When I arrived on Friday night, I switched the SIM cads from my old iPhone into the new one, and after five or six minutes of the activation process, I was able to make phone calls and use the device. I had to reset my voicemail password – which after resetting it, still doesn’t work (it worked once and hasn’t worked since. Not sure if that has to do with the iPhone’s unique ‘Visual Voicemail’ or not).

After completing a restore from my previous iPhone, all of my previous settings were successfully ported over (screen brightness, email, mobile me, etc.), but not with out their problems either. I had to delete and re-add two of my four email accounts (MobileMe and Exchange) because even with the correct settings, the iPhone couldn’t save the password. Instead, it would ask for the password for both every 30 or so seconds, followed by my voicemail password.
When I had finally gotten those issues taken care, I was free to actually use the phone. The camera is a dramatic improvement (I love taking the near macro shots!) and I was busy for most of the day taking pictures of the local plant life. One thing that immediately struck me is how quickly the battery bar started to shrink. I don’t know if it’s 3G, the tiny motor system in the camera, the GPS looking up my location every time I took a photo, or the bump up in the hardware (or all of these things), I found myself running to my charger.

Doing the same thing with my older phone (granted, with none of the previous technologies listed) would last until four or five in the afternoon.
But nothing really prepared me for what happened this morning. I had about half of a battery charge when I went to sleep last night (after 4-5 hours of casual usage), and when I woke up, the iPhone didn’t work. At all. I figured that the battery must have been completely drained, so I plugged it in and wait for *20 minutes* until it had enough of a charge to start. When it did start, I got the following message in the attachment NoRestore.jpg followed with NoIMEI.png, and the iTunes error of the iTunesRestore image (only the iTunesRestore image is mine, the rest were from a Google search).

Although this issue seems to be pretty common through out the far reaches of the internet, I’ve never encountered it before, and it sure takes away from the Apple experience . If you know of any issues like this or solutions, let me know. I am going to go ahead and follow the Apple knowledge base and iTunes prompts in hopes to get it going again. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
After restoring 4 different times, the phone either can’t or won’t function. I’ve checked the knowledge base regarding the issue and error code associated with attached pictures, but to no avail. I put the SIM card back into my old iPhone and it works like I never took it out. I really have no idea what I am going to do at this point other than stop by the Apple Store as soon as I can.