iPhone 5s Day 1: Audibles and Space Gray Friday

I have officially dubbed today "Space Gray Friday." The significance should be obvious, but in case you live under an Android rock, I bought the 32 GB Space Gray iPhone 5s. Before we get into the unveiling, we'll start off with the audible.

My wife has been pestering me most of this past week to consent to a weekend trip to Asheville, NC since my oldest is out of school today and Monday. She even went so far as to reenact one of my youngest son's fits, which I wish I would have videotaped as blackmail evidence for use at a later date. I finally relented yesterday afternoon, only to realize that my phone and the accessories were coming today. So my audible was with UPS. They have this new service called UPS My Choice. You basically sign up for free, and if their system detects a package with your name and address, it will give you alerts about the shipment, and give you a few options (most at an additional cost) for rerouting the package. I logged on to the My Choice site, and chose the option to have the packages held at the distribution center so that I could pick it up. The distribution center just happens to be off of I-285N and I-85N, the direction we were going anyhow. I get to the UPS distribution center, and they had caught the box with the phone, but the one with the accessories was already on the truck and out for delivery. As the UPS lady pointed out, "at least you got the important one." Truer words, as they say.

So we get to Asheville, we hang out at the NC Arboretum, we go have a very tasty dinner at Salsa's Mexican Caribbean restaurant, we put the boys to bed, and I can finally get to the phone. So before I begin, I'll go over the two major changes, and a couple smaller changes:

I am moving from Sprint to AT&T. My Sprint account was opened for me by my then girlfriend on December 18, 1998 as a Christmas present. Unlike most people, I've never had any real problems with Sprint, and they have always had the cheapest rate plans by far.The only reason I'm leaving is because my job will pay for my phone bill if I go to AT&T or Verizon. I hear Verizon's network is better, but I was tired of waiting for CDMA to be able to do voice and data simultaneously, so AT&T "Drop calls like it's hot" Wireless it is.

I am going from 3G to 4G. I remember going from 2G to 3G and how big of a jump that was. I'll see if this speed is as fast as the television commercials make it out to be.

I am going from iOS6 to iOS7. This one is probably not going to be that drastic, but I haven't updated my old phone because the resale value on eBay is higher if the phone still has iOS6, since it can be easily jailbroken. My 4s was also part of the first shipment of phones from Apple where the SIM card port is not carrier locked, so that should fetch a few extra dollars too. From the social media reaction, it appears people either love or hate iOS7 with very little in between. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

I am going from the 30-pin connector to the Lightning connector. Another minor change, but still a sticking point since I have several 30-pin connectors that have now gone the way of the dinosaur. I hear the Apple micro USB to Lightning adapter is very fragile, so I guess I just need to find some cheap Asian knockoffs to hold me over until someone makes a better adapter for micro USB cords, which I also have a ton of. A friend introduced me to these micro USB to 30 pin adapters, and I've already written the company asking when they plan on making Lightning ones. Still annoyed about Apple not using a standard connector, but obviously not annoyed enough to jump ship.

So let's do this thing! I of course take a few precautions. My iPhone 4s is still on iOS 6.1.3, and my iTunes 11.0.5.5. First thing was to take a full backup of the 4s with iTunes. Next was to copy the iTunes backup to another directory for safe keeping. Then I created a system restore point. I now felt comfortable updating iTunes to 11.1. The iCloud Control Panel also got updated from 2.1.2 to 3.0. So while that is going on, let's open the box:

Standard minimalist Apple box

Same presentation as my 4s

A little longer, a little thinner

Space Gray, unassuming, just what I wanted

I do like the earbud case. We'll test the earbuds out at a later date

Nothing shocking so far. I hate that it's longer, but apparently people are content walking around with bricks in their pockets. I am in the minority wanting something the size of my old Palm Pre. Enough with the small stuff, now time to turn this thing on:

She's multilingual, I like that in a woman. So I run through the setup screens to pick language, connect it to the wifi, and it's activation time. I'm kind of sad because this this means that my long term relationship with Sprint is at an end. I hit Next, answer a few questions, agree to the AT&T terms and conditions of giving up my first born child, and then it tells me I can't activate it because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. It tells me to connect the phone to iTunes to activate so I try that next. I have to reboot due to the new iTunes, but no biggie. I basically go through the same activation screens on iTunes for it to tell me that:

Due to the millions of douche bags who have bought iPhones this week, we can't activate the phone at this time. Stop whining about your first world problem of not being able to use the damn thing. We'll send you an email when it is activated.

Fair enough. It allows me to restore the phone from my backup, which fails. I start to panic a little bit, but apparently the second time is the charm and it restores the phone fine. I was just about to use it when iTunes notifies me that iOS 7.0.2 is already out. It appears someone took enough time out from watching porn to figure out how to bypass the lock code, and so we get yet another update.

It's now a little after midnight, so I think I'm going to let it finish this update, and I'll play with it some more tomorrow. This blog post is already an encyclopedia as it is...