Cnet iPhone review, 3GS, 32GB
April 14, 2010
by Kent German of Cnet (the article was written in 2009 and focuses on the US market)
Summary
The good: The iPhone 3GS finally adds common cell phone features like multimedia messaging, video recording, and voice dialing. It runs faster; its promised battery life is longer; and the multimedia quality continues to shine.
The bad: The iPhone 3GS’ call quality shows no improvements and the 3G signal reception remains uneven. We still don’t get Flash Lite, USB transfer and storage, or multitasking.
The bottom line: The iPhone 3GS doesn’t make the same grand leap that the iPhone 3G made from the first-generation model, but the latest Apple handset is still a compelling upgrade for some users. The iPhone 3GS is faster and we appreciate the new features and extended battery life, but call quality and 3G reception still need improvement.
Review
Three years after the first rumors of an Apple cell phone began to make the rounds, the iPhone continues to garner huge buzz, long lines, and a growing share of the cell phone market. And as we approach the second anniversary of the first model’s frenzied launch day, Apple drops the newest model in our laps. The iPhone 3GS, which will hit stores June 19, promises faster processing and network speeds, extended battery life, more memory, and additional features. It’s enough to get our attention, but not enough to get us completely excited.
In many ways, the iPhone 3GS delivers on its promises. The battery, which could sometimes deplete in less than a day on the iPhone 3G, lasted longer in our preliminary tests, and the phone’s software ran noticeably faster. Yet, we still have some concerns. A faster AT&T 3G network isn’t going to happen overnight, and some features, like tethering and multimedia messaging, aren’t scheduled until later in summer 2009. We also struggled to see any change in call quality, which, as any iPhone owner can tell you, remains far from perfect.
So should you buy it? That will depend on how much you’ll have to pay for the privilege. If you don’t own an iPhone yet, and you’ve been waiting for the right model, now is the time to go for it. The same goes for iPhone Classic owners who never made the jump to the iPhone 3G. But, if you’re a current iPhone 3G owner, the answer isn’t so clear. If you’re eligible to upgrade at the cheapest prices ($199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model), we suggest doing so, as long as you don’t mind the required two-year contract. If you own an iPhone 3G, but are not yet eligible for the upgrade, we recommend upgrading to the new iPhone OS 3.0 operating system, and then waiting. As much as the iPhone 3GS brings, it’s not worth the extra $200 that the 16GB and 32GB models cost.
Design and interface
The iPhone 3GS looks exactly like the previous model. It shares the shape and the same external controls, but the iPhone 3GS is unique in a handful of ways. You can get both memory sizes in white or black, and the iPhone 3GS display sports a fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating that is supposed to attract fewer fingerprints and smudges. The new model shares the same dimensions as its predecessor, but it’s slightly heavier (4.76 ounces versus 4.7 ounces), a virtually unnoticeable difference.
The menu interface is also the same, but in the past year, as we’ve added apps to the Home screen, something new has begun to bother us. As intuitive and simple as the interface is, it becomes unwieldy after you get above four menu pages. Swiping through multiple pages is tedious; and it’s rather painful to drag applications from page to page if you’re an organizational freak. We hate that there’s no way to categorize related apps into folders, such as one for news, another for social networking, and so on. Not only would this cut down on menu pages, but you’d also be able to find your app faster. And while we’re at it, how about letting us delete some of the native apps we never use?
Features
Since the iPhone 3GS inherits many of the features from the previous model, we’ll concentrate on what’s different on this device. If you need a refresher on such elements as the clock, YouTube, weather, iPod player, calculator, and e-mail, please see our iPhone 3G review. We’ll start off with the new features that only the iPhone 3GS will offer.
Camera
Until now, the iPhone’s camera has been good, but far from great, with decent photo quality, but no editing features. Apple didn’t include options such as white balance, a digital zoom, or a self-timer that come standard on many basic VGA camera phones. The minimalist shooter bothered us so much that we began to worry if Apple was leading a new trend of “dumbing down” cell phone cameras.
The iPhone 3GS puts some of those fears to rest. Apple boosted the camera’s resolution to 3 megapixels and added a new “Tap to Focus” feature. As you point the lens toward your subject, a small box appears on the center of the display. Tapping that square focuses the camera automatically on that point and adjusts the white balance, color, contrast, and exposure accordingly. If you’d rather focus on the edge of your shot, just tap the display at your chosen point and the square moves with you. If you don’t tap anywhere, the camera will focus the entire frame.
Tap to Focus performs well. For example, if we photographed a book cover sitting on a desk, we were able to get a clear reading on the book’s title. If we shifted the focus away from the book, the title became somewhat blurry. Alternatively, if we focused on the brightest part of an image, the entire picture would appear brighter. But if we focused on the darkest part of any image, the photo would darken accordingly. The iPhone still doesn’t come with a flash, though, so don’t expect miracles.
On the other hand, the new automatic macro setting didn’t appear to make much of a difference. Close-up shots looked slightly better on the iPhone 3GS than they did on the iPhone 3G, but we couldn’t tell when the macro focus was working and when it wasn’t. As with the autofocus feature, the macro setting is a welcome addition, but we’d prefer to have more control over it. In other words, the iPhone 3GS’ camera is smarter than those on the earlier iPhones, but the camera, rather than the user, still runs the show.
On the whole, the iPhone 3GS’ photo quality looks better than the 3G camera’s quality, but it depends on the shot. Outdoor shots and photos taken in natural light looked less blurry in our tests, with brighter colors. Photos taken during cloudy days were less likely to be blown out, and photos in low-light conditions looked brighter and had less of an orange tint. Indoor shots without natural light showed little change, however. The iPhone’s camera is not optimized for fluorescent light. For a full gallery of shots taken with the camera, see our iPhone 3GS camera slideshow.
Video recording
The iPhone 3GS is the first iPhone to offer video recording, another feature other phones have offered for years. Apple makes up for some lost time by offering an easy-to-use video-editing option right on the phone.
Controls for video shooting work just like the still camera’s controls, and you can use the Tap to Focus feature here, as well. The quality is just VGA, but the camera shoots at 30 frames per second, so while colors look muted and some videos appear washed out, the iPhone 3GS did better at handling movement than most cell phone cameras. After you’re done recording, you can send your clip in an e-mail or upload it directly to your YouTube account. We were able to upload to YouTube and send a video from our synced IMAP4 Exchange account, but when we tried to send a video from a synced Yahoo POP3 account, an error occurred. We’re checking with Apple on the discrepancy and will report back.
The phone’s video-editing tool is utterly intuitive and fun to use. After loading a previously shot video, you’ll see it displayed frame by frame in a linear format along the top of the touch screen. Using your finger, you can slide the cursor to any point in the video and start playing from there. If you care to edit, just touch either end of the border that surrounds your video. When the border turns yellow, you can shorten the clip by dragging either end toward your desired cutoff point (the image on the display will conveniently change as you move along). Once you’ve made your edits, just hit the “Trim” control.
We liked the video-editing feature a lot, but it’s worth noting a couple of small complaints. First off, when you trim a clip, the edited version replaces your original video, rather than saves it as a new file. Also, you can trim only in a linear format–meaning you can’t cut out something in the middle and stitch the remaining two ends of the video together.
We also like a new feature that allows you to quickly open a photo or video that you just shot. After taking your snap or video, a small thumbnail will appear on the bottom of the viewfinder next to the shutter control. Tapping that thumbnail takes you to the photo gallery page, from where you can view your work or send it on to a friend.
Voice Control
We’ve long berated Apple for not including voice dialing on previous iPhones, particularly in this age of hands-free driving laws. Overdue as it is, the new Voice Control feature goes far beyond just making calls. To activate it, hold down the home button until the Voice Control feature appears.
As with hundreds of other cell phones, Voice Control lets you make calls by speaking the contact’s name or phone number into the receiver. After you say your command, you’ll get audio confirmation and the name or number will show on the display. If the iPhone makes a mistake, you can press an “undo” touch control at the bottom of the screen. The feature is speaker-independent, so you won’t need to train it to recognize your voice; you’ll be ready to go the first time you turn on the phone.
In our tests, the voice dialing performed well. When using names, it understood us accurately most of the time. It made occasional mistakes–for example, it wanted to call “Siemens” instead of “Stephen”–but that’s hardly unusual for a voice dialer. Voice Control performed better when using only numbers. We didn’t have to speak loudly, except in noisy environments, but it was capable of filtering out most background noise.
If you call a contact with multiple numbers, but don’t specify which number you prefer, it will prompt you with “home,” “work,” etc. If you ask for a name that has multiple listings in your phone book (we know multiple people named Tim, for instance), it will prompt you for your choice, while showing the options on the screen. Alternatively, you can call a contact using his or her company’s name, but that company must be in the contact’s electronic business card.
Voice Control also interacts with the iPhone’s iPod player and the iTunes Genius list. You can ask it to play a song by artist name and album, and you can request an entire playlist. Once music is playing, you can pause, skip to the next song, and go back to the previous track, using your voice. Say “shuffle” and the player skips to a random song. The feature was accurate most of the time, but it occasionally confused some artist names.
Unsure which song is playing? You can find out by asking, “What song is this?” You’ll then get audio confirmation of the track name and artist. Like what you’re hearing? Say, “Play more songs like this,” and the player will use your iTunes Genius list to play a related song. In either case, the music will dim while you speak. They’re nifty features, to be sure, and we can’t think of another MP3 player or cell phone that offers such capability.
On the other hand, we can’t imagine that many people would use it outside of a car. And the iPod Voice Control isn’t perfect. It read Pink’s name as “P N K” in our tests (Pink spells her name as “P!nk” on her album covers), and it twice tried to call “Annette” when we asked what song was playing. Also, we’re not sure how Gwen Stefani would feel about being related to Britney Spears in the Genius list, but there you have it.
Compass
You’ll find the iPhone 3GS’ digital compass option directly on the Home screen; just tap to open. The attractive interface shows a large compass with your bearing and your latitude and longitude. Similar to any other compass, it continues to point true or magnetic north as you turn around. Reception was spotty inside, so you’ll need to stay clear of any interference. If it can’t get a bearing, you’ll be advised to move away from the interference and re-establish the compass’ orientation by moving the iPhone in a figure-eight motion.
The compass also interacts with Google Maps to point you in the right direction. To switch to the maps, just press the familiar bull’s-eye icon in the bottom-left corner. You’ll see your position on the map, and if you tap the bull’s-eye again, the map will rotate to show the direction you are facing. It’s a nice touch, and we like how the standard Google Maps view now shows the 3D outlines of buildings.
Accessibility features
The iPhone 3GS is the first iPhone to offer a full set of accessibility features. Visually impaired people can use Apple’s Voice Over to navigate the handset’s menus and type messages and e-mails. As you drag your finger around the display and tap a button, the iPhone will read a description of that button. The phone will also read the text of dialog boxes, the time of day, the status and orientation of the display (locked or unlocked, portrait or landscape), and detail information, such as the battery level, Wi-Fi, and cellular network signals. What’s more, it speaks each character as you type a message, and it will suggest autocorrection choices. Voice Over can read text messages, e-mails, and even Web pages.
To use Voice Over, you will need to learn a different set of gestures–for example, you’ll have to double-tap to open an item–but the feature provides audible instruction. You can set the speaking rate and choose from 21 supported languages. Voice Over works with all of the phone’s native applications, but support for third-party apps varies. Though we’re sighted and our Voice Over user experience can’t compare with someone who is visually impaired, we were impressed by the feature’s capabilities. The iPhone 3GS also adds multitouch zoom support for the Home, Unlock, and Spotlight screens for all applications, both native and third-party. Previously, zoom only worked in the photo gallery, e-mail in-boxes, and the Safari browser. You can activate the enhanced zoom in the Settings menu, but you can’t use it and Voice Over simultaneously.
You also can reverse the display’s contrast to white on black. Menus will show white text on a black background, while the Home screen will change to a white background. Just be aware that the contrast change alters the appearance of photos in the gallery so that they look like negatives. It has a similar effect for app icons on the Home screen.
What else is new?
The iPhone 3GS includes support for Nike + iPod, which integrates your iPod with a sensor that fits inside Nike running shoes. You use it as a pedometer to track your distance traveled and your pace. When you turn on the app in the settings menu, an icon will appear on the Home screen. The headphones included with the iPhone 3GS also show changes. You’ll find controls for using the Voice Control feature, adjusting the volume, answering calls, and controlling music and video playback.
iPhone OS 3.0
The iPhone 3GS will support the new iPhone OS 3.0 update from day one. The OS 3.0 is a significant update that promises 100 new features, including such long-awaited gems as multimedia messaging, stereo Bluetooth, a voice recorder, and cut, copy, and paste. Apple has yet to release a fully detailed list–and we’ve barely scratched the surface in our testing–but we’ll continue to report improvements as we find them. First announced in March 2009, it was released June 17, 2009, for the iPhone Classic and the iPhone 3G.
Multimedia messaging
We’ve ranted endlessly about why it took so long for Apple to achieve multimedia messaging (MMS), so we’re glad that it’s finally on its way. Besides photos, you’ll also be able to send videos, audio files, and map locations. At long last, the iPhone can do something that almost every other cell phone can do, and has done for ages.
But, and this is a big “but,” AT&T doesn’t have things ready on its end. We don’t know the real reason for the annoying delay, nor do we have a timetable for deployment; we just know that AT&T will support MMS “later this summer.” (Also, because it wasn’t integrated with the proper radio, the iPhone Classic will not support MMS.)
When we first tested the beta version of iPhone OS 3.0, we were able to compose, but not send, a multimedia message in a few quick steps on our iPhone 3G. In subsequent OS 3.0 updates, Apple removed the process for doing this; presumably you’ll get it back when MMS goes live.
On the upside, the messaging process was intuitive. When using the text-messaging app, a small camera icon appeared next to the writing area. After tapping it, we had the choice to take a new photo or send an existing shot. If we decided to shoot a new photo, we had the option of retaking it if we wished. Alternatively, we could initiate a picture message from the photo gallery. In either case, the photo appears in the typing area of the message application, and you can delete it if you change your mind.
Cut, copy, and paste
The cut, copy, and paste feature is long overdue. The interface is simple and easy to use, and it works across all applications, including notes, e-mails, messages, and text on Web pages. Developers will even get access to it in applications.
To get started, just double-tap a selection of text and the cut, copy, and paste commands will appear. You then can change the highlighted area by dragging the blue grab points around the page. Once you get to your pasting area, just tap the screen again and select the paste button. If you make a mistake and paste in the incorrect place, you can shake the iPhone to undo your command. When in Notes and e-mail, you also can highlight with a long press (aka holding your finger down). You’ll see two options: Select and Select All. The former command highlights just the word that you’re touching, while the latter highlights the entire block of text.
Using the feature in the Safari browser takes some acclimation, but even then we needed only a few minutes to get the hang of the process. Because the double-tap motion is also used to zoom in on a Web page, you must use a long press to select text that you want to copy or cut. You then can drag the blue points as normal. Depending on how closely you’re zoomed in, you can highlight just one word or an entire block of text.
Landscape keyboard
Formerly–and inexplicably–available only in the Safari browser, the landscape keyboard now works in e-mail, text messaging, and notes. After haranguing Apple over the past two years to get it, we have to admit that it took a second to get accustomed to it. Though the landscape keyboard is much wider, with larger buttons, it’s also a lot shorter. It did take us a couple of days to get the hang of it. Don’t think that we’re complaining, though, as it’s quite the opposite. We love being able to use two hands, but we had grown accustomed to the one-finger tap dance on the vertical keyboard.
You can also now view your e-mail in-box, contacts, and text messages in landscape mode. The calendar remains in a portrait orientation, but the changes we received are welcome.
Spotlight
Until now, it’s been rather painful to sift through the data to find e-mail or calendar entries on the iPhone. Luckily, iPhone OS 3.0 adds a Spotlight feature that makes the search process vastly easier. Similar to many of the OS 3.0 additions, it took way too long to get here, but we have few complaints about the final product. To get to the Spotlight feature, swipe your finger to the right from the first menu page. You’ll then see a keyboard with a typing field above it (this keyboard only works in portrait mode). As you type in a search term, the results appear below the search bar, with results grouped together by category for easy navigation. You can search calendar entries, music, notes, apps, contacts, and e-mail, and you can search within an individual e-mail in-box. For IMAP4 and Exchange accounts, you’ll also be able to search messages saved only on the server.
Tethering
In March, we heard that tethering would be possible with the OS 3.0, but that it would be completely carrier-dependent. Here again, AT&T isn’t on the ball. While other iPhone carriers around the world will be ready when the iPhone goes live, AT&T is saying that the carrier will support tethering later this summer. Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact reason for the delay, when tethering will actually arrive, or whether AT&T will charge extra for it.
Text messaging
Deleting and forwarding individual messages in a texting thread works just like the e-mail app. When you select the edit button, small dots appear next to each message. Hit the dots for your desired messages before pressing the delete or forward options. Thanks, Apple, but this should have been on the first iPhone.
Stereo Bluetooth
We were very glad to see a stereo Bluetooth profile arrive with iPhone OS 3.0. We tested it with the LG HBS-250 stereo Bluetooth headset. The pairing process was easy and incident-free. In the music player, a small Bluetooth icon appears next to the player controls. Press it to route audio to the headset; you then can toggle back and forth between the speaker and the headset. Speaking of Bluetooth, the update also adds Bluetooth peer-to-peer networking for gaming. Yet, neither Bluetooth feature is available on the iPhone Classic, even with the OS 3.0 update installed. Apple has a chart with more information.
Turn-by-turn directions
iPhone OS 3.0 brings support for turn-by-turn directions, making the iPhone a fully functional GPS device. The bad news is that, along with MMS, we’ll have to wait until later this summer for complete functionality. Directional services won’t come from Apple, but will instead come from third-party apps. TomTom will be one of the first companies to offer an app; a TomTom executive demonstrated it at WWDC 2009. AT&T has built an app for its AT&T Navigator service and we expect that other companies will offer their own apps.
From what we could tell from the brief demo, TomTom’s service looks promising. The interface was attractive and the audible directions were clear. TomTom will also offer a car kit that will secure your iPhone to your windshield or dashboard while charging it at the same time. That’s good news for a device that sucks up juice quickly.
We’re concerned with how much the app will cost. TomTom will offer a “range” of U.S. and international maps, but that’s as much as we know. GPS maps are not cheap, so we’ll be interested to see how TomTom will package and price the content to make it affordable for consumers and profitable for TomTom.
What’s more, we’re curious how much memory the maps will consume and how the app will integrate with the iPhone’s other features. From what we understand, we’ll be able to make hands-free calls and play music on our car’s radio while getting directions. Unlike the Palm Pre, however, the iPhone doesn’t multitask (we have more to say on that below). If the GPS feature has to suspend because you get a call–just as the iPod player suspends when you take a call–then things could get tricky. We suspect, though, that Apple and TomTom have this covered.
iTunes Store
With the software update, your iPhone’s iTunes Store experience will change a bit. Now you’ll be able to rent and purchase movies, download TV shows and audiobooks, and access iTunes U. You’ll also be able to redeem iTunes gift cards on the phone in the iTunes App store. Previously, you could only redeem in the iTunes music store.
Also new is the capability to make purchases while inside apps. For example, you can renew a magazine subscription or buy additional levels of a game. This is a small win, at least for us. Sure, it’s nice that you won’t have to close the application and return to the iTunes Store, but this is almost one of those “problems I didn’t know I had.” Just remember to keep a limit on your impulse buying.
Apple promises that free apps will always be free, to avoid a bait-and-switch scenario. While that’s great for consumers in that you’ll never have to shell out money for an update, even now we see two versions of many apps cluttering the App store. The free app get you hooked, much like a demo version of a game, while the paid app offers the whole experience. As we see it, that’s not much better than offering an app for free, but then charging later for an update.
Find My iPhone
If you’re prone to losing your iPhone 3GS, OS 3.0 will give you some peace of mind. If your handset goes missing, you can use a computer to find its position on a map. You can then send it a message that instructs anyone who finds your phone to call you. It plays a tone to get a passerby’s attention, and it even plays the tone when the sound is off. Presumably, however, it won’t play the tone when the phone is off.
It sounds like a great service, but there are a couple of caveats. Find My iPhone is only available to MobileMe users. Also, it can be dislabled, and you’ll need someone on the other end who is responsible enough to notify you that he or she has found your phone. Luckily, if the latter doesn’t hold true, you can use a remote wipe option to swipe your iPhone clean of data. This is the first time remote wipe is available to consumers outside of an enterprise setting.
Voice recorder
Did we mention that iPhone OS 3.0 adds features that should have been on the first-generation device? Oh, that’s right, we did. But, in any case, the new voice-recording app is another example of something being better late than ever. It has its own icon on the Home screen, and its interface is clean and easy to use. Tap the record button to start and tap it again to end; you can continue to record while you’re using other applications, like the Web browser. When finished, you can e-mail your voice clips to a friend, or you can trim them in the same fashion as you would videos.
Stocks
You’ll now see news headlines for the company tickers saved in your Stocks application. That would be a nice touch if we used the Stocks app more often. You’ll also be able to see a chart in landscape mode, and you’ll be able to get a stock price at any point on a chart.
Other additions
The remaining additions range from useful to trivial. Thanks to iPhone OS 3.0, you’ll also get push notifications, expanded parental controls, a shake-to-shuffle feature for the iPod player, the capability to forward meeting invites and contacts, Notes syncing for Macs and PCs, autofill for Web fields and Wi-Fi auto-log-ins, the option to change the default destination for the home button, and additional wallpaper. Finally, if you tap and hold on a Web link in the Safari browser, a new menu will appear with choices to open the link, open it in another page, save an image, or copy the link.
What we’re still waiting for
Fortunately, this list is getting shorter with each incarnation of the iPhone. Yet, the iPhone 3GS still lacks some important features. To begin with, it does not offer multitasking. We’ve been hung up on this for a while, but after seeing the Pre handle multitasking so elegantly, we think Apple can at least compete. And keep in mind that multitasking is hardly limited to Palm’s showpiece. It is frustrating that on a phone that can do so many things well, we have to close an application and go back to the menu in order to open another one. But more than that, it’s becoming unacceptable.
As mentioned earlier, you can’t change the look and feel of the iPhone’s interface. Though we like not having to root through multiple menu layers to access features, we’d still enjoy more customization. Similarly, Apple continues to lock down the iPhone’s file structure. There’s no file manager feature, and USB mass storage and transfer remain largely elusive. While you can access your iPhone’s camera folder via a USB cable, you can only transfer photos and videos from the iPhone 3GS to your computer. To transfer photos, videos ,and other media files to your iPhone, you must rely on iTunes. And even then, iTunes restricts what kinds of files you can move and it tells you where to store them on the phone. A wide variety of cell phones, from simple candy bar handsets to high-end smartphones, offer USB mass storage. We think Apple should do the same.
Flash support for the Safari browser is also a must. Apple has skirted this issue, so there may be hope in the future. But in the meantime, we still expect Flash Lite to get a true Web experience. Apple has long boasted that the iPhone puts “the Internet in your pocket,” but without Flash, it’s not quite there.
We doubt we’ll ever get the last few items on our list. But as long as we’re complaining, we’d love to see an FM radio, a “mark as read” option in the e-mail app, an FM transmitter, and a user-replaceable battery. We still wonder what you’re supposed to use as a cell phone when you send in your iPhone for a replacement battery. And don’t forget: you’ll have to pay for that service.
Internal performance
The “S” in iPhone 3GS stands for speed and the device promises to be quicker in two ways: not only will a new processor enable it to load apps faster, but it will utilize an upgraded AT&T 3G network for speedier Web browsing. We expected both of these improvements, so we’re not surprised that they are the new 3GS’ prime selling points.
We’ll start with the processor: Apple doesn’t provide details on the processor’s capabilities, but a T-Mobile Netherlands’ Web site briefly reported that the iPhone 3GS has a 600MHz processor–similar to the Pre’s–and 256MB RAM. In contrast, the earlier iPhone 3G had a 412MHz processor and 128MB RAM. As our colleagues at CNET Asia said, twice the memory “should speed things up a fair bit.”
The promised change surprised us, since we never thought the iPhone Classic or the iPhone 3G were that slow in the first place. But, whatever the reason for the improvement, we’re certainly not going to refuse if Apple wants to dish it out. And from what we can tell, it’s not an empty promise. We conducted side-by-side tests between an iPhone 3G and an iPhone 3GS. Both phones had identical contact lists, calendars, photos, apps, and music libraries.
For most native applications that don’t depend on a cellular or Wi-Fi connection, the iPhone 3GS was consistently faster. For the photo gallery, camera, calculator, calendar, notes, clock, and contacts list, the iPhone 3G lagged about 2 seconds behind. No, that’s not a huge difference, but it was a difference nonetheless. We noticed a similar change when using the Spotlight feature and opening the Settings menu.
We saw a bigger change in other areas. The iPhone 3GS opened the iPod player almost 5 seconds faster, and it was much quicker at loading some notoriously slow apps. For example, Bejewled 2, which can take up to 12 seconds to load on the iPhone 3G, started in just 5 seconds on the 3GS. Even better, Pocket God went from opening in almost 30 seconds to starting in just 11. The iPhone 3GS also started up much quicker than the iPhone 3G–we were up and running in 26 seconds instead of 50 seconds.
We realize that the above tests aren’t very scientific or exact, but they do reflect everyday use. Indeed, the iPhone 3GS appears to delivers speedier internal performance; people should notice a difference.
Browser and data
On the other hand, we didn’t notice any differences in data and browser speeds over AT&T’s 3G network. We’d certainly welcome any improvements that should come from the carrier’s forthcoming HSPA network upgrade to 7.2Mbps, but there’s an important caveat for the moment: AT&T won’t start rolling out the faster network until later this year. What’s more, full deployment is scheduled for 2011. Though we expect urban areas will be first, coverage will vary widely for the next year, at least. As such, we don’t predict any miracles soon. On the other hand, we noticed faster browser speeds when using CNET’s Wi-Fi network. The New York Times loaded in about 30 seconds on the iPhone 3GS, but took up to a minute on the iPhone 3G.
Call quality and reception
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) iPhone 3GS world phone in San Francisco. Call quality was virtually unchanged from the iPhone 3G. When the calls could connect, and when they weren’t dropping, the audio quality was decent. Voices sounded natural and we heard a satisfactorily low amount of “side noise,” which is the sound of your own voice coming back through the phone. Wind noise was apparent in some instances, and the volume could be louder, but the 3GS lacks the sensitive sweet spot that we encountered on the first iPhone.
On their end, callers didn’t report any differences from the caller experience on the iPhone 3G. They could hear us under most conditions, and, while they could tell that we were on a cell phone, that’s not unusual. The only complaints mentioned occasional background noise. Automated calling systems could understand as well, but we had the best experiences when using the phone inside. We’ll test the iPhone 3GS in more places over the next few weeks.
Speakerphone calls were good, but not great. The external speaker was rather soft, but voices weren’t distorted, except at the highest volumes. Also, as long as we were in a quiet room, we didn’t have to speak close to the phone if we wanted to be heard on the other end. We connected to the BlueAnt Q1 Bluetooth headset without any problems. Call quality was mostly satisfactory, though we noticed a slight amount of static. That could be from the headset, however.
Unfortunately, we saw no change in overall signal strength and reception. The hand off between EDGE and 3G remains shaky, and the iPhone still tries to latch onto the 3G signal even when it’s barely detectable. As we found with the iPhone 3G, the reception jumped if we switched off the handset’s 3G radio on the Settings menu. Constantly doing that, however, can be a pain.
While testing the iPhone 3GS with the iPhone 3G in areas of San Francisco with reliably poor AT&T coverage, we noticed no difference in the number of bars or in the capability of each to establish a connection and make a call. What’s more, the iPhone 3GS dropped calls as frequently as its predecessor in the “semidead zones.” We also used the iPhone’s internal Field Test application, which is a more accurate test of signal strength than the number of bars on the display. In most cases the iPhone 3GS had a stronger signal, but not by much. Dial *3001#12345#* to run the test yourself. You’ll see the signal strength in decibels in the upper-left corner of the display–the lower the number, the better the signal.
According to FCC radiation tests, the iPhone 3GS has a rating of 0.79 watt per kilogram. That is the highest at-ear SAR for voice calls. Data use and at-body use can result in different SARs.
Audio and video quality
Editors’ note: Senior Editor Donald Bell contributed to this section.
For all the small tweaks and improvements made to the iPhone 3GS, music and video playback quality is indistinguishable from the 3G model. Fortunately, in this department, the iPhone can afford to rest on its laurels. Audio is crisp and full, with a suite of iPod EQ presets, ample volume, and minimum background hiss. A range of audio files and resolutions are supported, starting at basic MP3 and AAC, all the way up to CD-quality formats, such as AIFF, WAV, and Apple Lossless. Video playback quality is still the same bright, smooth experience we enjoyed on the 3G model. If there’s a story to be told about video improvements, it’s the fact that the 3GS is the first iPhone to both play and record video. Apple has also updated the mobile version of the iTunes store to include movie, television, and music video downloads, in addition to the music and podcast downloads offered prior to the OS 3.0 update. Music quality on the LG HBS-250 stereo Bluetooth headset was quite satisfactory–a big improvement over the iPhone’s external speaker and better than the standard wired headset. Of course, your experience will vary depending on which stereo headset you choose.
Battery life
Battery life remains one of the iPhone 3G’s biggest detractions. Indeed, you’re lucky if your handset lasts longer than a day with heavy use. When Apple first introduced the iPhone in June, the company promised relief for beleaguered users. The 3GS’ rated battery life is 9 hours of Wi-Fi battery life, 10 hours of video playback, 30 hours of audio playback, 12 hours of 2G talk time, and 5 hours of 3G talk time.
In our initial tests conducted just after this review posted, the iPhone 3GS’ battery appeared to last longer than its predecessor’s. We could go longer during a day of heavy use before having to recharge. Also, our first talk time test with EDGE delivered almost 11.5 hours of battery life, which is impressive considering the iPhone 3G lasted 8.75 hours on EDGE. We then sent the 3GS to CNET Labs for more rigorous testing. In those tests, the 3GS largely matched Apple’s promised times. We’ll start with voice calls first. CNET Labs managed 5.36 hours of 3G talk time and 13.4 hours of 2G talk time. While those results may seem surprising, remember that we leave the handset alone with the display dimmed during our talk time tests.
Battery life for multimedia use also was satisfactory. In Airplane Mode on with the cellular radio turned off, the 3GS delivered 36.7 hours of music playback and 10.03 hours of video playback. With the Airplane Mode off and 3G enabled, we got 35.4 hours of music time and 9.2 hours of video playback. In both cases, the screen was off during music playback.
It’s important to remember that real-world use will be a better judge of the iPhone 3GS’ endurance. The large color display, frequently switching between different applications, and heavy 3G or GPS use will drain the battery faster than just making a call. As it’s difficult to develop an accurate benchmark for testing battery life while multitasking, your experience will vary widely depending on how you use your iPhone 3GS. There are quite a few things you can do to maximize battery life, but we recommend using Wi-Fi over 3G whenever possible, limiting GPS use, and dimming your display’s brightness. The 3Gs is the first iPhone to show the percentage of battery charge on the Home screen.
MacWorld iPhone review
April 14, 2010
Groundbreaking wireless communicator really lives up to the hype
by Jason Snell of Macworld.com (the article was written in 2007 and focuses on the US market)
Apple’s iPhone is a product that’s been years in the making. Apple’s designers have been working on it for years, and the Web has been buzzing about Apple’s entry into the phone market for just as long—or maybe even longer. But now, after six months of intense speculation since its introduction at Macworld Expo, the iPhone has arrived. Although the iPhone is not without a few quirks, it makes good on the hype that surrounded it.
Hefting the hardware
Steve Jobs proudly described the iPod as a beautiful piece of hardware that had amazing software inside it. And with the iPhone, Apple’s hardware designers have once again wrapped the output of the company’s in-house developers into a remarkable piece of hardware. Pictures of the iPhone don’t do it justice: it’s smaller than it looks. Roughly the width (2.4 inches) and height (4.5 inches) of a full-size iPod, depth is the dimension that makes the iPhone feel tiny: it’s shockingly thin, measuring less than half an inch.
However, the iPhone doesn’t feel fragile. It’s got enough weight (4.8 ounces) to it to feel substantial when it’s in the palm of your hand. And as our colleagues at PC World have shown , the iPhone appears to be built to last, with a screen that proved quite resistant to scratches and drops. The iPhone’s back side is a textured silver, rather than the polished stainless steel of the full-sized iPod models, so my guess is that both the front and back of the iPhone will be more resistant to scratches than either the full-sized iPod or the original iPod nano.
This is not to say that the iPhone is impervious to being marked up. Perhaps we were unwise to order pizza at Macworld on the day of the iPhone’s arrival, but the grease from that pizza helped make a point: the iPhone’s screen collects fingerprints. The good news is, the screen’s so bright that in most situations you don’t notice the fingerprints. But it’s enough of an issue that Apple includes a small black chamois cloth in the iPhone box, and the image-conscious iPhone owner will want to give their screen a good wipe-down often.
The dominant physical feature of the iPhone is its black glass face, punctuated by a single physical button on the bottom and a speaker slit near the top for listening to phone calls. But the Home button isn’t the only physical button to be found anywhere on the iPhone; on its side are a pair of volume buttons, which (depending on context) will let you raise or lower the volume of the phone’s ringer, music or video playback, or conference-call speakerphone. Placed right above these two buttons is a switch that slides back and forth; in one position the iPhone will emit sound from its external speaker, while in the other it will only vibrate to warn you that something’s going on.
Using a switch instead of a toggle button was an excellent choice, since you can feel the switch’s position even in a darkened movie theater. However, the volume buttons are located a bit too close to the switch, and on several occasions I found myself pushing the switch (which won’t budge) in a vain attempt to boost the iPhone’s volume.
The iPhone’s top has a physical button, too. It serves as a wake/sleep toggle button: press it and the iPhone goes to sleep and locks instantaneously. (This feature is aimed at preventing you from accidentally pushing an on-screen button; you can still receive incoming calls when the phone’s in this state.) Press that same button and hold for a few seconds, and the iPhone will shut down completely.
Opposite the wake/sleep toggle on the iPhone’s top edge is a recessed headphone jack. It’s a standard 3.5-millimeter jack—the very same sort used on the iPod—but because it’s recessed many third-party headphones won’t fit, especially if they’ve got a large plug or one that turns at a 90-degree angle. It’s too bad that a clunky add-on accessory will be necessary for aficionados of high-quality headphones to use the iPod features of the iPhone. (Although if the iPhone is a success, headphone manufacturers will almost certainly build their plugs to ensure iPhone compatibility.)
The iPhone comes with a set of stereo earbuds that sound pretty good, exponentially better than the earbuds that shipped with the original iPod. These earbuds also include an inline microphone that’s also a clicker: click once to pause or play your music, or click twice to advance to the next track. Although I’m sure that third-party headphone makers will create numerous excellent alternatives, the good news is that the iPhone’s in-the-box earbuds are very good.
On the iPhone’s back face is the tiny lens of its compact, two-megapixel camera. It doesn’t zoom and doesn’t work well in low light, but with still subjects in well-lit areas it produces nice results. It’s definitely more appropriate for fun shots when no other camera is around than as a replacement for your digital camera, even if your camera is five years old. (The camera also can’t record video, at least not with the current version of the iPhone’s software.)
The iPhone’s inside may not be as beautiful as the outside, but it’s full featured. Each iPhone contains either 4GB or 8GB of flash data storage. It’s also got three different wireless technologies inside: a standard GSM cellular connection with support for AT&T’s EDGE network, support for 802.11b/g Wi-Fi networks, and Bluetooth.
Bright, clear display
The iPhone’s display is excellent. Yes, it’s big and bright, but its most impressive trait is its high resolution: It’s 160 dpi, more than twice the traditional Mac screen resolution. Jamming that many pixels together in such a small space means that everything on screen looks smooth, not pixelated. Digital photos and videos look gorgeous, and even the colorful icons on the iPhone’s home screen are so bright and clear that sometimes it’s hard to believe that you’re looking at a computer screen and not something physical, like a sticker. On-screen text looks sharp, more like printed text in a book or magazine than drawn with pixels on the screen.
Of course, the iPhone’s screen isn’t just for looking at: It’s the key driver in the device’s interface. Using the iPhone is a tactile experience—it’s all about touching your fingers (or, if you’re daring, your thumbs) to that screen. Instead of dragging a scroll bar or clicking a mouse, you move through screens on the iPhone by a combination of taps, flicks, and other finger gestures.
The original Macintosh changed the world by providing a physical control to move a cursor around on a computer interface. But the iPhone does it one better—instead of pushing around a mouse in order to make a disembodied arrow or hand move up on the computer screen, it’s your finger doing all the moving. When you touch a photo, Web page, or e-mail message on the iPhone and slide with your finger, it moves along with your touch, as if you were moving a real, physical object. There’s no cursor on the iPhone because your finger is your pointer—which, despite what your mother might have told you, is just what fingers are designed to do.
Fingertips on virtual keys
If pointing is a natural act, typing on a keyboard (especially a tiny one) is its antithesis, but it’s a necessity of our modern age. After the crash-and-burn of the Newton’s handwriting-recognition interface and even Palm’s original Graffiti writing system, the makers of most mobile devices settled on tiny, chiclet-style keyboards as the best way for people to input text.
The iPhone’s designers seem to agree that typing is the best way to enter data on a small device, but they’ve ditched the physical keyboard and replaced it with more touchscreen space. When you’re using the iPhone and reach a point where you need to input text, a keyboard automatically slides up from the bottom of the screen.
The abolition of a physical keyboard is probably destined to be the iPhone’s most controversial feature, at least at first. There’s a bit of a learning curve when it comes to using the iPhone’s keyboard, especially for people who are comfortable using the physical keyboard on a Blackberry, Treo, or other smart phone.
I can’t say that my typing experience with my previous phone, a Palm Treo, was particularly good. I could manage, but never felt that I could reach an acceptable typing speed. As a result, it’s hard for me to put myself in the place of an accomplished Blackberry thumb typist who has spent a year honing his or her skills. But I believe that most users—even thumb typists, given an open mind and some training time—will find the iPhone’s keyboard to be excellent.
It does take some getting used to, however. That’s because the iPhone’s keyboard is a failure if taken literally. If you slowly tap every single letter and painstakingly backspace if you press the wrong one, you will never be satisfied. The iPhone’s keyboard excels when you ignore your mistakes and keep on typing, because it senses your finger presses, compares all the nearby keys to its built-in dictionary, and intuits what you’re actually trying to type. Over time, as it learns the kinds of words you type, it improves its auto-correcting accuracy.
Within a few hours with the iPhone, my finger was flying over the keyboard, and I’m sure my fingertip was only getting roughly close to the correct letter most of the time. But the iPhone’s software, with remarkable consistency, knew what I had meant to type. I assume that with some practice, two-thumb typing would be even faster, but with my index finger I managed to type faster than I ever have on a tiny device, physical keyboard or not.
The iPhone’s key layout is smart, too: it changes what keys appear depending on context. For example, in Safari’s URL window, you’ll be presented with a .com key. In an e-mail window, you’ll only be provided with characters that can be part of a valid e-mail address. One inconsistency is the presence of a horizontal keyboard when the iPhone is in a landscape orientation: it shows up in Safari, but it would be nice if you could rotate other applications, such as Mail, in order to take advantage of a larger keyboard.
One iPhone text oddity is that the device has no concept of a text selection, let alone copy, cut, or paste. You might think that touching your finger and dragging it across text might select it, but it doesn’t—Apple uses that gesture to bring up a magnifying glass so that you can correctly reposition the insertion point (which is a great idea).
Without copy and paste, you can’t (for example) compose a blog entry in the notepad while in Airplane mode and then paste it into your blog-posting tool in Safari when you’re back on the ground. Yes, you can e-mail that note, and if your blog tool has an e-mail-to-blog gateway, that’ll do in a pinch, but the lack of a better way to transfer text from one place to another can generally hamper interaction between different iPhone programs.
iPhone calling
It’s easy to get lost in the hype about touchscreens and Web browsers and forget that the iPhone is, like its name says, a phone. And it works pretty well as one: When an incoming call arrives, the iPhone gently interrupts what you’re doing to display Caller ID information about who’s calling. You can set any of 25 built-in ringtones as your ring and assign custom ringtones to individual callers. Unfortunately, you can’t use your own music or sounds as ringtones.
Once a call is in progress, the iPhone’s large screen gives Apple room to make it clear what your options are while on the phone, including placing people on hold and creating conference calls.
The iPhone uses iTunes to sync the contents of your Mac’s address book (or a set of groups within the address book) with its internal contacts list. Although I was initially resistant to the idea of syncing over all my contacts rather than just a group containing the people I was most likely to call, in the end, syncing everything is probably the best approach, since your contacts are also used for e-mail addressing.
Fortunately, the iPhone remembers which contact group you were looking at most recently. So even though my iPhone contains all 207 of the contact records I’ve got on my Mac, when I tap Contacts I see only the contents of a “Phone” group that I created within the Mac’s Address Book. (If the person I need to call isn’t in there, I can tap on a back arrow and browse the entire contacts list or a different contact group.)
In fact, the stickiness of your current contact group is just one example of an effect you’ll find throughout the iPhone’s interface: When you return to a task you were previously using, things will generally be just as you left it. For example, if you’re looking at a Mail message and then press the Home button to check stock quotes, when you tap on Mail again you’ll be back to that same message.
The iPhone’s Phone application is a five-tabbed interface that lets you quickly get to a numeric keypad for “old school” dialing (especially useful if you’re trapped in a phone tree), see your contacts, and get a list of recent calls.
There’s a Favorites list, too, so you can create a short list of your most commonly dialed numbers. However, creating and accessing favorite people should be easier than it is right now. To add a contact as a favorite, you have to tap on the name in your Contacts list, then scroll down to the bottom of the contact record and tap Add to Favorites, then—if they have more than one number—pick the one you’d like to add as a favorite. There’s got to be an easier way, like tapping on a name and dragging it onto the Favorites icon.
The iPhone also lacks a quick-dial feature that you’ll find on many other phones, in which you hold down a particular button to call your most frequently-called contacts. Obviously the iPhone can’t map contacts to buttons it doesn’t have, but top contacts are probably a few too may taps away.
When you’re on a call, tapping the screen brings up six commands—Mute, Keypad, Speaker, Hold, Contacts, and Add call. That last command is particularly noteworthy, as it’s an example of the kind of task that can be confounding on other smart phones while being drop-dead simple on Apple’s handset. Whether you’ve initiated or received a call it’s an easy matter to put one caller on hold while you contact another and then bring the three (or more) of you together in a conference call. If only our phones here in the office worked as intuitively.
One of the iPhone’s most unique phone-related features is Visual Voicemail, which displays messages by showing you the name of the caller and the time of the call; messages that you have not listened to yet are marked with a blue dot. Tap on any message and that message will be played back, regardless of its position in the message queue. While listening to a message, a progress bar shows the length of the message and current playback position, letting you jump back and forth with the drag of a finger—no more listening to entire messages over again just to hear that phone number you missed the first time. There’s also a large green Call Back button to return the person’s call (assuming the caller didn’t have Caller ID blocked) and a large red Delete button. It’s a fresh approach to voicemail, and a welcome change from the kludgy menu-driven Voicemail systems with which most mobile-phone users are all too familiar.
One of the most useful interface touches on the iPhone is the method you use to scroll through a massive list of information: a strip with every letter from A to Z which runs vertically down the right side of your contacts list (as well as most lists in the phone’s iPod functions). Touch the strip with your finger in the general direction of the first letter of the contact name, song, or artist that you’re looking for, and the list will jump to that letter.
If you want to use a Bluetooth wireless headset with the iPhone, you should be able to do so without much trouble. I easily paired the iPhone with a Plantronics headset, and my colleagues have had success with headsets from Apple and Aliph. However, the iPhone doesn’t currently support stereo headphones, nor can it pair with your Mac for such tasks as passing files, using the iPhone as a modem, or passing call information to your Mac.
One-handed e-mail
The explosion of interest in smartphones is because they’re a mixture of two great tastes that taste great together—cell phones and e-mail. And the iPhone’s Mail program is excellent, capable of displaying formatted e-mail messages, including many common attachment file types.
The Mail interface is a simple hierarchical list that lets you tap through to different accounts (if you’ve got more than one account, as I do). If you’re using IMAP, you’ll see a list of all the mailboxes that are a part of your account. Once you’re in a mailbox, you can see a list of messages, complete with the name of the person who sent it, the message’s subject, and, optionally, the first few lines of the message.
Using Mail on the iPhone couldn’t be much easier: tap the New Message icon to create a new message, and then choose a recipient from your Contacts list (or type in an address yourself). If you’re reading a message, pressing the reply button will give you the option of replying to or forwarding the message.
It’s no fun entering in e-mail settings on a computer with a full keyboard, let alone on an iPhone’s virtual keyboard. So Apple has tried to make e-mail set-up on the iPhone easy, and it has largely succeeded, albeit with a few caveats. When you first set up your iPhone, iTunes transfers all your mail account preferences from your Mac’s copy of Apple Mail. If those accounts are the only ones you want, you’re set.
But if you need to enter in account info yourself, Apple has created several account presets that work for some major account types: Yahoo, Google’s Gmail, AOL, and Apple’s own .Mac. Setting up those services was very easy and required a minimum of data entry.
If you’re not using any of those services, however, you’ll have to enter in a bit more data. And you’ll probably discover one of the iPhone’s major interface mistakes: there’s no option to display the text of the passwords you’re entering. That’s a fine security measure, but when you’re typing on the iPhone’s teensy virtual keys, and most likely not typing any sort of character string that the iPhone is good at auto-correcting—at least not if you’ve got a decently secure password—it’s very difficult to carefully enter in your password and make sure you’ve done it properly. I managed it by pressing my finger down on the keyboard and, if the letter that popped up wasn’t the one I wanted, deliberately sliding my finger until the proper key registered, then picked up my finger. But for long or numerous passwords it’s a big pain, and something Apple should fix.
If you’ve never used a mobile device for e-mail before, you’ll also discover that you may need to change some of your mail settings (or change servers) to get the best e-mail experience on the iPhone. After entering all the data for my office’s mail server, I was confounded by an error when sending mail. At first I thought that I had entered my password incorrectly (hence the repeated visits to the password entry screen), but it turned out that my mail server wasn’t listening for outgoing mail messages at the same location (SMTP port, for you mail geeks out there) as the iPhone wanted to use by default. After some research I discovered what SMTP port we were using, and appended it (preceded by a colon, of course) to the name of my mail server in my mail settings. It worked, but it was the kind of difficulty that will drive most people to tech support.
Moreover, the iPhone doesn’t filter mail, nor does it have any built-in spam catcher. That means if you’re relying on a client-side filtering program such as C-Command Software’s SpamSieve ( ), you’ll be stunned at the amount of spam you’ll see on your iPhone. The solution: Use a mail server with server-side spam filtering, if you can. If your server also offers other server-side filters, it might be an opportunity to redirect some mail you don’t want to get on your phone, such as messages from mailing lists, elsewhere.
iPhone Mail has a few other idiosyncrasies that I hope will be addressed in the future. By default every reply you send quotes the entire message you’re replying to, with your response at the top. This didn’t bother me, but that style of mail drives some people crazy. And since there’s no way to select a mass of text and delete it, there’s really no way to get around the default reply style. There’s also no way to select all of your mail at once and delete those messages or mark them as read. It’s not a show-stopper, but it is annoying.
Another, much more minor, missing feature is the ability to assign signatures for each of your e-mail accounts. You can have a signature (by default it’s “Sent from my iPhone”), but that signature is applied to every message you send, regardless of account.
Big Web, little window
At numerous public appearances, Steve Jobs has promoted the Web-browsing experience on the iPhone as one that brings you the “real Internet”—in other words, the experience of viewing the Web via a full-fledged computer browser, not dumbed-down pages simplified for mobile phones (or, what’s worse, complicated Web pages that a puny cell phone browser can’t properly render). By embedding a version of Safari on the phone, Apple has brought the iPhone most of the way toward that goal, but it still falls a few notable steps short.
When you’re using Safari on the iPhone, you feel as if you’re using Safari on your Mac. Web pages load in full, scaled-down to fit on the iPhone’s screen. Tap twice on any part of the page and Safari automatically zooms in, making text readable and enlarging photos to fill the screen. The experience is as close an approximation to the Web you experience on your Mac as you could possibly get on a screen the size of the iPhone’s. Web-page text is a pleasure to read on the iPhone’s high-resolution display.
Your bookmarks even come along for the ride, because iTunes syncs bookmarks between your Mac copy of Safari and your iPhone. (It’s a two-way sync, so don’t delete bookmarks on the iPhone unless you’re willing to lose them on your Mac too.)
If the iPhone is a success, the iPhone Web story will improve, too: Web developers can custom-build style sheets to work with the iPhone, as well as make some basic additions to their pages to improve the iPhone browsing experience.
Loading Web pages on a Wi-Fi network felt about as snappy as it did on my Mac, but when I switched over to AT&T’s EDGE digital cellular network, things bogged down. I found browsing the Web on the EDGE network less pleasurable, but still quite usable (though it’s worth noting speed of the network can vary widely).
Safari on the iPhone even has a clever way to support multiple open Web pages at once: tap the Window button and the current page pulls back to reveal that it’s one in a chain of up to eight different pages. If you click a link that’s set to open in a new window, Safari handles the process itself, zooming you out of your current page and sliding you over to the new page.
However, there are a few limitations that prevent Safari on iPhone from truly showing the real Internet. The biggest is the fact that perhaps the most common browser plug-in in existence, Adobe’s Flash, is nowhere to be found. Over the past few years, the melange of different browser plug-ins for features such as embedded Web videos have largely been replaced by a single video player format: Flash. Although the iPhone’s included YouTube player solves the problem for that popular video-sharing Web site, it doesn’t address the larger fact that numerous Web sites use Flash to play video or display other interactive content.
The iPhone also won’t play back Web audio or video being streamed in the Real or Windows Media formats, although Mac users can play such media on their Macs.
Less major though still annoying, is the lack of support for file upload via Web pages. It would be nice if Safari allowed users to upload certain kinds of content in order to, for example, post pictures taken with the iPhone’s built-in camera to the Flickr photo-sharing site. (An alternative would be for Apple to add support for photo-sharing-site uploads right into the iPhone’s Photos program.)
iPod reborn
The iPhone’s iPod functions are like no iPod we’ve seen before—but I’d hazard a guess that they closely resemble the look of iPods to come. Without a scroll wheel to use in navigation, the iPhone’s iPod features take some getting used to. It took me quite a while to figure out how to toggle into and out of Shuffle mode. (The controls appear when you do a single tap on the screen.)
When held in a vertical, or portrait, orientation, the iPhone’s iPod menus are reminiscent of the old iPod, but with much more detail. Instead of a main menu, there’s a row of five buttons along the bottom of the screen. You can customize four of them with elements you might remember from the iPod’s main menu (including Artists, Genres, Videos, and Podcasts). The fifth, called More, is the home for all the options that didn’t make it onto the row of buttons.
When you’re in a list—of artists, for example—you can scroll through it by flicking your finger, or use the same vertical A-to-Z quick index feature that’s present in the Phone’s Contacts list (assuming you’ve got a long enough list of artists or songs). Tapping on an Artist brings up a list of albums or, if they have only one album, a list of songs from that album. Conveniently, you can now choose to begin shuffling at almost any point: all songs, all songs by a particular artist, or all songs in a particular album.
When the iPhone’s in a landscape orientation, the iPod interface switches into Cover Flow mode, in which you flick through a row of album covers. Find a cover that looks intriguing, and tap on it to see its contents. It looks great, but I’m still not convinced about how useful Cover Flow is as a feature—on the iPhone or anywhere else.
Due to its large, high-resolution screen, the iPhone excels as a video player. It’s the largest canvas a video iPod has ever had, at 480-by-320 pixels. (The current video iPod’s display resolution is 320 by 240.) And the widescreen aspect ratio, while not quite a Hollywood-standard 16:9, is still better for watching widescreen movies and TV shows than the 4:3 ratio of the video iPod.
Of course, the iPhone doesn’t have a large hard drive on which to store a massive video library. That means you have to be judicious with the amount of content you load on the iPhone. And if you convert your own videos (from DVDs or other sources), you’ll want to spend the extra time compressing and resizing them to fit on the iPhone. But I was able to load up my 8GB iPhone with 350 songs and eight hours of video, and still have 3GB left over. So while loading an entire season of a TV show onto an iPhone is basically impossible, there’s certainly enough room (especially in the larger model) for a nice selection of viewing options. And in a nice touch, the iPhone offers to delete videos off its flash drive after you’ve viewed them, to free up more space.
There are also several things the iPhone doesn’t do that the iPod does. It won’t output video to a TV, for one, and its iTunes synchronization process is much more like Apple TV than an iPod. I often drag-and-drop music and video onto my iPod when I attach it to my Mac, but the iPhone will only sync with a library or playlist on a specific Mac or PC. If you want to drag-and-drop, you’ll need to do it into a playlist that you’ve set to sync with the iPhone.
There’s also no support for embedded lyrics in music files, and no voice-recorder support, either with the iPhone’s internal microphone or with various iPod voice-recorder add-ons.
And there’s more
It’s easy to focus on the iPhone’s four core programs, but there are 12 other icons on that Home screen. A few of them are full-blown applications, while others are nothing more than simple Dashboard-style widgets.
The Text program, which has been built to resemble iChat, works quite well as a messaging tool for the cellular network’s SMS text-message protocol. I was able to send messages directly to other phones, status updates to Twitter.com via its SMS gateway, and even chat with someone who was using iChat via AOL’s SMS gateway.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that Text can’t send MMS messages, which are similar to SMS messages but can contain multimedia. Because of this limitation, you can’t send a picture you snap with the iPhone’s camera to another phone via Text. (You could send that photo via e-mail.) What’s worse, the iPhone has no support for any Internet-based instant-messaging network. AOL’s SMS gateway works okay in a pinch—and when your buddies are initiating the chats—but it’s no replacement for a full-blown AIM buddy list. And if you’re in a location where you’ve got Wi-Fi network access but no cellular service, there’s no fallback.
The iPhone is dying for a full-blown instant messaging program, and Text doesn’t fit the bill. Although I don’t have any inside information, I assume the choice of SMS support over instant-messaging support has something to do with the fact that AT&T makes money on SMS message plans. But SMS simply isn’t a replacement for instant messaging, and Apple should make the addition of a chat program a priority for a future iPhone software update.
The Calendar and Notes programs help the iPhone fulfill its role as a personal information manager, but they’re like night and day when it comes to their utility. Calendar is implemented beautifully, with a useful Day view and a mega-useful List view of all upcoming events. You can add and edit events and sync them back to iCal on your Mac.
Calendar’s big limitation is that it doesn’t color-code differences between different synced calendars, and new events can’t be assigned to particular synced calendars—they all automatically get assigned to a single, default calendar. And neither Calendar nor any other iPhone program will let you display or edit your iCal to-do lists.
In contrast, the Notes program is fairly useless. It’s cute, with its brow header and yellow legal-style ruled background. But notes don’t sync back to your Mac, so you have to e-mail them from your phone if you ever want to free them from the iPhone. And not to get too font-nerdy on you, but the Marker Felt font used in Notes is extremely ugly and, sadly, can’t be changed. (Here’s hoping that when Leopard arrives, with its system-wide support for notes, you’ll be able to sync iPhone and Mac notes.)
If there’s ever been an example of Apple’s software-design prowess, it’s the Maps program on the iPhone. Maps is powered by the same data you get when you visit Google Maps with your Web browser, but its interface is so slick—from the ease of finding addresses in your contacts list to the whizzy turn-by-turn direction animations—that it not only puts the Google Maps implementations on other cell phones to shame, it makes the Google Maps Web site itself look dowdy.
The only thing missing from the Maps equation is that the iPhone doesn’t know where it is. Not via built-in GPS (it has none), nor by triangulating signal strengths from nearby cellular phone towers. It’s too bad, because with some knowledge of where it’s currently located, the iPhone’s Maps program would be perfect.
A trio of iPhone icons—Calculator, Stocks, and Weather—will be familiar to anyone who has used their Mac OS X Dashboard Widget equivalents. They’re harmless, attractive, and functional. They also point out how, before too long, the iPhone’s Home screen will need some sort of management tool. Not just because Apple will no doubt add to the 16 icons currently on the screen—but because some people will want to hide icons that they don’t use. For example, I wouldn’t mind if I never saw the Stocks icon ever again. I’m sure someone else feels the same way about Weather. And who knows? Perhaps those who hate math might want to kill Calculator.
The Clock program, on the other hand, is more than just a pretty face. Yes, it lets you see what time it is in major metropolises such as London, Moscow, and Cupertino. But it also lets you add multiple alarms (unfortunately only using ringtones, not the contents of your iTunes library), set a stopwatch, or initiate a countdown timer.
The least exciting, but most useful, of the iPhone’s 16 Home screen icons is Settings. This is where everything behind the scenes on the iPhone happens. The preferences for the iPhone in general, and individual programs in particular, are all located here. From Settings, you can send the iPhone into Airplane Mode (which turns off all its radios, including cellular, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi), connect to a Wi-Fi network, and even connect to a corporate VPN (Virtual Private Networking) server.
I was able to connect to my office’s VPN a few times, although I was unsuccessful on some occasions. And I ran into an annoying bug: despite the fact that I asked iPhone to remember my VPN password, it insisted on asking me for it every time I tried to log in.
Power on
The iPhone tech specs claim battery life of up to eight hours of talk time, six hours of Internet use, seven hours of video playback, 24 hours of audio playback, and 250 hours of standby time. Apple arrived at these figures under testing conditions that may not necessarily reflect your own use.
Macworld is running battery tests of our own, and we’ll post the findings once we have them. But Macworld staff have been impressed with the anecdotal results we’ve seen so far, given the number of tasks you can throw at the iPhone—often at once.
The AT&T factor
Unlike other Apple products, the iPhone is the result of a partnership between Apple and AT&T, the company that’s exclusively providing the cellular network for the iPhone. iPhone owners must be AT&T customers, and commit to being AT&T customers for two years.
The result is that it’s fairly hard to judge AT&T aspects of the iPhone. While I’ve been an AT&T customer (and before that Cingular, and before that — oh, the irony — AT&T) for years and have been relatively happy with the service, I’ve also heard from many people who hate AT&T’s cellular service. Add to that the fact that every cell phone user tends to use their phone in a different set of areas, each with their own particular coverage characteristics, and that makes it difficult to give any cellular carrier a broad judgment. What might be great service for one person might be horrendous for another.
In addition, I’m aware of numerous complaints from iPhone buyers—including at least one on the Macworld staff —about long, drawn-out issues with activating their phones. Still others have complained about poor customer service on the part of Apple and AT&T during the product’s first days of existence. Without downplaying those issues, it’s worth noting that neither Apple nor AT&T has ever released a product like this before, and it’s not surprising that both companies are still figuring out how to handle the attendant customer-support issues. If you’re changing from a different carrier and are skittish about AT&T handling the changeover, you might want to wait a few weeks until the initial surge of iPhone sales drop off and both companies have learned some valuable lessons about how to handle iPhone activations.
If you’re not sure AT&T is the right carrier for you, despite your interest in the iPhone, my advice is even more amorphous: Find someone who uses AT&T and who uses their phone in the same places you do, more or less. See how their experience is. Or ask a friend to borrow their AT&T phone for a couple of hours and take it to the places you tend to use yours, so you can see for yourself.
Macworld’s buying advice
In both hardware and software, the iPhone is a truly new creation. In the technology industry, we tend to call these “1.0 products,” and many savvy consumers choose to wait until a second version arrives, presumably with the original version’s bugs worked out.
The iPhone certainly has room to grow, and there’s no doubt that future versions will build on the impressive list of features in this initial product. But let there be no doubt: this first iPhone is an impressively polished product, with none of the haphazardness that we’ve come to associate with anything 1.0.
Among its liabilities are some features that ideally would be addressed via software updates, including adding instant-messaging support, some method of selecting text and moving it between programs, a faster quick-dial feature, Flash support in Safari, and improvements to the Notes program including the ability to sync it with the Mac. Other weaknesses, like its lack of support for faster cellular networks and absence of GPS capabilities, will have to wait for a new version of the iPhone’s hardware.
But the iPhone’s positives vastly outweigh its negatives. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware with a gorgeous high-resolution screen and a carefully designed, beautiful interface inside. The iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard will end up pleasing all but the most resistant Blackberry thumb-typers, making it an excellent device for e-mail. Its Safari browser cleverly condenses full-blown Web pages into a format that’s readable on a small screen. Its iPod features make it a versatile audio player and a drop-dead gorgeous video player. And, yes, it does pretty well at making phone calls, too.
To put it more simply: The iPhone is the real deal. It’s a product that has already changed the way people look at the devices they carry in their pockets and purses. After only a few days with mine, the prospect of carrying a cellphone with me wherever I go no longer fills me with begrudging acceptance, but actual excitement.
Use of your iPhone 3GS and battery power
April 12, 2010
The 3GS has a longer battery life and is twice as fast as iPhone 3G. The Iphones have built in rechargeable lithium batteries charged via USB to your computer system or a power adapter.
The battery life on the 3GS can give you 5 hours of talk time and 300 hours standby. Internet use of up to 5 hours on 3G networks but up to 9 hours on Wi-Fi. You have up to 30 hours audio playback available and video playback of up to 10 hours.
HSDPA on the 3GS gives faster maximum download speeds (up to 7.2 Mbps). Tethering allows the iPhone to be used as a 3G data modem for mobile broadband for a laptop or netbook – but you will have to purchase an additional Internet Tethering Bolt On which will cost you £15 a month with a 3GB cap or £29.36 with a 10GB cap. Please visit our recommended iPhone stores online to learn more.
Refurbished iphones available on Vodafone
April 11, 2010
News fresh from Vodafone…
£5 OFF the standard monthly contract when you buy a refurbished iphone handset from Vodafone
The iPhone is a great handset and chances are that if you don’t have one, you would probably like one! Refurbished iPhones are now available at £5 less on each tariff (compared to when purchased new), making price less of a barrier and the phone itself more accessible!
Vodafone carefully check and test all refurbished iphones – so they look and work just like new. You get a battery, charger and user guide with your iphone, plus pay monthly handsets also come with a warranty that lasts as long as your contract (PAYG handsets come with a 12-month manufacturer warranty). In short, you benefit from great deals on often popular handsets, without the risks commonly expected!
Check out the offer on the Vodafone website.
iPhone apps are clogging up networks
April 7, 2010
In spite of the fact that we will be paying £6 -a-year tax on landlines to enable a faster cable broadband network, the public is showing a preference for mobile data networks. The big 5 mobile phone companies all offer powerful, internet-connected smartphones packed with apps able to surf the net, email and access social networking sites on the move. Customers love the range of apps available to them and 950 apps a day are being added to the 150,000 already in the App Store for iPhone. So what is the problem?
Over Xmas, O2, the UK’s biggest network with 3 million smartphones users -2million of these are iPhones- suffered clogging up of its 3G data service. The sheer number of connections made by smartphones was the root of the problem. Derek McManus, O2’s chief technology officer admits that phones loaded with apps often exhibit ‘chatty’ behaviour. For example, the app that looks for Facebook messages connects with the network every eight seconds. When you are not making a phonecall, or surfing the web, or downloading data, your iPhone is still checking for messages, or email, more than 7 times per minute and tying up the software used by the nearest phone mast. This repetitive activity can deny another user a connection and/or slow down the connections. Because of the growth in apps the situation is getting worse as every month passes. The arrival of Apple iPad will strain services even further. During the 18months that O2 had exclusive contracts with iPhone, the amount of traffic sent over its data network increased 20-fold and is continuing to double every 4 months!
In order to resolve this problem we need more transmitters -the more phone masts we have available the easier it becomes to supply us with a faster service and the less clogged our networks. O2 spent £30m in 2009 erecting more masts in and around London. The merger of T-Mobile and Orange later this year should enable them to be more flexible regarding connections. However, to meet the predicted rise in traffic we need 4G, known as LTE, and trials of one single 4G network in Slough already has the same data-carrying capacity as the entire 3G system of one of the big five. However, it is going to take years to go 4G countrywide and the bad news is that 4g requires new masts AND new handsets too …. so your iPhone is only compatible with the present 3G networks. We are stuck with a 3G system that rarely achieves advertised mobile network speeds of 7.2mps. A survey of 50,000 mobile network users found the following average UK network speeds:
Vodafone 1.186mbps
T-Mobile 1.089mbps
O2 0.929 mbps
Three 0.920mbps
Orange 0.823mbps
When speeds are ranked by region they range from the fastest Northern England 1.046mbps to the slowest Northern Ireland 0.659mbps – which is below the level required for broadband. By comparison, the average speed of landline broadband connection is 4.1mbps, according to Ofcom- about 15% of the UK population still cannot get a 3G signal. We really need more investment in the UK’s mobile phone network to provide good 3G signals across Britain.