Last Updated: 13-02-2013 – Patch version 6.1
Just last week when Maxis announced that they would be releasing the new iPhone 5 (new by so-called Malaysian standards), I was ecstatic and I quickly signed up my interest on their website. What I didn’t expect that the sign-up rate was so great (30,000 sign ups) that Maxis closed it down the following day.
When I was confirmed that I would be eligible to get the iPhone 5, I was quite happy to state that I would line up for the first time in my life to get the iPhone 5 on the launch night. This meant that I would need to start queuing up at night and await for the official launch at 12 midnight 15th December. I guess another excuse I wanted was to get interviewed by my friend Melissa who was a TV presenter at NTV7. Talk about ulterior motives.
The night arrived and I was extremely excited. I was definitely lacking sleep as I had to wake up early for an 8am teleconference call, run around KL for meetings and then finally back to PJ to collect my car from the service center. After taking a short nap from 8pm-9pm, I headed to CAPSQUARE and started queuing at 10pm. That was a bad idea because I was already greeted by hundreds of other people.
It was a good thing that Maxis gave out free donuts and apples as well as hot milo, white coffee and water to the folks queuing up. After queueing for about 2 hours, I managed to get my few seconds of fame on NTV7. After watching it, I think I sounded like a crazed geek (prior to my interview, they also interviewed the guy who was first in queue who had started lining up since 10am that day and it was also his birthday).
So to cut the long story short, it took me over 4 hours to queue up and get my phone and finally back at home into bed.
Now after having lived with the iPhone 5 for the past couple of days, here are some of the things I loved about it as well as the things that I hate about it.
Love:
- It’s beautiful form factor
- How light the phone is (comparing with my current iPhone 4)
- How fast it is and how apps respond so quickly
- The extra space on the screen (being able to see more icons on the 1st screen)
Hate:
- Battery life. In short, it sucks! Sucks battery juice that is. I have to charge it at least up to twice a day. Lots of complaints about it here at the Apple forums (here, here, here and here). With the iOS 6.1 update as well as trying out several tips such as deleting general settings and network settings, the battery life has improved but I still have to charge my iPhone twice a day (pre 6.1 I used to charge around 1pm and post 6.1, I usually charge around 4pm).
- Maps, still always an issue and I know Apple is in the midst of getting it fixed. Until they do, it still sucks.
- Having to use the new lightning connector (the cable is RM69 whilst the adapter is >RM100). Now I have two set of cables lying around and to carry around, one for my iPad and one for the iPhone.
There were some issues regarding the phone as well but it seemed more from a carrier perspective. Here are some of the issues that has been reported.
- Able to make calls but not able to receive them (Maxis issue which has now been resolved)
- Showing wrong data usage and data available for each user (affecting iValue 2 users)
- Losing 3G, Edge and GPRS signal and not recovering back from it again. Post iOS 6.1 patch, this issue seemed to have started up again. Several folks mentioned it was a Maxis problem but it does occur for other networks as well. A tip which I followed was to reset my iPhone’s Network Settings and it did manage to resolve it.
I will definitely update this post as I go along. At the time of writing, these love hate relationship points were based on the iPhone 5 running on iOS 6.0.1. There is a new patch that was just released but I haven’t tried it out yet.
If you know of any other issues, do post it here in the comments section and I shall add it up.
Updates – 13-02-2013 (iOS 6.1)
- Battery life has improved a little bit (lasts around 2-3 hours longer)
- Dropping of 3G signal seem to have reappeared but now it doesn’t happen anymore. Some people have reported that Maxis was upgrading their network hence the cause of it but I followed a tip which was to reset the phone’s network settings and it did seem to work.
Updates – 21-12-2012 (iOS 6.0.2)
- Cases have been reported that the new patch does indeed drain the iPhone 5’s battery life. Read in a couple of forums including the Apple Support forums and found that one of the solutions is to reset your phone settings, Settings>General>Reset> Reset All Settings
- This does not wipe out your media and data
- Currently testing this method now and so far, after almost 2 hours, I have only used 6% of battery. This is with service locations on for certain apps, mails set to fetch, wifi and bluetooth on.
