iPhone is back and this time it is even better.

Sum and Substance

Thumbs Up

Faster than previous models, great new features like MMS, voice dialing, video editing, voice recording. Great music quality.

Thumbs Down

Bad 3g signal, no USB mass storage, no multi tasking, no FM

Inside the Trunk

Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Techonology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Phone design: Candy Bar
Caller ID: Yes
Additional Features: Digital compass, Music player, Camera, etc.

The Whiz Kid Speaks

OS 3.0, Supported Email protocols – POP3 , IMAP4, GPRS, EDGE, Safari browser, HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), PDF support , Microsoft Word support , Microsoft Excel support, GPS, 32 GB Flash memory, 1 x Headset jack – Mini-phone 3.5 mm, Display 3.5 inch TFT LCD, Resolution 320X480 pixels.
Video Format Playback – H.264 , MPEG-4, 3 MP Camera, Video resolution 640 x 480 (VGA)

Razzle Dazzle

Apple always has but beauty of its products on the top of the list. Apple also revolutionized the way phones are used. It was the first touch screen ever to go with out a stylus, and it brought a smart phone to a common man, rather than reserving it just for businessmen.

The user friendliness was always there. Phones of this class were very complicated to use before and people used to take lots of time to master a device like a smartphone. Apple’s obsession with simplicity is clear from their iPods. All iPod Nano had was a click wheel and 4 set of buttons on it.

Apple iPhone 3GS uses the same theme of simplicity, the phone is amazingly simple and intuitive. There has been no change of looks in Apple iPhone 3GS from the previous models. The change is in the inside, Apple claims that the speed has improved (the ‘G’ in 3GS stands for speed) and some customer demands have been taken care of.

Inside DopeiPhone 3GS is a lot faster than the previous models of Apple, the processor speed has been improved and it delivers by serving applications faster. The previous version of Apple had 412 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM, iPhone 3GS is 600 MHz processor with 256 MB of RAM. The amount of  memory has doubled you’d expect this phone to perform twice as faster, well you won’t be disappointed. But we were never unhappy with the way iPhone 3g and iPhone classic performed. We always thought that the iPhone was fast enough. Applications like Bejeweled which take up to  11 seconds to load on the previous version, loads in iPhone 3GS in 5 seconds! And Pocket God which opened on iPhone in 30 seconds needed only 11 seconds in iPhone 3GS to start up. iPhone 3GS also boots faster than the earlier ones when you start the phone. iPhone 3GS takes 26 seconds and iPhone 3G or iPhone classic will take up to 50 seconds to boot.

Some might say that the iPhone classic or 3G wasn’t that slow but if you use this model for a long time you will know the difference. The time taken to open an application, especially the Spotlight feature (more about that later) is significantly low.

The phone has a camera in the back, like most phones do; the camera is upgraded from two mega pixel to three mega pixel. We have always been wary of camera phones because their photo quality isn’t always up to the mark. We have been looking hard for a phone that has a good camera. The iPhone 3GS has a decent quality camera but it is not that good. It is certainly better than the two mega pixel camera which the phone earlier had.

Apple has now lent the camera features to the new generation iPod Nano also. But the camera is located at the bottom left of the back panel which makes it very difficult to use.

Talking of this camera, there is a new feature called “Tap to focus”. When you point to the object in the lens there is a box which comes up. You have to adjust the camera in such a way that the box encloses the object you want to click. You tap on the box once and then the camera then will adjust the color, contrast, white balance and exposure accordingly. Or you can make the box move yourself to highlight the object in your camera. If you don’t use this feature then the entire frame is selected. The main point of using the “Tap to focus” feature is that the camera makes the highlighted objects look good in the picture. A flash on the camera would have made things a lot better and clearer.

iPhone 3GS has digital compass built in where in you can know which direction you are facing. The direction will also give you details about the latitude and longitude in place which you are standing. The compass points the north direction and moves as you move along. Make sure there is not much interference around when you use the magnetic compass. The iPhone 3GS is also integrated with Google maps and a single tap on the button on the lower left corner of the compass brings up Google maps and it shows which direction you are facing. Google maps also now show 3D view of buildings.

We had been screaming loud for the Apple iPhone to have a voice control feature and now the company has finally heard out prayers and given voice control feature in iPhone 3GS. Hands free feature always comes in handy, sometimes your hands are in the middle of something else, or there are laws which prohibit using phones without hands free while driving.

With voice control, as you are already familiar with, call contacts on the phone. You activate it by long pressing the home button, until the application starts. You can dial a number by speaking out the number loud or by saying the name of the contact. You will get an audio confirmation before the iPhone 3GS starts dialing. If the phone is not dialing the correct number you select the “undo” button on the screen. The feature is speaker independent and you don’t need to train it to your voice, you can use the feature as soon as you get the phone.

We tested the voice control and we were pretty happy with the results. The feature may occasionally stutter and if you have two similar sounding names in your contact book, you might have to speak out clearly.

If you have a contact and you have more than one entry in the contact like two numbers then it will ask you if you want to dial work, home, etc. And if you have two contacts with similar name it will ask you for your choice, showing options on the screen.

The voice controls is also available for the music features. You can ask a song to be played or you can take the name of the artist album etc and the phone will play the tracks for you. This is not all you can go back to the previous track or pause or skip to the next song all by voice commands. If you say shuffle, the player will start shuffling songs in the play list. The play list can also be started through voice command. We really liked the voice command feature in the phone; it took voice command to the next level.

You can ask which song is being played and the phone will give you the name of the track and the name of the artist. If you are playing a song and you like the track then you can say ‘play more songs like this’ and the Apple’s AI plays songs which you want. We haven’t seen such voice commands ever in a gadget.

There is camera in the phone so this gives way to video recording as well. Video recording is not a great; it is a VGA quality video camera. The camera shoots at 30 fps and the video quality is not that bad but it is not that good either. Videos don’t look that crisp and clear.

The video editing tool is fun to use. You can slide the cursor to any point in the seek bar and the video will start playing from there. Then you can touch the other end of the video where you want the video to be cut. The border turns yellow; you can shorten the clip by dragging either end toward your desired cutoff point. Once you are done, press the “Trim” button and your video is ready.

There is video editing feature but we were frustrated with this because when ever we edited a photo it over writes the video rather than storing it as a new file. Also you can’t cut a video from the middle and then join the other two ends of the video.
Tap to focus feature can be used here as well. After recording your clip you can send it through e-mail or upload it directly to YouTube.

iPhone 3GS also includes support for Nike+iPod, where you get an sensor to put in you Nike pair of shoes. You can track your pace and the distance traveled. When you turn the application on it will show in the home screen on the phone and the headphone becomes responsive to voice controls, you can adjust volume, answer calls and control music and video playback.

Apple has finally put in QWERTY virtual keyboard in landscape mode. Earlier the keyboard was available only in Safari browser and you had to do with a portrait mode keyboard for text messaging and e-mail. But now this feature has been put to use to other applications too. The QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode is much easier to use since you get a wider keyboard and the keys are more spacey. Typing with the portrait mode of the keyboard was awful.

iPhone 3GS also supports MMS. This is a big addition, all phones have been known to have this function and we wonder what made Apple leave it out in the first place in the previous models. The carrier AT&T says it is not ready to accommodate MMS as of now and are working fast to get the feature going. But once you get the green signal you can use MMS to send audio, video files and map locations. We tested the MMS feature and we found it user-friendly. When using the MMS feature a small camera icon appears next to the writing area. If you tap it you can take a new picture or send the picture that is already clicked. This feature is included because you may want to click the picture again to make it better than the previous one before you send it. Photo appears in the typing area when you are doing typing so you can always take a one last good look at it and make up you mind before sending it.

For text messaging there are new features put in. There are features of cut, copy and paste in the phone. You select the area by your fingers and then get to the pasting area and tap the screen again and select paste. As soon as you select a piece of text you get the options of copy paste and cut. You can use the cut copy paste function in e-mail and notes too. Using the three functions in Safari browser needed a little practice. The double tap feature 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.

It can be a pain in the neck to search for a contact name from the huge list. There is a Spotlight feature come to your rescue here. You can put the name of the contact and the Spotlight feature will get back to you with the results. You can also use this feature for calendar entries, music, notes, etc.

Other features on the iPhone 3GS worth mentioning are get push notifications, a shake-to-shake feature for the iPod player, expanded parental controls, notes syncing for Macs and PCs, the capability to forward meeting invites and contacts, the option to change the default destination for the home button, and additional wallpaper. Tapping and holding a web link in the Safari browser will give you a new menu with choices to open the link, open it in another page, copy the link or save an image.

Nitty Gritty

iPhone 3GS is a good phone and vast improvements have been made in it. But some of our needs still remain unanswered. The phone doesn’t support multi tasking. Now smart phones are known to handle multi tasking.

We cannot change the look and the feel of the device (like Nokia’s “themes” concept) our other discrepancies are no file manager feature; you must use iTunes to transfer files and other media from computer to the phone. There is no USB mass storage for the phone which means that you can use the huge 32 GB memory to store your data files. You cannot use the phone as a USB pen drive device. There is no support for flash on the Safari browser either. Still with these short comings we think that Apple will improve with other models and we think that the iPhone 3GS is certainly better than the earlier iPhone models. Go buy this one if you don’t have iPhone or iPhone 3G.

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