones that plug into the car charger are rubbish unless you like your iphone to wave around as you drive or get a crick in your neck trying to see it.

I'm on O2 now and am pretty happy with the coverage although being in Northumberland, there are parts of the county where I go 'dark' as they say on 24!

Hopefully by now you will have all you need, but maybe my opinion will help someone else.

Ho

I've just got a 3GS on Orange as an existing customer on upgrade. The iPhone was activated in store and they told me this was standard practice for all iPhones as suggested by Apple.

Battery life is your biggest enemy, but I've got a Mophie Juice Pack which helps out. They claim it doubles your battery life but it doesn't; you get about 1.6x in regular use and if you don't use the phone at all, other than for answering incoming calls and texts you can squeeze almost 2.5 days out of the phone/Mophie combination. The Mophie has a USB connector on it, and no pass through for the dock connector, but you can charge it and the phone at the same time, using their cable and your USB mains plug that came with the phone. The only downside is the Mophie will double the thickness of the phone. For me it's not an issue; I'd rather have the confidence that I have enough power to last me. The alternative is to make sure you have a spare charger/car charger with you at all times, which isn't always practical.

If you want to extend your battery life make sure you only switch on wifi and bluetooth and location services when you need them, and unless you need the higher speed data transfer you can switch the phone down to 2G mode without noticing any substantial loss of performance.

Talking of data, one of the things the iPhone still doesn't do is act as a portable hard drive, unlike its iPod cousins. A good way round this to use Dropbox, (http://www.dropbox.com) a free 2GB "cloud" based file hosting service. It comes in PC, Mac and iPhone flavours and sets up special folders which you save documents etc in. So long as you update a document in a dropbox folder, all your devices that have Dropbox on them will automatically update themselves. As the iPhone reads all the common PC/Microsoft file formats its a much more effective way of having your docs with you at all times, rather than resorting to emailing them to yourself and opening an attachment on the phone.

I put a screen protector on, although it's said it's not needed. I went for one from the Apple Store which was anti-glare with a matt finish. I can't remember who makes it but its in a green box if that helps! The matt finish is slightly silky to the touch and I think feels better to operate.

As for bluetooh, my car (Fiat Grande Punto) has something called "Blue&Me" built in and fully integrates with the car's audio system. My previous phone, HTC Touch HD never worked properly with it, despite it being WiMo and Blue&Me a Microsoft/Fiat collaboration. The 3GS works flawlessly with it, it paired almost instantly and downloaded the phone book into the car without any prompting, just as it's meant to. The HTC never came close. I've had headsets in the past, my current one is a Bluetrek, but Jabra make some good ones.

I've not had any coverage problems on Orange so far, apart from full 3G/HSDPA coverage in some places, but that was the same for my HTC, so it's something I'm used to.

Hope this helps.

Graham