I have owned an iPhone 3G for a few months now and have since found it to be pretty much the most well designed, well thought out phone I have ever used. Now, Apple has a new release, the iPhone 3GS, but what difference is there between the two really, apart from the new price tag? Well let’s have a look.
The iPhone 3G was available with built in memory of either 8GB or 16GB, depending on the model, which was probably enough for just about most things. But with the iPhone 3GS Apple has added another model to its collection which has a massive 32GB of memory, this makes the new addition brilliant for storing things such as Movie’s and many other large files. However, this does come at a price.
Apple has also improved the quality of the camera with the release of the new iPhone 3GS taking it from 2 Megapixels in the iPhone 3G to 3 Megapixels in the new 3GS. They have also added a variety of features including Autofocus and the eagerly awaited Video recording. The new autofocus feature makes the photos taken with the iPhone 3GS much more clear and crisp that with its predecessor and is a much needed addition to the iPhone in order to keep up with its rival competitors. The video quality of the iPhone 3GS is extremely good considering it is still only a 3 Megapixel camera, the video seems to run very smoothly and the sound isn’t bad either. Overall I think Apple has done an excellent job with its camera update.
The new iPhone 3GS comes with a few new features built in. Apple has worked hard to make the new iPhone 3GS work as fast as possible and as a result Apple claim that it is up to twice as fast as the 3G, and from the tests I’ve done, I don’t think they’re far wrong. The performance lives up to what Apple claims and makes simple tasks such as reading Email and browsing the web much quicker and more pleasurable. Another big addition with the 3GS is the Voice Control feature, the idea being that you can control almost everything from simply telling your iPhone what you want, including making calls, playing music and much more. Now, you might think that this sounds like a recipe for disaster but somehow Apple seems to have pulled it off, the voice control very rarely gets it wrong and makes using the new iPhone even easier than ever. Apple has also added a Compass app which comes with the iPhone, which may not seem like something you would really need that often. Nonetheless it is a nice feature and works very well.
Although not by a great deal, Apple has also increased the battery life with the iPhone 3GS raising talk time from 10 hours to 12 hours compared with the 3G, although this is only the case when using a 2G connection speed. They have also increased the battery life when using the internet from 6 hours on Wi-Fi with the 3G to 9 hours with the 3GS and video playback from 7 hours to 10 hours. Although these aren’t such big changes, it is still a nice addition and shows that the folks at Apple are doing their very best to tweak and perfect the iPhone. It also means it can spend more time in your hand and less time charging.
