I got my iPhone 4 today, which is a week earlier than originally expected.
Recap: I pre-ordered on June 15th at 7:00 pm online. The initial ship date was July 2nd.
Shipment Travel History
Jun 29, 2010 10:09 AM
Delivered
Jun 24, 2010 5:16 PM
Picked up
SHENZHEN CN
Package received after FedEx cutoff
Jun 24, 2010 1:54 AM
Shipment information sent to FedEx
Well, my iPhone 4 left China on the 24th and now has arrived in Anchorage, AK today. According to FedEx tracking information my iPhone 4 is still due to be delivered by the 29th, although on apple.com it states the 30th.
This will be a greater change for me than most since I’m upgrading from an 8G iPhone 3G not a S model.
I got an email with tracking number showing that my iPhone 4 has shipped TODAY.
I placed my order early evening on June 15th with Apple and my confirmation stated that my iPhone 4 would ship by July 2nd with an arrival between the 6th to 8th. I had read that some iPhones had shipped early. Since then I have been checking multiple times a day to see if my ship date got moved up. It did. So basically, I will get my iPhone 4 a week earlier than expected.
Apple handled the iPhone 4 ordering excellently. They gave a reasonable initial ship date in order to cover their demand. Once things were sorted out and initial exceptions were being realized Apple SHORTENED the ship date. This of course make customer happy. Not like other vendors that cancelled confirmed orders and increased ship time. This demonstrates that Apple does know how to judge demand with a new product. Having good balance between customer expectations and actual quantity to manufacture is difficult and risky.
I upgraded 2 products to the new OS, my 2G iPod Touch 32G and 3G iPhone 8G.
First was my iPod Touch. I synced it with iTunes 9.2 and initially iTunes stated that the OS was up-to-date. After pressing the check for update button I was then asked if I wanted to upgrade to iOS4. I selected yes. First iTunes downloaded the update then asked me if I wanted to install, yes of course. iTunes backed-up my Ipod Touch then installed the new OS. Then restored my settings from the back-up. This process took 90 minutes. After it was done my iPod Touch was not longer connected to iTunes and iTunes was frozen. I had to force quit iTunes in order to get things back up again. Before re-syncing with iTunes I checked out the operation of the iPod Touch. Everything appears to be working as before. The new Mail app is much better with the choice of handling multiple email accounts.
Next I upgraded my iPhone 3G (no S). Once connected iTunes 9.2 immediately told me that a new OS was available. I selected yes to all appropriate menus. First iTunes downloaded iOS4, next backed-up my iPhone 3G, installed new OS, then finally restored my settings from the back-up. Same process as my 2G iPod Touch. Except for the time. The iPhone upgrade took over 3 hours. I had the same frozen iTunes after all was done making me force quit iTunes again. My Phone 3G appears to be working as expected. No problems. I really do like the new Mail app. I have not tried using folders yet.
As for battery life , maybe a little more. The current battery life before re-charge seems to be very low to me. Starting with a full charge in the morning, I check email and read news on a break at work thats about 15 minutes. Then on lunch I check email again and read more news and sometimes play a game, that lasts about 30-45 minutes. When I get home and check battery life I am down to less than a quarter of life left. Basically I get about 2 hours top between battery re-charge cycles. That seems to me to be way to low. SInce I carry multiple battery rechargers for back-up when I am way from home I am not concern yet. Of course I will be getting a new iPhone 4 next week. We will see how that goes.
I am currently running WordPress 3.0 using the K2 theme nightly version 1.1 r1105. When I previewed the theme first the format was not showing up correctly. I had to re-select ‘Use K2 Styling’ in order for the site to be displayed correctly. I only mention this because on two other sites with a different hosts I did not have to do this. Strange – no matter everything is working.
Also, I had to re-select ‘Header Menu Home tab’ selection of Custom and re-enter ‘Custom Home tab’ name: Start under the K2 Options tab.
I have never been able to use the automatic update feature for WordPress or plugins with the host of this site. I did some research on the host’s forum and on the wordpress.org forum but never found anything that could help. I just did the manual upgrade in the past. It only takes a few minutes.
I decided to finally figure out the issue. I found a few old files that were causing problems. After deleting them everything seemed to work as expected. I upgraded from WordPress 2.9.2 to version 3.0 with no problem automatically after de-activating all of my plugins.
Then I started to upgrade some plugins, 7. The first few upgraded automatically just fine, but by the 4th my blog got stuck in maintenance mode for over 15 minutes. That seemed a bit long to me. I checked my site and tried to return to my admin page and all I got was –
Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.
After a quick Google search of ‘wordpress stuck in maintenance mode’, I found the answer on the wordpress.org forum.
The answer – looked for a file called .maintentance (dot maintenance). Once deleted everything came back.
This issue was a bit scary at first. Before I freak out and sent emails/phone calls to my host I always search major problems in Google or appropriate forum for an answer.
Since I was awake at 1:30 AM June 15th, I decided to checkout the Apple Store website. At first I was not thinking about pre-ordering an iPhone 4, I was actually checking if there were any iPod classics available on the refurbished site. Well, the Apple Store was down for maintenance.
After that I thought I would check with AT&T wireless website about upgrading information for the iPhone 4. The iPhone specific page loads with a big iPhone 4 ad with an pre-order select button. Pressing the button takes to a log-on screen for your account for upgrading. I entered required information. The response tells me that I am eligible NOW to upgrade my iPhone 3G (No S). Until recently I was due to be eligible on 21 June. Next page fails. There was a warning that AT&T is unable to process my inquiry. So that was that off to bed.
Next try, 7:30 AM. Same thing with both Apple and AT&T. Off to work.
3rd try, 7:00 PM. AT&T same response still. Lucky for me the Apple Store is up and running. I selected iPhone 4 32G pre-order and checked the appropriate upgrade path. Next Apple checked my AT&T eligibility. Information came back showing my current AT&T phone, messaging and data plans with an option to keep current ones or change. I kept old plan for now.
Next step was a choice on iPhone 4 delivery method. Either ship to or in-store pick-up. The in-store pick-up option stated that there were no reservations available but I could go to my local store and get an iPhone 4 on a first come basis on June 24th. I had not chosen an actual local store at this point. That option was too iffy, especially since I would be at work until 6 PM. Who knows what in-store availability will be like the first weekend, probably not good.
I chose the ship to method. The page stated that the iPhone 4 will ship by July 2nd. Yes July 2nd. My confirmation reaffirms this and adds delivers by July 6th – 8th by standard shipping.
Hopefully these dates won’t be extended. This will give two weeks to read and here all the comments from those who got the iPhone 4 on the first day.
