The iPhone 3Gs is Here: My First Impressions

Let's face it, the iPhone 3GS is loaded with hype.  There isn't one thing about it that hasn't been described as "great," "amazing," or "better," and so on.  While it didn't get the revolutionary attention and wasn't as far a leap as the 3G and OS 2 was, expectations were high.

So how did it go down yesterday?  Let's discuss.If you preordered your 3GS, you did pretty well if you did it right away.  I ordered mine the day after WWDC and Friday morning, right on schedule, Fedex popped into my office at around 10:45 and handed me the box.  Oddly enough, it shipped from Ingram Micro, not directly from Apple.  I guess Apple isn't equipped to handle that kind of fulfillment demand?

Knowing the procedure with an iPhone is important.  You're not supposed to swap SIMS from the old phone to the new one.  Instead, you're meant to plug into iTunes and activate.  That initiates a SIM swap and activates the phone.  It's amazing how bad Apple is at this part of the process.  If you're a new activation, it goes very quickly, but if you're upgrading...  Wow...  It can be painful most of the time.

For example, upon plugging in and finishing the initial copy of stuff over, I saw this message indicating I would have a really crappy wait...

Wait, there's an FAQ!  Obviously, that'll be helpful!

Any questions?  Thought not.

Damn was I annoyed.  I knew it was coming, though, so I wasn't that surprised.  I let the initial backup finish and then took the phone off my MacBook Pro and opened the SIM Slot and popped my old SIM in, violating rule number one of the Apple Universe, and just like that, I was up and running.  I knew I'd have a problem when the activation finished, though, so I taped the "SIM Removal Tool" and the new SIM to a piece of paper and put them in my wallet just in case the activation finished while I was out with my wife last night.

At 7:53pm, my wife got the E-Mail (she's the primary on the account)...

Sure enough, my phone stopped accepting phone calls.  A switch of the SIM and I was up and running.  Surprisingly easy.

Some people are still waiting for their activation to finish at this very moment, but I think in the end they'll be done quicker than they think.  I can't imagine the load is as high now as it was this morning as Fedex started dropping off boxes to the first batch of preorders.

So what about the phone itself?

Physically, if you've seen the 3G, you've seen the 3Gs.  In fact, if I put both in your hands and didn't tell you which was which, you wouldn't know.  The box is slightly smaller, but there's nothing different, aside from one thing that came out of nowhere and, despite how silly it seems, it really does work! The iPhone 3Gs has an oleophobic screen, which, to put it bluntly, means all that ear and face funk won't get stuck to the screen.  Don't believe me?  Try it.  I didn't buy it either, but the results are hard to ignore.  Gearlog checked it out, also, and found it lived up to the hype.

As for the screen itself, it seems slightly cooler than my original iPhone, but not annoyingly so...

Figure 4: I know it's slightly out of focus, but it was the closest representation to the actual screens I was able to shoot.

All in all, hardware wise, the biggest changes are the invisible ones; namely the faster CPU that makes opening apps much snappier and switching them much smoother.  It doesn't take long for you to realize just how much faster the 3Gs is than the 3G.  It boots faster, loads apps (to readiness) faster, and bounces screen to screen much faster.  It's understandable where the "S" comes in.

Of course, the most important hardware upgrade is the one made to the camera which now includes video recording, and a 3.2 megapixel sensor with autofocus.  The tap function to autofocus is absolutely brilliant in practice.  In fact, it's one of those things that's like "damn, why didn't someone else think of this?"  I hope at some point Canon or Nikon adopts the idea, too.  Nikon is already making consumer level cameras with a touch screen, so it wouldn't be a big leap.  Here's a sample shot...

And of course with this new camera comes video ability and the quality is very good.  It's not on par with the quality from a smartphone like the Samsung Omnia (which shoots brilliant HD video), but it is quite comparable to the Nokia N95 which, for the longest time, was the standard for video on mobile phones.  The iPhone shoots video at 640 x 480 x 30 and video is crisp and the colors are well-saturated.  As could be expected, the quality in low light suffers, but no more than you would expect from the integrated sensor in a phone's camera.  Below is a sample of the video from the iPhone 3Gs.

Overall, the improvements to the camera are quite noticeable.  The one thing that lingers is the abysmal launch time and write time after taking a picture, but at least the quality of the camera makes the wait worth it.

Another addition to the 3Gs is Voice Control, and frankly, it isn't that great.  It works okay for controlling iTunes, but I found it to be seriously unreliable in recognizing names in my phone book.  I hope this is improved with a few updates over the next few months because it's a feature with a lot of potential.

Overall, the 3Gs is about refinement and performance, though, and that's what you notice most.  For example, in the Maps application, the magnetometer will orient the map correctly based on the way you're facing making it much easier to read along as you're following directions. The battery meter will now show you a percentage, not just a graphical representation of the remaining battery power (something I've been dying for since my first iPhone!).  Little things, sure, but important ones, and those aren't counting the enhancements that came along a few days earlier with OS 3.0.

So what's the windup?

Well, here's the thing.

If you have an iPhone 3G and you don't care about video or the speed increase, you'll be very happy with it as long as you want to keep it.  In reality, I don't see the speed updates and video as being worth the upgrade price it'll cost you if you're outside of AT&T's ever-changing parameters for an upgrade.

That being said, if you're the "cutting ege" type and like to have the latest and greatest, or if you just need a little more wiggle room as far as storage goes (that was my main reason for upgrading, honestly) then go grab the 3Gs.  While it's more evolutionary than revolutionary (much in the way 3.0 was mostly an evolution of 2.0) it'll still scratch that itch for something new and give you just enough newness to justify the purchase.

I for one am glad I bought it and I have a feeling I'll be holding on to this one for a year, too.  The 3G is the first phone I've ever had in my entire life for a year.  Being in the business, I'm very easily swayed into buying a new phone, but the one thing I won't do is not have an iPhone.  As far as I'm concerned, there are no better phones on the market, and the 3Gs is a worthy successor to a very good line of phones.

Vincent Ferrari is an Apple fan, videoblogger, blogger, writer, and all-around geek from the Bronx. He works in the IT Department of a cellular phone company that shall not be named, and lives in a very comfortable apartment with his lovely wife, two lovely cats, three Macs, two iPhones, and God-knows-how-many iPods of varying age.