Apple iPhone 3G S review

Few mobile phones divide people like the iPhone 3G. If you like it you tend to the love the little fella to bits and won't bear any criticism of the blessed phone, the operating system or of Apple.

Those that are impervious to its charms tend to veer off in the opposite direction and lay into everything from its virtual keyboard to the puny camera and inexplicable lack of MMS and video features.

Now the launch of the iPhone 3G S has made things a lot, lot harder indeed for the Apple naysayers.

In fact they may soon be joining the Steve Jobs love fest. Because the new, improved iPhone 3G S - and the underlying upgraded OS X 3.0 operating system - at a stroke addresses all of the well worn complaints about the iPhone, the net result being a handset that can easily be hailed as the best smartphone on the planet.

Out of the box there is little about the packaging or indeed the phone itself to indicate that this is the second coming of the iPhone 3G. The handset is identical to its predecessor (the specs say that it is a millimetre thicker at 12.3mm but in the hand it's impossible to tell them apart) and it doesn't even sport the 'S' anywhere on the exterior.

If you felt the iPhone 3G was too bulky then you won't be interested in the iPhone 3G S - an iPhone Nano it ain't. But even two years after this form factor made its debut the minimalist industrial design still bears comparison with any of the smartphone's rivals.

As before the only button on the front is the home key but there is a subtle change to the screen - the iPhone 3G S now has a special coating that makes it much more resistant to smudges and grease.

This single improvement makes a massive difference to the phone's usability - text becomes much easier to read for example - and at the same time makes the iPhone even more cherishable as a shiny object of desire.

But though the new phone appears identical to the iPhone 3G as soon as you start using it you can see that it is a very different beast. Everything runs much, much faster: applications launch faster, web pages render faster, games play faster (and with better frame rates).

For instance, in a side-by-side comparison on the same 3G connection the iPhone 3G S downloaded and opened the BBC News homepage 30% faster than the iPhone 3G, a significant real world improvement.

Apple has been strangely subdued about the tech specs of the new iPhone 3G S perhaps because it doesn't want to make the iPhone 3G seem inferior or get caught up in megahertz war with other smartphones. But it seems the iPhone 3G S has a 600MHz ARM processor (up from 517MHz) while the onboard RAM has been doubled to 256MB.

The end result is that everything runs with a bit more 'snap' and features which were formerly impressive if a little slow - such as the Google Maps application - are now simply impressive.

The Maps application also benefits from the new compass in the 3G S: the pulsing blue dot now comes with an arrow indicating the direction you are facing which changes in real time as you swivel the phone.

This simple addition - along with the speed hike - makes an enormous difference to the usability of Google Maps and is sure to be exploited by the raft of application developers racing to bring turn-by-turn navigation to the iPhone.  

Another new hardware feature of the iPhone 3G S is the upgraded camera. The sensor has been boosted from two to three megapixels and autofocus and auto white balance have been added.

So as you would expect, photos now turn out sharper and better exposed - although they are still not as stunning as those delivered by the 8-megapixel cameraphones from LG and Sony Ericsson. And unlike those handsets there is no flash available so you'll need to look elsewhere if you want to take decent snaps in low light environments.

The iPhone 3G S's camera can now take video footage at 640x480 resolution at 30 frames per second. This somewhat unsung upgrade may turn out to be one of the biggest selling points of the new handset because the combination of high frame rate, high quality (if not HD) video, a fast processor, gigabytes of storage capacity and a fast 3G connection makes the iPhone a fantastic device for taking, editing and uploading video footage.

Apple has also included a basic video editing tool to trim video clips quickly as well as the option to share the video via email, MMS or uploading it to be hosted by Mobile Me and YouTube.  The quality of the footage is fine, especially when taken in daylight, and comparable to that of dedicated digital camcorders such as the Flip. A minute of video uses about 30MB of storage so the 16GB or 32GB capacity of the iPhone 3G S is a real advantage.

The hardware improvements - processor, RAM, compass, camera - all deliver the goods but the real icing on the cake is the iPhone 3.0 operating system. This delivers two key features that address the twin Achilles heels of the iPhone: the lack of a global search function and the cramped virtual keyboard.

The new search is easy to access - just scroll left from the home screen or up from within the Email and Contacts apps - and so quick to deliver results that it's almost instant. Everything on the iPhone is indexed from contacts to email to the apps themselves and the hits are presented on a single page, elegantly grouped by type. A faultless implementation of global search.

With the virtual keyboard Apple has finally done what it should have done on day one - let you use it when the phone is horizontal. That immediately provides the space to make the keys easier to hit correctly and to make fast, two-fingered (or thumbed) typing a viable option. As a rough rule of thumb you can type about twice as fast on the larger virtual keyboard and long emails are no longer a time consuming exercise in frustration.

There is a raft of other new features in the iPhone 3.0 operating system (notably the long awaited duo of cut and paste) but the larger keyboard and global search are probably the additions that will address the concerns of most iPhone doubters - particularly as a business phone. Along with all the hardware upgrades Apple has addressed almost every single reason for saying 'no' to the iPhone.

Even the battery life - long the secret bane of every iPhone user - has been addressed. It's still not a phone you can comfortably use for more than a day without charging but now you can at least use it regularly throughout the day without seeing the dreaded Low Battery alert. That's quite an achievement given the faster processor and video functionality.

Finally, the key question: Should existing iPhone 3G owners upgrade to the 3G S? Obviously that depends how much you need the hardware improvements as all the software features can be gained by the free upgrade to the iPhone 3.0 OS.

The speed hike is a nice thing to have but if you never use a 3G S you probably won't miss it (though if you do get your hands on one, however briefly, it'll be painful to go back). The same goes for the built-in compass - it's cool but you can get by without it. But the camera upgrades are the clincher because at a stroke the iPhone becomes a really rather decent digital camera and camcorder.

So if you factor in how much it would cost to buy those separately and compare it with the upgrade costs to an iPhone 3G S the maths add up promisingly.

Meanwhile if you are not an iPhone owner and looking to upgrade then the iPhone 3G S is an absolute no-brainer. Not only is it the best smartphone you can buy it is now a state-of-the-art mobile computing platform that is fast, elegant and has widespread developer support. To paraphrase an old Seiko commercial, someday all phones will be made this way. But they sure as hell aren't yet...