Gadget Hunter

  

Carefully carried through the office like an unopened birthday present, the Apple iPhone 3G gently made its way to our desk. Floppy-haired co-workers eagerly huddled around, waiting for the screen to turn on and display all the new goodies the iPhone 3G has in store. Questions echoed around the room: would 3G be that much faster than EDGE? Does GPS make it a more useful phone?

There was simply no doubt that this is an exciting product, but after the hype dissolved and people went back to their desks, we had some important questions of our own to answer. If anything, Apple knows how to hype its products and for the most part it delivers, but the original iPhone wasn’t perfect and we were determined to see whether the iPhone 3G had enough to offer over its predecessor to justify an upgrade.

Features
When the iPhone first came out, many people were disappointed to see that it lacked 3G, among other things. As you may have gathered, Apple has fixed this — in fact, it’s gone one better and included HSDPA, which is an even faster version of 3G. And it makes a massive difference. Browsing the Web and watching YouTube videos is lightning fast compared to the old iPhone, which was hamstrung on EDGE. We loaded the Sky News homepage on the original iPhone in 1 minute 40 seconds. The iPhone 3G took just 40 seconds to load the same page — over 2.5 times as fast.

GPS is another addition to the iPhone 3G’s artillery — and it blows the old model to smithereens. Compared to the original iPhone’s cellular and Wi-Fi triangulation, using GPS on the iPhone 3G is far more accurate. GPS pinpointed our location to within metres rather than kilometres. For the time being it only works with Google Maps, which doesn’t do voice navigation. Some pundits have suggested Apple isn’t keen on third-party developers creating navigation apps, but we’ll have to wait and see.

As for other apps, you’ll be glad to know that the App Store is live and already features over 500 programs. You don’t need to use the badly implemented Web-based apps anymore, or unlock your iPhone. Some of the apps come free, while others you have to pay for.

Performance
The iPhone 3G vastly supersedes the old iPhone when it comes to audio quality during calls. You can hear people loud and clear, with no noticeable distortion. The iPhone 3G’s loudspeaker is also louder than its predecessor, but still not as loud as we’d like. Compared to the Nokia N82, the iPhone 3G operates at a whisper, and isn’t great for sharing YouTube videos, for example.

We haven’t had the iPhone long enough at this point to properly test the battery, but from our usage so far, we think it should last for around a day with moderate use of 3G and GPS. We’ll update this section when we’ve exhausted the battery. There is an option to turn the 3G off if you want to save power. It’s annoying that the battery cover still can’t easily be removed, however.

Our Verdict

An Amazing phone however this is really not a revolutionary phone. It’s more like the iPhone we wished Apple made last year. But basics, like cut, copy and paste are still missing. (As is MMS, thanks for the reminder, commenters.) As well are the ability to use the phone like a hard drive. Other than that, we’re hoping for some more revolutionary changes to come by software update. And let’s take a moment to remember how many developers are making killer iPhone programs right this second. Thats the real revolution!