I could throw my Xbox through a friggin' window right now

AS SEEN ON HPS: Friday I picked up the exceptional Call of Duty 6, a.k.a. Modern Warfare 2, for the Xbox 360 on the way home from work. I brought it home, put it in the Xbox...and it didn’t work. Tried it again, it didn’t work. Tried it again, it didn’t work. You get the picture.

Since I picked up Tiger 10 my Xbox has had a progressively harder time reading discs, to the point that I considered buying MW2 for the PlayStation 3, which is a well-made not-piece-of-crap. Also, it's quieter. Also, playing online is free. But most of my friends have Xboxes, and Xbox Live is just so good that I had to get it for Xbox. (And though I used to devote hours to the pursuit, I have a hard time just playing games by myself these days.)

Anyway, after several reboots, wiping down the brand-new disc (which didn't make any sense but hey, the machine told me to) and quickly slamming the drive door shut, the thing finally loaded, and I played some coop missions for a few hours. They're so awesome. The snowmobile races are sweet, but overall, the game just has this great intense pacing. It's so much fun. The first Modern Warfare was outstanding but I love this one quite a bit more.

My Internet has also been out for most of the weekend, so when I tried to play again Saturday night, I was already resigned to single player. It took even longer this time to get the stupid game to load, and several times it got to the initial Infinity Ward logo, which is progress, before quitting back to the dashboard anyway. It's obnoxious. I stuck with it because the game is that awesome, but come on. I mean, my Xbox has already been in for repairs once; why does something so awesome have to suck so badly?

A friend asked me over the weekend which is better, the Xbox or the PS3, and let me say: the PlayStation 3 hardware is so much better, it's not even funny. Not that it's all that superior graphically or anything; it just doesn't break constantly. Unfortunately, you can't play Halo on it. So you're kind of screwed either way. I just checked online and Microsoft is willing to fix my DVD drive for a mere $99.99, which is awful. The alternative is to drop $200 on a replacement. I'll probably try to fix it and then drop two bills on a new one.

I gotta say it now, better loud than too late

Pearl Jam’s ninth album, Backspacer, has been out for a month now but seems to get better every day. It’s a little under thirty-seven minutes of the band at its best.

Turns out the abbreviated running time, my biggest concern before hearing it, is a huge plus. The constraint seems to focus their efforts into a tight and wonderful whole. As on their last album, the entire disc feels coherent, but in this case it feels especially complete, too.

I love the energy of the album, which really takes on two tones: the sharp defiant rock of the first four songs, and the thoughtful persistence that starts with “Just Breathe”. Somehow the two styles complement one another: if you start cranking the first few songs, you won’t feel the need to turn it down when you hit the slower stuff, but if you jump straight into the second half, the same songs somehow feel much calmer. Personally I think I love the second half a little bit more. “Unthought Known” and “Speed of Sound” are the two songs with the highest play counts in my iTunes, if you don’t count “The Fixer”, which I got before the album came out. I really like “Amongst the Waves”, too.

The other awesome part of any Pearl Jam album is hearing it live. I missed their concerts (they finish their U.S. tour in Philly this week) but picked up the CDs of their first night in Seattle. It’s predictably incredible. You can catch a lot of it on YouTube. Really (music starts just before two minutes in). This album is great and I want to listen to it more the more I listen to it. People mock me some times for loving such an old band, but Backspacer proves Pearl Jam is as good as ever.

Why Transformers 2 was so horrible (Spoiler Alert!)

I’ve had two conversations lately about Transformers 2, easily the worst Transformers movie since the animated original. The DVD just came out and one of my friends saw it, and the other discussion took place when a girl complimented my Autobots T-shirt the other day. That’s right, baby! Instead of proposing, I launched into this diatribe.

Transformers: The Movie, not to be confused with Transformers, was the animated film that, in 1986, destroyed my childhood. Why? Because they killed all the freaking Autobots to make way for a new line of toys. (They killed a bunch of Decepticons, too, but honestly, who cares? The Decepticon logo is cool. The concept of Decepticons is cool. But they’re either whiny (Starscream), weak leaders (Megatron) or really unoriginal (Thundercracker, Skywarp, etc.). Soundwave is awesome and I still try to do his voice, but overall it’s a weak crop.)

Anyway, the worst death was Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots and a red-white-and-blue symbol of all that was good in the Cold War ’80s. Optimus Prime was like the John Elway of my childhood. Actually John Elway was the John Elway of my childhood, so call him more of a Robot John Elway, which sounds awesome and like he could probably play forever. Like I was saying, anyway, they just up and killed Prime and broke my heart but good. Well, actually it didn’t break my heart at all, I just thought it made the movie suck. When you’re a kid, no one cares if you spoil the movie, and by the time we got around to renting it I already knew a) Optimus was gonna die and b) Ultra Magnus was gonna cuss. But why kill O-Prime? He’s the hero. Does Peter Parker die during the opening scene of Spider-Man 3? Lots of people in my generation look back on this movie fondly and all of them are, without exception, complete idiots. The movie’s garbage, I hate the kids’ movie storyline about some brash young pup (Hot Rod) becoming the next leader, and anyone who disagrees with me is a communist.

Well, I’m already tired of building up to this pile of suck, so for those of you I warned never to see 2, here’s the problem with it: they killed Optimus again. Seriously. Halfway through the movie he finds himself in a huge forest battle with a bunch of Decepticons, and he’s rocking, and beating the crap out of evil space robots left and right. And then one of them stabs him through the back and he’s dead. That’s it.

Well, that’s not it, because they keep dropping hints that only a Prime can defeat this enemy, and for some reason they keep alluding to the location of Optimus’ body, and eventually you’re like, hmmm, I wonder if he comes back to life. Well, I’d really love to spoil it for you, and he does come back. Stupid! Stupid! Don’t make me sit there shaking in rage for several minutes, wondering how I could have been so foolish as to waste my money on a ticket.

Also, like how Mike Shanahan would script the first fifteen plays of any Broncos game, it feels like Michael Bay scripts the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then lets his cast of wunderkinds take over. There are tons of lame scenes and characters, but really the death of Optimus is all you need to know about to avoid this forever.

Notes on earlier posts

I thought it might be worth following up on a few things.

1. Microsoft’s browser ballot screen proposal still isn’t enough for Opera, who complained in July that having icons on the ballot screen (specifically Internet Explorer’s familiar blue “e”) would be too much of an advantage for Microsoft. That’s right, icons. They also suggested Microsoft offer the ballot screen (which is Europe-only) to Windows users across the world, which ain’t gonna happen.

I’m starting to think Microsoft bent over so far backwards just to show the world what a whiny bunch of babies their competition can be.

2. I said in my iPhone post that AT&T had not given me a discount on my first bill; I’ve since corrected the post, but it took me a while to get to it. They did give me my discount on the first month, it’s just that they also charged me an upgrade fee of eighteen bucks that I had no idea was coming. Oh, well. Just got another bill and it’s all good.

The one time I needed my phone to last a whole day, it let me down, running down to seven percent after 3:21 of usage. This was a day when my sister made a surprise visit to town and I drove down to my parents’ house late that evening. Something weird was going on because even while just listening to the iPod app that day I could practically watch the battery life drop in real time. (Seriously, every minute or two I’d look and a percentage point was gone.) Before that day and since that day it’s been fine, and overall despite my concerns the battery has been good enough, but I figured this warrants mentioning.

3. Microsoft told a reporter that the Zune HD will be the only model of Zune going forward. This means that the 16 and 32-gig models of the slick new touchscreen device will soon be the only options for Zune buyers, though the older models are still available while supplies last.

While I said I was looking forward to the Zune HD, I was also hoping to get a refreshed hard drive model. The current 120-gig Zune has a large 3.2-inch display and plenty of capacity. I figure if I’m ever going to spring for a music subscription, I’ll want as much space as I can get, right? Unfortunately I’m not blown away by the battery life (30 hours of music is solid, but four hours of video isn’t great). The iPod classic, on the other hand, is listed at 36/6, but iLounge got an amazing 42:29/7:59 out of it last year. So I was hoping a new Zune 160 or something would provide space and last longer.

Am I ever going to watch four hours of video in one day on an mp3 player? Probably not. Still, it seems that the device I was hoping for is not going to exist.

4. I was playing Batman: Arkham Asylum the other night and some parts were getting pretty tedious. I can’t really say what they were without giving away plot points. I still think it’s an awesome game and highliy recommend it, it’s just not as perfect as I was gushing earlier.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is awesome

I’m only 36% of the way in, but so far, Batman: Arkham Asylum is the best single-player video game I’ve played in years. It’s brilliant, it’s fun, and it’s creepy. The game has excellent pacing, good graphics, and awesome sound, and it makes for an incredibly immersive and addictive game. And I’ve been losing sleep because I can’t stop playing it.

The game takes place, predictably, at Arkham Aslyum, which in this game is located on an island. This simple design decision gives the game focus: while you acquire plenty of gadgets, you’re never driving the Batmobile or flying the Batwing (so far, at least). Instead you’re usually moving through a bunch of rooms and a limited set of outdoor areas, trying to sneak around and, when necessary, kick a ton of butt. I love stealth-action games, like Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, and I’m really enjoying the Batman twist on one. You don’t merely sneak around; you can also break up a party of Joker henchmen and take them all out with brute force. You are Batman, after all. The game’s combat system is very fun; it’s just complicated enough that there’s variety, but not so hard that the learning curve hurts the game. It captures the enviable feeling of being Batman. When in rooms full of enemies, a view toggle lets you see their heart rates and emotional states. It is so much fun to go into a room and take guys out, one by one, as the rest of their group becomes progressively more terrified. Nothing beats it. The fighting is so much fun that I’m almost disappointed when I head into a room or hallway and no one is in there waiting for me, because I want the challenge. I haven’t felt that way about a game in years.

Of course, it’s a bit tougher when the bad guys are carrying machine guns; only a couple hits then and you’re out. (And then the Joker or some other villian comes on screen and taunts you.) Fortunately you don’t have to replay large sections of the game over and over; you usually come back in the same room (or just about to enter it) so you can immediately try again. It’s excellent. One nitpick: I played through a tough area one night with a ton of guys you have to fight in it, as well as occasionally-electrified floors. Took me a few tries to figure it out. I waited for what I thought was the Autosave icon before turning off the system, then returned the next day to find my game saved right before the room, meaning I’d lost that victory. I didn’t mind playing it again because the game is a blast, but that shouldn’t have happened.

Seriously, it’s great. I am a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid series and have been looking forward to playing Metal Gear Solid 4 literally for years. MGS4 came in the mail last week the day before Batman did. I still haven’t played it.

Batman has a Teen rating sort of similar to The Dark Knight’s PG-13; it sounds tame, perhaps, but it’s not for kids or even some teenagers. You’ll find and hear recordings of interviews with asylum inmates (Batman villians), and hearing the Joker talk trash can be kind of disturbing. It’s fun when he starts cracking on his own goons when they’re afraid of you, though.

The game is out for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and if you own either system, you owe it to yourself to get this game. The PS3 version lets you play as the Joker, rather than just Batman, in a challenge/practice mode, which I didn’t find to be all that compelling in a few minutes of trying it. The game also comes out for PCs later this month. I love it. Go buy it.

How I choose to feel is how I am: September is going to rock

September 2009 should feel like one giant party. At least for me. Check out all the awesome stuff to be excited about:

The new, slim PlayStation 3 is officially launched.

Let there be choice! Last week Sony announced a new, slimmer model of the PlayStation 3, which comes with a 120 GB hard drive and retails for $300. It’s already in some stores, but should be out everywhere on the first of the month.

This is fabulous news for anyone who likes video games as much as I do. So far this generation, there has been exactly one choice for the “adult” gamer: the Xbox 360. The PS3, which launched at an unfathomable $600, was just too expensive, and the Wii…well, we all know what happens to Wii players when they turn fourteen. The 360 has a ridiculously good online system (Xbox Live) which is worth every penny of the five thousand they charge you a year for it and, of course, it’s the only system with Halo. It’s awesome. Too bad the hardware is an unreliable piece of crap. Mine, already sent in and repaired once by Microsoft, is starting to give me error messages while starting games, and I fear it’s not long for this world.

The new slim PS3 and its price-cut predecessor change the balance of power. While Microsoft is dropping the price of its 120-gig system to match Sony’s, the PS3 plays many of the same games, but adds  an awesome Blu-Ray player and free online play. Plus it’s built up a solid list of exclusives, like Metal Gear Solid 4. As much as I love the Xbox, if you’re not a Halo nut, it’s now much harder to recommend. As for the Wii, its $250 price tag has now gone from “kind of shocking” to “priced by a supervillian”, and its two-piece controllers cost an insane sixty bucks. It’s totally a unique experience, for sure, but it’s a ripoff. You can’t even watch a DVD on it. Sony’s powerhouse system, which they were losing money on even when it was six hundo, does so much more.

Football’s back!

I’m most excited for the NFL, which kicks off on Thursday the 10th with the Tennessee Titans on the road against the Pittsburgh Steelers. My beloved Denver Broncos will be awful this year, but at least they were considerate enough to end the suspense months ago. I’ll consider every win this year a gift and a blessing.

It’s fine, though, because I’m ready to go back to being a fan of the whole league. I’d been slipping out of the League’s loving embrace for a few years, and last year, after I “quit” Hole Punch Sports, I was completely burned out on sports in general. But something about this year has me excited. I don’t know if it’s the familiar faces in new places, like Brett Favre and Michael Vick, or the return of Tom Brady, or just the hole in my heart every time the sport has been out of my life too long, but I can’t wait to go nuts on the NFL this year.

There’s a hidden upside, too: last weekend, while choosing Madden teams with an older brother (this year’s Madden is great fun, by the way), we realized how many teams there are in the league we hate. It’s great to see your team win. But it’s almost as fun to see your enemies lose. And I don’t just mean the Raiders, but the Chiefs, the Chargers, the Manning brothers, the Cowboys, the other team from New York, the Jaguars, the unwilling ingestion of so many NFC East games, the Ravens…the list goes on and on. Maybe one of them will win the title this year, but I’ll rejoice when all the others falter.

And oh, by the way, there’s this little thing called college football, too. And this year, they’ve got Labor Day weekend all to themselves. What Mormon isn’t looking forward, one way or the other, to the opening week BYU-Oklahoma matchup?

New iPod Day, plus the Zune HD

Every September Apple announces its new iPod lineup for the holiday season. I love iPods and I love the day they come out. But this year I’m most excited that they’re getting some awesome-looking competition, namely Microsoft’s Zune HD.

The Zune HD is Microsoft’s answer to the iPod touch, which I don’t think all that highly of. So why am I excited? Well, the screen’s supposed to be great, it’s got a web browser, and the Zune platform actually has some cool features the iPod doesn’t, like the ability to sync wirelessly. The biggest reason I want a Zune, though, is the Zune Pass: a $14.99 monthly subscription service that lets you download all the songs you want from the Zune Marketplace. This is so cool. Think of a band you like; instantly start downloading their entire catalog. Like all music subscription services, if you stop playing the monthly fee, you can’t play your music anymore. Except the Zune Pass also lets you keep ten MP3s every month. So if you buy that much music anyway (especially if you buy exactly ten songs a month now), it’s an awesome bargain: only a few bucks more for unlimited songs. I really want to try this out.

New Pearl Jam album, Backspacer, comes out

September is already guaranteed to be awesome but I’m not close to done. Pearl Jam, my favorite band, is coming out with a new album, too, slated for release on Sunday the 20th. Target is their exclusive major retail partner, but the music will also be available in smaller stores and on iTunes. The promotion of the upcoming release has, to me, been executed perfectly. Slowly but surely they’ve been releasing things, like videos on YouTube, pictures from their concert tour, and their incredible first single, “The Fixer”. I’ve learned a lot of this from their feed on Twitter, which is perfect for stuff like this. If you like the group, you may enjoy a cool making-of video a friend steered me towards.

House (or your favorite show) returns

I can’t wait for House to come back on the air. If you like the show and watched last year, you might find this preview intriguing. If you don’t like spoilers (of last year), don’t watch it. I’m stoked to see how the new direction of the show works out.

But maybe you prefer, say, The Office. No worries; that’ll be back, too, on Thursday the 17th.

New Halo game!

The new Halo game, Halo 3: ODST, comes out Tuesday the 22nd, and it looks awesome. Originally conceived as an expansion of the original Halo 3, ODST adds a cool new multiplayer mode to the original Halo 3’s excellent online game, as well as a new campaign, where you play as a Marine, rather than the Master Chief. I am so excited for this. Halo games are usually good enough to last even if they were the only game you owned. Even if this one’s sort of a supplement, I can’t wait to spend a few more hours fighting through the Halo universe.

The Rockies’ stretch run

The Colorado Rockies have already had a pretty remarkable season since switching to new manager Jim Tracy. They’ve just lost their second in a row to the Dodgers, but look like a playoff team that could be heading for a 2007-like run.

My biggest regret in 2007 was not following the Rockies earlier, though I’m not sure I would have wanted to. This year’s team has been getting better and better for months and is revving up the bandwagon at a more palatable pace. I don’t know what will happen in the playoffs, but even if they miss out or lose in the first round, it’s great to have an awesome baseball team again.

So, see? September is going to rule.

The best gets (mostly) better: two weeks with the iPhone 3GS

So about, uh, two weeks ago, I picked up an iPhone 3GS at a local AT&T store. How insanely popular is this device? Well, I went to an AT&T store because I was still annoyed at being barred from entering an Apple Store on launch day when I wouldn’t agree in the mall corridor to buy the phone. Since the best I could do then was offer that I would probably buy it, but that I wanted to see it first, the kindly Store personnel and the security behind them would not let me pass. The whole thing was funny to me because cell phones are hardly the most expensive thing Apple sells; but I was told that even with these measures, there were 30-minute delays for the people inside who had already committed to purchasing the device. Good times.

AT&T gets a bad rap, and sometimes that’s deserved, but I was in and out of their store in moments. The whole purchasing process is kind of funny; they handed me my new phone, now active, but still with the plastic wrap clinging around it. I was told the data plan would activate on my phone within five minutes of purchase; I saw the “3G” appear on my screen before I even hit the door on my way out. I threw the phone (a white, 16-gig model) back in the box for the ride home. Since then, I’ve been putting it through its paces, deciding whether I want to keep it, and here’s what I’ve found:

The good

Headphone jack: My “old” phone was the O.G. iPhone, which has a standard-sized but recessed headphone jack. iPod headphones, with their tiny connectors, plug in easily, but many headphones won’t without an adaptor. I think I’ve bought about four of those adaptors. They’re annoying and easy to lose. No need for them now with the 3GS’ flush headphone jack. Plus, at work, I’m frequently testing audio connections, so being able to plug any mini cable into my phone is incredibly convenient.

3G: I might be nuts, but I could swear that the longer I’ve had my O.G., the worse AT&T’s normal voice network and EDGE data network (which is to say, not the 3G they’re pushing on newer models) have performed. In my wildest pre-purchase dreams, a 3G iPhone would switch seamlessly between the two depending on which gave me the best reception. And that’s exactly how it works. I almost always have three or more bars of reception, and I have yet to have a phone call where it was particularly difficult to understand the other person, something that happened from time to time on the O.G. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that a recent Times article scared me straight on talking while driving.) Phone calls over 3G seem to sound slightly clearer, but most of the improvement can be credited to having good signal strength more often. The phone even held up like a champ during a brutal argument I had on the walk in to work the other day, exactly the kind of talk where I would have had to “what?” a few times on the old phone.

And that’s not even touching on the data speeds offered over 3G, which freaking rock if you have a good signal. Hole Punch Sports loads in seconds. E-mail seems instant, and fast even with pictures attached. I now often find myself listening to the Pandora app in my car, and it’s honestly only a little slower than using Pandora on a desktop PC. It’s a very nice option to have. I was mostly satisfied with the EDGE speeds I was getting on the old phone, especially since I can use the faster Wi-Fi at home and work, but 3G is a nice bump.

Faster chips/more memory: The iPhone 3GS has a faster processor than its predecessor, and supposedly has twice as much RAM as Apple’s first two phones. It is a noticeable but small increase in responsiveness for the most part, but a few changes stand out. First, you can open multiple browser tabs in Safari and flip between them without the pages having to reload as often; they almost always had to reload when flipping through tabs on my old phone. Second, you can correct mistakes more quickly; if you accidentally hit the wrong app you can hit the home button and quit it almost instantly, which is lovely. And third, the keyboard lag I found myself battling more frequently with the iPhone OS 3.0 update on my old phone is pretty much gone. That said, I hope Apple can optimize the 3.0 firmware more for older phones because that lag’s annoying.

Camera: The still camera has one more megapixel (3 total) than older iPhones, but also adds an autofocus feature. You simply tap on the screen in the camera app on the object you want to focus on, and it adjusts. It also adjusts the white balance, which seems to have a bigger impact on many images. In any event, having already taken hundreds of pictures on my old iPhone, the improvement is very welcome. (I don’t have any samples to put up since I’m not sure people want random pictures of themselves on my blog, but you can find side-by-side examples of the improvement on many sites, including the fantastic iLounge.)

The camera also does video, at 640 by 480 resolution at 30 frames per second. The quality is pretty good, and the microphone picks up sound better than I expected. So far I’ve mostly just used it to make people around me really self-conscious.

Improved location stuff: The iPhone 3GS includes GPS, which Apple first introduced on the 3G. My first-generation iPhone could determine its location by triangulating from various wireless networks, and would generally give me a circle of a few blocks including my location. That was, honestly, almost always good enough, though while driving in unfamiliar locations a few times it lead to confusion. GPS is more accurate, natch, though while indoors once it showed me to be somewhere I wasn’t (though I was pretty close to there). The phone also includes a digital compass, and can rotate your Google Maps to face the direction in which you’re holding the phone. I navigated around Manhattan with my brother last summer just fine without this feature, though of course it’s better to have than not.

The same

There are many things which haven’t changed on the iPhone, but which are too awesome to ignore. My favorite feature is probably Visual Voicemail, which shows your voicemails in a list, labeled with either a phone number or the name of the caller, if you have the number in your contacts. You just tap a message to hear it, which beats calling in and dialing through menus by a country mile. I wish I’d had this a few years ago, when my church responsibilities meant I got a lot of calls and short voice messages from people I’d only need to speak to briefly.

The App Store, featured in countless commercials over the last year, still offers tens of thousands of programs. Most of my favorites just end up being information you could look up on the Web packaged more conveniently, like say the New York Times app, but I also like a few games and the option to download the Dictionary.com dictionary straight onto my phone.

Apple’s built-in programs, like Safari and Mail, are wonderful, but I’m also a fan and devout user of the unsung ones. I like the Notes app a lot and use it for everything from shopping lists to work reminders. The countdown timer on Clock is something I use everyday; certainly it beats racing across the apartment to shut off the oven timer. Calendar went from convenient and easy to downright indispensable once Google started offering free over-the-air syncing to Google Calendar. The threaded view for text messaging, which makes texting look more like an instant messaging window where the conversation goes back and forth, is a small bonus that I’d never want to do without. The iPod is of course outstanding, too; portable video is almost comfortable on the 3.5” screen.

Oh, and the one thing I adore about AT&T is having rollover minutes.

The bad

3G data plans: The original iPhone mandated a $20/month data plan when used on AT&T. That included unlimited web and data as well as 200 text messages (or five bucks worth). The 3G iPhones require a $30/month data plan than includes no texts. Particularly if you get a texting plan, you can see how things get more expensive in a hurry. I sort of dodge a bullet on this because I should get a discount through my work. Since AT&T didn’t offer plan discounts on the first-gen iPhone, I should only end up paying like two bucks more per month, though they didn’t apply the discount on my first bill (yes, I am working on this). [Correction: the discount was already on first bill, but so was a nearly-equivalent upgrade fee I didn't know I'd be paying.]

Battery life: One small improvement Apple made on the 3GS is the ability to turn on a battery percentage indicator, an option that has turned me into a neurotic mess. I’m constantly calculating in my mind that, if my last phone call took 12% of my battery, how much longer will my phone last? Yeah, I got issues.

Two features use up battery particularly quickly: video recording and 3G, especially 3G phone calls. Judging from the percentages I think I’d get three hours or so of talk time over a 3G network. I can remember talking once on my first-gen iPhone for three hours in a row and using maybe half the battery. As it is, I use my phone for a few calls and texts every day, plus a lot of data over Wi-Fi, which uses less power than cell network data. My old phone could often get seven or so hours of this kind of use without needing a charge, meaning I could use it a lot; the 3GS tends to last more like five or six hours. That may not sound like a huge difference, but it’s noticeable, and makes me less willing to rely on the device as an iPod and a phone, something I did frequently with my first gen. I have a nearly-dimensionless iPod nano that holds all my music, so this isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for me personally, but it makes the device a bit less cool. So far I have always made it through the day without recharging, though it has been close a couple times.

I would also say my first-gen’s battery was a champ while travelling a few times last year, though perhaps the 3GS would do similarly if I switch the 3G off. (Not sure, though, because I haven’t had the willpower to leave it off for a full day; it seems to do better without 3G, but not dramatically so.)

At home I get good reception either way, so I will probably just turn off 3G when I’m home or when I know I’m going to be on a long phone call and be fine in the long run. Of course, if you could swap the battery this would be no big deal, and I really wish you could, but you can’t.

Durability: One thing I don’t like about the iPhone is that it still feels just a touch too precious in your hand. When I got home from that AT&T store, I immediately applied a screen protector film and put my phone in a case.

My first-gen phone stood up to some abuse; I didn’t have a case or cover for months, and it was nearly spotless until one day I accidentally dropped it screen-first on a table corner and got a nice little scratch. Nothing ridiculous, but it is noticeable. The very next day it slipped out of my pocket onto the tile floor of my office and got a couple more scratches on it. That’s when I started using a screen protector and a case. I’ve gone through a couple screen protectors since but haven’t done any more damage to the screen. The 3GS has a new coating on the screen which is intended to prevent smudging from your fingers and face, but this is useless to me because I plan to have a protector on it at all times. I couldn’t even tell you what the new screen feels like.

Anyway, my first-gen never stopped working great, but the general feel of the iPhone (like the 3GS’s plastic shell and the non-removable battery) make you sort of hope to take care of it well enough to last you through your contract. You can shell out for an AppleCare extended warranty but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t cover losing or dropping your phone, so I didn’t bother.

So, those are my thoughts. Overall I think this is the best phone going, especially for me, so I’ll probably hang onto it, though I have another week and a half to do a return. I’ve been intrigued by many other phones lately, especially the Palm Pre and the HTC Hero, but so far nothing else has caught my eye quite like the iPhone, despite a few drawbacks.