A couple of months ago I bought an Apple iPhone 3GS 16Gb. It is my first iPhone, and also my first smart phone. I was tempted by the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G, but was put out by some key feature omissions, notably lack of MMS and voice dialling.
The iPhone is immaculately presented in a surprisingly small, well designed box. The contents comprise the iPhone, wired headphones with microphone, a short USB charging cable and a charger. The chunky instruction manual that seems to come with every other phone on the market is notably absent; there is just a concise quick start leaflet. As always with an Apple product, EVERYTHING is meticulously designed to the same high standard. The charger is very discrete and is no bigger then a standard 13amp plug, the USB cable has incredibly small connectors at either end, and the trademark white earphones have a strangely tangle resistant cable. This attention to detail is carried throughout the hardware and software design.
Externally the handset looks identical to the iPhone 3G. Apparently, the only key change is that the 3GS has an invisible oil repellent coating on the screen. I was sceptical, but was surprised to discover it works incredibly well. Finger prints and smudges still accumulate on the screen, but a single rub on the sleeve will remove them all completely (the only exception being . The handset design is fantastic, with the huge screen taking up most of the front, a polished metal surround and a plastic back. The size is little on the large side to accommodate that monster screen, but the tapering edge design makes it very comfortable to hold and use. The phone is really well put together, with no creaks or squeaks. Its early days, but I suspect that the handset will be extremely durable. The screen is very well protected with optical-quality glass which has yet to pick up even a single scratch. This is in stark contrast to my experience with the cheap plastic displays used on my previous phones.
As good as it is, the looks and design of the iPhone handset pale into near insignificance when
compared to the superb software. There are plenty of good looking feature rich phones about these days, what separates the iPhone from the rest is not the hardware, its the software. There is a good reason why there is no instruction manual in the box; put simply, its not needed. From the moment you first switch it on (it can be used straight out the box as it is supplied charged), all of the iPhones features are intuitively accessible using touch screen controls. Gestures such as taps, swipes and two fingered pinching translate to selection, scrolling, selection, and zooming etc to allow access to all of the devices functions. Not everyone likes the touch screen keyboard, but I found it fast and easy to type on, especially in landscape mode. Those in doubt should at least give it a try...
Its very easy to set the iPhone up, with most setting easily accessed in the "settings" program There is a general absence deeply nested click heavy menus, acronymns,and jargon that seem to be standard fit on most other phones settings. Ringtone junkies will be a bit disappointed at the meagre selection supplied though. They are all of excellent quality, its just that there really aren't that many of them.
The pre-installed suite of Apple software is comprehensive and well featured. Stand-outs for me are the Maps and Safari applications, but Mail, iPod and Voice Memos are great too. However, its the 3rd party applications available from Apples App Store that are the big talking point. The quality of many titles is incredible, and often at ridiculously low prices, and even free in many cases.
With the iPhone offering so much its easier to overlook its key function as a phone. In this respect its better then any other phone I have ever used. Call quality is good, contacts are very easy to find and call, and the phone offers multiple phone books to easily separate work and home contacts. I've heard that the iPhone phone features were not particularly great, but to be honest everything is extremely polished and I can't find anything missing.
The new voice control features are impressive. You simply hold down the home button for a few seconds the say "call John". If John has more then one number, a voice asks which of them you want to call, to which you can then say "mobile", for example. Voice controls can also control music, so saying "play U2" starts playing tracks by U2. Accuracy is good, though not flawless. Voice control with a Bluetooth headset, missing in the iPhone 3.0 software that shipped with the device, has thankfully just been added with the newly available and free iPhone 3.1 software.
The iPhone 3GS comes with the iPhone 3.0 OS preinstalled. This adds numerous features (including cut and paste, MMS, system wide search, and voice memos) to the old iPhone 2.0 OS. What's particularly impressive is that this new software is available free for ALL iPhones (including the 2 year old original), not just the 3GS. This means that the iPhone actually gets better over time. Version 3.1 has just been released This adds a bunch of new features including the Bluetooth headset voice controls mentioned above . How many other phones are this well supported?
The S of 3GS stands for speed. Put simply, the iphone 3GS is incredibly quick. All of the supplied applications launch instantly. Even the bigger games take only a few seconds to launch. Apple don't bore us with processor speed or RAM figures that tend to bear little or no resemblance to real-world performance, instead saying that its 2x quicker then the old iPhone 3G. This makes everything feel very responsive indeed. From what I can gather the graphics performance is quicker again; more like 4x that of the 3G, which will be particularly useful for 3D gaming.
The 3GS has a 3MP autofocus camera which takes good clean images, and very good movies. Other phones boast considerably higher specs then this, but picture quality is generally no better. In a mobile handset anything much above 3MP wont really increse the image quality, as the image sensor and lens are too small. After all, there is a good reason why shots taken on an SLR are always better then those taken on a compact. Its a one click job to send images via MMS and email, or uploading video to YouTube. Personally I would rather the handset used a physical button for taking photos, and you do need to make sure that you click the subject on screen to ensure that focus and exposure are correct.
The syncing process with my Apple Macbook is seamless. It took a few minutes to set up exactly what gets copied from my mac to the iPhone. In my case its all contacts, numerous music playlists, several TV shows, and my most recent 10 photo albums. After that it all just works; you just plug it in and everything syncs automatically. Every time you sync a full back-up of your iPhone, including all settings, contacts, apps etc, is saved onto your computer automatically. This can be used to setup a new iPhone if yours gets lost, stolen, broken or (next year!) upgraded. It can also be used to reset your iPhone if something goes wrong. No more lost numbers if your phone goes AWOL!
Battery life is a bit of a mixed bag to be honest, and is easily the weakest aspect of the product overall. If you use it like a normal mobile phone; making and receiving a few calls a day, sending a few texts and doing a few minutes browsing the internet over Wi-Fi then the battery will probably last 3 or 4 days. The problem is that you will want to do much more then this, as the it is so versatile and capable. The reality is that heavy use, especially with any 3G access or GPS use, will probably give a days use, with slightly more moderate use will giving you a couple of days. Listening to music or watching movies gives an impressive 30 and 10 hours respectively. If you are using GPS apps, then you may struggle to get more then just a couple of hours. Overall I think that these figures are acceptable, though an improvement would be very welcome. It is rather telling that I have already bought a second USB cable to charge the phone at work, and may buy a cheap car charger and external battery in future...
The iPhone cost me £440 on O2 pay-as-you-go. If you look at the iPhone as just a mobile phone purchase then this is seriously steep. However, if you consider that you are effectively buying is a pocket computer, video ipod, quality games console and phone in a single box then it starts to look much more fairly priced. If you then factor in the free 12 month 3G internet bolt-on that O2 bundle that would normally cost £10 a month then things start to look fairly reasonable. You can also be confident that this time next year the resale value on ebay will be very solid indeed, something that you are unlikely to be able to say about most other mobiles out there. The old iPhone 3G is still available for £100 less, or the 32Gb iPhone 3GS for £100 more. I don't really need the additional storage of the 3GS 32Gb, and the additional storage, speed and features of the 16Gb 3GS over the original 3G make it easily worth the extra £100.
Apple have really hit the bulls eye with the iPhone 3GS. Comparing it with my old Nokia and SE phones is like comparing an Audi A4 with a horse and cart; its a revolution and then some. It is versatile and powerful, yet highly intuitive and exceptionally easy to use. The price tag is high, but the value for money is excellent. Software and hardware alike are highly polished, and attention to detail is evident everywhere you look. Battery life is somewhat dissapointing, but its the only major weakness I have found. The 3GS is a product that not only lives up to, but actually beats the hype.
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Apple iPhone 3G S * 3 mega-pixel camera with auto focus, auto white balance, and auto more
exposure. Doubles as a VGA video recorder at 30fps w/ audio * Voice control, aka voice recognition * Built in compass * Improved battery life * 16GB/32GB Internal Memory In its official material, Apple states, "Everything you do on iPhone 3G S is up to 2x faster and more responsive than iPhone 3G. "The company also claims that "updated 3D graphics deliver an incredible gaming experience." Technical specs about the improved graphics capabilities are one of the few details that have not yet been released The iPhone 3GS will feature 256MB of RAM and a whooping 600 MHz processor. Previous versions of the iPhones that came to market included 128MB of RAM and a 412MHz processor. The added RAM alone will make a huge difference in speed and should allow larger applications run on the device. This is a great follow up to Apple's already very popular iPhone 3G. The new 3GS (S=Speed) is a much faster and improved version of the iPhone 3G
Advantages: great features and design, easy to use Disadvantages: very fragile, scratches easily. no way of opening phone. too fragile can brake so easily.
Sep 10th, 2009
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