Mac

Cliffy B used one onstage today to demo Gears.

This also happened to me. I stuck it out and eventually they let me have the right price because I was an original iphone owner.

This was the worst retail experience I have ever had, and it was all AT&T's fault. I arrived at the Apple Store at 5:30 and was about 45th in line. The store was in a mall and the transition inside was flawless. As they let us in at 8am, things rapidly disintegrated. After 6+ calls to at&t and 4 and a half hours later, I finally walked out with a 3g.

Here's what I learned while the super professional Apple staff worked tirelessly to fix my problems. go to an AT&T store (i never thought I'd say this) instead if you are upgrading, have any sort of discount on your plan, or anticipate any kind of trouble with your account. And I mean any. I nearly lost my number of ten years, and the rep had to make 1 call to ATT for every one I made to correct ridiculous problems like having to pay for a bill that wasn't due for 2 weeks, phantom upgrade eligibility problems, and the impossibility of signing up for the plan I wanted. Even though I now hate AT&T for screwing up the fantastic process of buying the first gen iphone, I have to admit they were able to correct all of these phantom problems quickly.

Which leads me to my last point. I feel like there is something fishy going on in the apple/att relationship. Every single CSR asked me if I was calling from an ATT store, and most of the massive problems I saw stemmed from people who previously had iphones. The new customers sailed through fairly easily. It really felt like at&t was trying to steer customers to their stores by erecting fake hurdles to entry. Maybe I'm just exhausted and paranoid, but others agreed. the other interesting thing i learned that summed up the whole process for me? Every time something goes wrong in the two stage activation process, the phone in question is essentially bricked before it even leaves the box and the store has to return them to the warehouse. What a ridiculous waste of time. Again, all AT&T's fault.

Second on the review request. Also, what's the resolution on the screens? In fact, it would be great if you guys could do a comparison chart of the two phones, so we could pick the better phone/deal.

Thanks in advance.