Review: iPhone 3GS

Over 40 million people owned an iPhone (or an iPod Touch) before Apple released the iPhone 3GS.  Because you are reading this website, chances are that number includes you.  Should you upgrade to a new iPhone 3GS?  It's a big decision, and one that I tried to focus on as I have been using my iPhone 3GS over the past week.  If you are a heavy iPhone user and if you are eligible for the discounted price, I think you will really appreciate the upgrade.  Here is why.

How much will it cost?

If money was no object, everyone would want to upgrade.  For example, virtually every iPhone owner should upgrade to iPhone Software 3.0 because it includes great features and it is free.  But there is a cost, and that cost depends upon your particular circumstances.  AT&T has this page describing its upgrade policy for the iPhone 3GS, but here it is in brief:

1. If you own the original iPhone, sold from June 29, 2007 to July 10, 2008, then it is virtually certain that AT&T will let you take advantage of the discounted prices that it offers new customers, especially if you bought that iPhone in 2007.  For you, an iPhone 3GS will cost $199 for the 16 GB version or $299 for the 32 GB version.  By paying this price, you will lock in to a new two year commitment with AT&T.
2. If you own an iPhone 3G, sold from July 11, 2008 until today, then the formula becomes somewhat more complicated.  You can purchase a new iPhone 3GS for the discounted prices only if (1) you purchased your iPhone 3G during July, August or September of 2008, (2) you have been paying your bills on time and your account is in good standing and (3) you pay AT&T over $99 a month.  All AT&T iPhone owners must pay $30 for the data plan, but if you have the minimum 450 minute $40 voice plan, then you are only at $70 (or $90 if you add on the top $20 unlimited text messaging plan) so you are not over the $99 threshold.  But if you have the 900 minute or higher plan and/or have text messaging on your account, then you are over the threshold.  Even if you have the minimum minute plans with no text messaging, you may still be paying over $100 a month if you have a family plan.  This was the situation that I was in; although I have the cheapest phone plan and no text message plan, my wife also has an iPhone, so AT&T views my total account as an over $100 a month account because of my wife.  (Thanks, honey!)
3. If you are an iPhone 3G owner but don't meet those three requirements, then you cannot take advantage of the discounted price.  You will likely than have to pay the Early Upgrade price of $399 for the 16 GB / $499 for the 32 GB.  Ouch.
4. Any customer always has the option of paying the No Commitment price of $599 / $699 which gets you the new phone without a two year commitment to stay with AT&T.  Of course, you cannot (legally) use your iPhone with any other carrier in the U.S., so this option will appeal to few people.

What are the new features?

Compared to the iPhone 3G, here is what is added:

1. Speed
2. Better camera for still pictures
3. Video camera
4. Voice Control
5. More storage: 32 GB in the higher end model, 16 GB in the entry model
6. Compass
7. Slightly better battery life
8. The included headphones now have volume buttons (and you can now use the volume controls on the Apple In-Ear Headphones)
9. Support for Nike + iPod, which you can use if you have Nike+ shoes (or a shoe-mounted pouch) and the $19 Nike Sensor for your shoe
10. An optional battery percentage indicator next to the icon at the top of the screen showing remaining battery life.
11. An oleophobic coating on the screen which helps to resist fingerprints

In my opinion, the first five features are real reasons for iPhone 3G owners to consider upgrading.  The remaining features are nice, but unless you have special needs (perhaps you run with your iPhone and would really appreciate the Nike + iPod feature, or you are a boy scout leader and really want a compass on your iPhone) the remaining features are unlikely to be worth the upgrade price.

Thus, I will focus the rest of this review on those first few features.  Having said that, I do encourage you to read some of the more comprehensive reviews of the iPhone 3GS to get all of the nitty gritty details on all 11 new features.  The brand new website gdgt has lots of great information on the iPhone 3GS, including this helpful page which links to around three dozen iPhone 3GS reviews (although it misses some good ones, especially Andy Ihnatko's review in the Chicago Sun Times).  To narrow down the list for you, I think that these are the best reviews to read if you are trying to decide whether to upgrade:

• Macworld
• Ars Technica
• iLounge
• New York Times
• Engadget
• Wall Street Journal
• Chicago Sun-Times

Speed

There is no real question about the #1 reason that I am happy that I upgraded to the iPhone 3GS.  Apple says the "S" in 3GS is for speed, claiming that the iPhone 3GS is twice as fast as the iPhone 3G.  I haven't tested the speed myself—and some people who have done so find that the 3GS is even more than two times faster—but what really matters to me is the responsiveness of the phone.  The 3GS is much more responsive that the 3G.  Launching apps is so much faster.  Switching apps happens very quickly.  The typewriter is much more responsive, and not once have I seen a key freeze for a second as it raises while I am typing, something that my old 3G did from time to time.  Web browsing is so much faster that when you are on 3G, you will think you are on Wi-Fi, and when you are Wi-Fi, you will think that your bandwidth somehow increased.

The increased responsiveness makes the iPhone much more pleasant to use.  My calendar and contacts have tons of entries, but on the 3GS they pop right up with no lag as I scroll.  Safari on my iPhone 3G was a great experience because Safari does a great job of rendering web pages, but Safari on my 3GS is an excellent experience because pages jump up almost as quickly as they do on my computer.  And it is no longer any bother at all when one of my apps (such as a Twitter client or an RSS reader) wants to open another app (such as E-mail or Safari or YouTube) because it all happens so quickly.  Also, because part of the speed increase comes from more internal memory on the iPhone, [UPDATE 7/8/09:  see here for more on this] games that are memory hogs run much much better on the iPhone 3GS.  For example, I have a game called Guitar Rock Tour which, on my iPhone 3G, would sometimes have the flying notes get ever so slightly out of sync with the music, which is frustrating in any Guitar Hero-type game.  The game doesn't have that problem on the 3GS, nor have I seen the game crash once.

I realize that part of the charm is that the iPhone 3GS is new.  We all know what it is like to get a new computer and have it feel so fast, but a year later the speed just seems "normal" and by two or more years out that same computer starts to feel slow.  Perceived speed is relative.  There will surely come a time when the speed of the iPhone 3GS will start to feel normal, but even then I suspect that I will still appreciate having a very responsive device in my hands.

In sum, the added speed to the iPhone 3GS is really great.  If you are a frequent user of your iPhone, then you will find yourself appreciating the increased speed every day, throughout the day.

Better camera

The 3GS camera is better in two ways.  First, it is a 3 megapixel camera versus the 2 megapixel camera in prior iPhones (2048 x 1536 versus 1600 x 1200).  That alone makes pictures look better.  Many of the iPhone 3GS reviews have done an excellent job of showing side-by-side pictures that compare the 3G to the 3GS.  For example, look at these pictures in the Macworld and the iLounge reviews.  Those examples do such a good job that I haven't set up any side-by-side tests myself, but I can definitely tell that my pictures are better.  For example, here are two pictures that I took this weekend  Click on each picture to see the full size, unedited pictures.

  

As you can see, the picture quality is actually quite good when you are in daylight.  But even more than the increased pixels, what really makes this a better camera is the improved ability to focus.  Just tap on an area of the screen.  A box will go around whatever is in the image where you touched and the iPhone will adjust not just the focus, but also the exposure and white balance. For example, in the first of these two pictures, I tapped on the desk, and on the  second picture I tapped on the face of the watch.  Again, you can click for full-size versions, but even from the smaller version you can see that the difference is dramatic.

  

With the ability to control focus, the camera on the iPhone becomes much more powerful, and this is often the difference between having a usable picture or a useless picture.  For example, in the past, I have tried to take a picture of a page of handwritten notes on a legal pad, and the results were almost always terrible.  But with the iPhone 3GS I can use the manual focus feature to get images that are very readable, saving me the trouble of taking home a note pad when I just want to have quick access while I am at home to what I scribbled down during a meeting in the office.

Let's be perfectly clear:  the iPhone camera is still just a phone camera.  I own a great digital SLR camera (a Nikon D50 with an amazing 18-200 mm lens) and for times when I want to take good pictures, there is no question what I will want to use.  But for those times when you just want to take a quick picture, having the iPhone 3GS with you means that you can take decent pictures when the light is good, and often a merely decent picture is fabulous when the alternative is no picture at all.

Video camera

Another key new feature is the ability to take video. Much like with the still camera, when the light is good, you can get decent quality video.  For example, here is a quick video I shot of one of my son's games.  The quality of what YouTube is showing you seems a little worse than the original file on my computer (the original is a little sharper and less jerky), but this gives you an idea of what you can get with an iPhone 3GS.  The colors are actually quite good.

One problem with using something like an iPhone as a video camera is that it is very difficult to keep the iPhone still, resulting in video that can cause motion sickness.  You can see this in the video I posted above:  watch the pattern in the carpet during the video and you will see it jump all over the place even though I did my best to hold my hand steady.  But if you have a Mac, one nice feature of the built-in iMovie software (the current version, iMovie '09) is the ability to stabilize video.  The software zooms in slightly to do this trick, so you lose a little around the edges, but the results are quite good.  Here is that same video, stabilized.  You can click play on both this one and the above one at the same time to easily compare the difference:

The point is that even though hand shake is one of the major problems with a video camera in a device like the iPhone, it is easy to correct this on a Mac.  (I don't know if there is anything as cheap and powerful as iMovie for the PC, but I presume that there is software out there that does this same trick.)  

Another problem with the video is that you have little control over the focus.  Just like with the still camera, you can tap on an object to tell the iPhone to focus on that object.  But then once you start taking video, that focus point stays the same and cannot be changed.  Since videos inherently involve motion, this can be a problem as the subject of the video moves.  For example, here is a short video I took of a streetcar passing through the Garden District in New Orleans.  I'm not sure what the iPhone was focusing on at the start of the video—I guess something across the street or maybe a passing car—but when the streetcar passes, it is not in focus.  Note that this version was stabilized using iMovie to save you from feeling nauseous due to my hand shaking:

Enough about the negative, let's focus on the positive.  The iPhone 3GS takes 640 x 480 video at 30 fps.  This doesn't compare to an HD video camera, but it is better than then the VHS-C video camera that I used from 1995 to 2007, and I created a lot of great memories with that old video camera.  And that is really why I love having video in the iPhone 3GS.  Often, the quality comes not from the number of pixels but instead from the content.  The video quality of the iPhone 3GS is good enough that you will pay attention to the content.  Perfect example:  while playing around with the video functions this past weekend, I took a short video of my son while my wife and I were playing the board game Candy Land with him.  The video is great, even when viewed on a large 57" TV screen, because my son said a lot of funny things that were captured in the video.  I suspect that years from now I will find myself watching the video again to remind me of the the funny things that a three year old can do and say.  I would have never bothered to go and find my HD video camera, but my iPhone 3GS was there, so I used it, and I'm glad I did.

One of the more interesting iPhone 3GS reviews is by camcorderinfo.com, a site that—you guessed it—reviews camcorders.  They prepared an exhaustive, 17 part review of the iPhone 3GS the same way that they would review any other camcorder, humorously throwing all of the other features of the iPhone like phone, e-mail, apps etc. into the "other features" category.  While obviously not in the same league as any HD video camera, they found that the video camera on the iPhone 3GS is actually quite good, concluding:

Apple-haters, you may want to look away. The iPhone 3G S performed very, very well under our battery of tests. The color accuracy rivaled that of camcorders in its class and better, including the high definition Flip and Sony Webbie. The low light performance was impressive, making it a good choice as a party camera, considering its diminutive size.

                            *    *    *

In short, the iPhone 3G S is a surprisingly capable camcorder. It's at least as good as the standard definition Flip Mino, and offers an exceptionally intuitive interface that far exceeds the typical, labyrinthine experience of a full-featured video camera. Lacking HD, it falls short of being a complete replacement, but we are very impressed with Apple's first time out on the field.

Speaking of HD, I have to think that just as Flip and other manufacturers of tiny video camera started out with SD versions and then came out with equally small HD versions, Apple will one day have an HD video camera in the iPhone.  In fact, I've seen reports that the iPhone 3GS can technically handle HD 720p video, but presumably Apple is not enabling that feature because, among other problems, it would severely drain the battery.  I wonder if the June, 2010 version of the iPhone will be called the iPhone HD and add HD video and better pictures?

Voice Control

Hold down the Home button on the iPhone 3GS and you jump into Voice Control mode, where you can talk to your iPhone to have it call someone or play music on the iPod app.  Helpfully, the possible commands that you can say float by in the background when Voice Control is on.  In my experiences, sometimes this feature works great, but other times it misunderstands me and reminds me of that classic clip from the Simpsons that makes fun of the handwriting recognition on the Apple Newton.  

Because it sometimes doesn't work, and because I don't find that I have much of a need to use Voice Control, I really haven't used it very much this past week.  And I was tempted to tell you that Voice Control isn't a good reason to upgrade when I ran across this post from my friend and fellow New Orleans lawyer Ernie "the attorney" Svenson.  I respect Ernie's opinions quite a bit, and he believes that Voice Control is the "best new feature" of the iPhone 3GS.  He demonstrates why in this part of his post:

The advantage of the headset becomes obvious once you've used it a few times.  Before I got the new phone here's what would happen if wanted to make a call.  

1. Take phone out of pocket
2. Swipe to turn on 
3. Navigate to phone, and then to contacts within phone 
4. Slide finger carefully along right side to zero in on the contact I want to call 
5. Tap the contact's name 
6. Locate the best phone # to call for that contact 
7. Tap the desired phone # 

  Now, I do this if the phone is in my pocket and I have the headset in my ear

1. Hold down the middle button (equivalent to the 'Home button') until Voice Command announces 
2. Say "call John Appleseed [short pause] mobile'
3. Wait for confirming announcement, which if correct means I just wait for the phone to start ringing. 

Ernie makes a compelling argument, and I suppose I'll have to give Voice Control more time.  If you are trying to decide whether to upgrade, this feature might be an important consideration.

Increased storage

There isn't much to say here.  If you find that your current iPhone is often full, then you can use more storage.  If not, then you don't need this feature. 

I was frequently running low on space on my 16 GB iPhone 3G, so I appreciate the increased elbow room on the 32 GB iPhone, but it all comes down to video and music.  If you don't store a lot of video and music on your iPhone, then you probably won't need extra storage space.  With few exceptions like this one, it is rare for iPhone apps to take up much space, and you would have to have an insane number of e-mails, contacts and calendar entries for that data to take up much space.

...and the rest

Although I don't consider the other six new features of the iPhone 3GS important enough to justify the upgrade, they are certainly nice.  For example, the compass makes it quick and easy to orient yourself in the Map app.  I don't like the feel of the included iPhone headphones so I use the the Apple In-Ear Headphones, but on either headphone I love being able to change the volume on the headset without having to touch the buttons on the side of the iPhone.  And the oleophobic coating really does work, helping to resist fingerprint smudges and making removing smudges on the screen as quick as a simple swipe on my shirt.

Recommendation

If you use the first generation iPhone, now is the time to upgrade.

If you use the iPhone 3G, and if you consider yourself just a casual iPhone user, then I probably wouldn't worry about upgrading.  Most of what is great about the iPhone 3GS is also in the iPhone 3G.  Wait until next year and you can take advantage of these 11 new features plus presumably many more.

But if you are a more serious iPhone 3G user, one who uses the iPhone every day throughout the day, you will want to give serious consideration to the five new features I outlined above.  There is little question that the new iPhone 3GS would make you happier, and if you are eligible to take advantage of the $199 or $299 price, then for you it may well be worth it.  For less than a dollar a day over the next year, you can have a much more enjoyable iPhone.  It was well worth it for me.  But it would have been a much harder decision if it would have cost me $499, so if you are in that boat, then that's a tough decision and you have my sympathy.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the iPhone 3GS, including why you did or did not upgrade and, if you did, what you like best about the 3GS.  If you have a moment, share your views in the comments.