[This is a joint review between  Dan and Doug.  Dan's comments are in normal font and Doug's are in bold italics.]

I’m liking a whole lot about the iPhone 3G I picked up the other day. It feels good in my hand and, even though it is a bit thicker, the curved sides make it feel smaller and lighter. I am liking the 3g speed a lot more than I expected. While home and work have WiFi, the 3G speeds make a much bigger difference than I expected when I am out and about. I’m pleasantly surprised how common 3G is in my area and those  speeds make a far bigger difference than I expected when using my iPhone for browsing or updating RSS feeds. I am especially liking the increased cellular signal strength. On my Gen1 iPhone I was lucky to get one bar when I am home, while my iPhone 3G gets 2-3 everywhere. Because of the increased signal I can even live with the cheap, easily scratched, plastic back. (Thank goodness for Invisible Shields!)
I don’t have the iPhone, but I do have the iPod Touch.  And since many of the applications for the iTouch involve Cloud computing or utilizing data stored online, I find myself frequently connected to the Internet via Wifi.

Thanks to the new firmware, my iPhone 3G is pretty stable. I’m finding myself having very few crashes and far fewer lockups then I did when I was using my Gen1 iPhone with the 2.0 firmware. Yup, I like almost everything about my new iPhone. “Almost” but not “everything”… The battery life is horrible. I need to be able to rely on phone to work when I need it and the battery life… well the battery life scares me. It is lousy. It is weak. Horrific. A shanda. It makes me want to throw the phone out the window.

The battery on the iTouch is not nearly that bad.  Since I do not have to contend with a phone or 3G signals, I have found that I get some pretty good use from a single charge.  Still, using Wifi for everything from checking email to syncing my RSS feeds, weather, todo lists and more, can also be trouble for a battery.

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