Apple iPhone 3GS Review

Despite commanding just a small percentage in terms of sales within the smartphone market, when it comes to hype, the Apple iPhone is in a league of its own. Since the initial launch, the iPhone soon became the handset by which media types would make their comparison with other smartphone devices. Which, to be honest, wasn’t really adequate, with the features on the original iPhone no more than you would have expected to have seen on original GSM handsets. Despite the lack of features, what the iPhone really had that won over many fans was the user interface. Slick, well designed, ease of use, the iPhone interface is probably the best out there in the smartphone market, and if there is one area the more established manufacturers need to look at with their own products, they wouldn’t go far wrong looking at the UI.

Apple have now launched the third edition of the handset, the Apple iPhone 3GS, and we are going to take a look and see what improvements have been made. And we’ll start with the camera. Despite being mediocre at best, the iPhone II with a 2.0 Megapixel camera is the most used cameraphone for uploading pictures to Flickr. Surprisingly, by quite some margin too. But if there is one feature that the iPhone lacked that allowed other smartphone users to smugly lord it over iPhone owners, then it was the lack of video recording facility. And, to be fair, they had a point. After all, for a top end smartphone not to be able to offer such a basic feature these days seems very strange. Well, no more do iPhone users have to listen to S60, or Microsoft smartphone users gloating away, because the new iPhone 3GS finally includes video recording, as standard, and at a fairly acceptable 30 fps, VGA, too. And, thanks to the excellent Apple UI, uploading videos from the phone to the web is as simple as you would expect.

The main camera itself is also enhanced, now moving up to 3.2 Megapixel, with auto focus, touch focus and geo tagging. The interesting feature here is the touch focus, which allows you to focus in on a particular area of the picture just by touching the screen. And finally, we have an iPhone that includes MMS as standard! Yep, Apple have caught up with the picture messaging craze and you can now send pictures from your iPhone as MMS without having to resort to third party apps to do this for you.

The ‘S’ in the name of the new iPhone stands for speed. And speed the phone certainly has, with support for HSDPA Mobile Broadband included, up to 7.2 Mbps. There is also included support for WiFi, GPRS and EDGE, for those times when you are not in 3G coverage or in a country where 3G is still not active.

Internally, the phone has received some enhancements, with memory on the device now available in either 16GB or 32GB options, offering plenty of room for storing videos, pictures, and music. Thanks to the gorgeous iPhone screen, video playback is a real pleasure on the handset, with crisp, clear definition. The screen itself measures in at 3.5 inches, and as before is a capacitive TFT touchscreen, supporting up to 16 million colours. The phone has a multi touch input method and a built in accelerometer for automatic screen rotation from portrait to landscape mode. The screen is covered by toughened, scratch resistant glass, and there is a proximity sensor, which disables the touchscreen when you are in a call.

GPS support is included on the iPhone, with additional support via aGPS. Google Maps is supplied on the device, and the whole mapping experience on the iPhone works really well, probably one of the best experiences on a mobile phone. The device also includes a digital compass, so you can get a grip on your bearings if you happen to lose your way.

Overall the new iPhone 3GS is a worthy successor to previous models. It is clear that Apple have worked hard to bring in features that any modern mobile user has come to expect as standard on their phones, such as video recording and MMS. The enhancement of the internal memory is also a welcome bonus, as is the inclusion of HSDPA for web browsing. The early hype of the iPhone was always something to be jeered, what with the limitations on the device, but now Apple have a serious smartphone, well equipped to face down its competitors in a feature-by-feature fight out. Now we need to see if Apple can bring this level of features and this level of UI in a few devices of different design. Now that is something I would like to see.

O2 have come under fire from current iPhone subscribers who are unhappy with the upgrade tariffs and charges, however if you are considering an iPhone for the first time, tariffs start from £29.38 a month (18 month contract) . Stock expected to be released to customers June 18th 2009.

Apple iPhone 3GS Video Tour

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