It’s almost as if Apple was taking a cue from the auto industry in its glory days. If you have a solid product but want to signify a step up, just add a letter or two to its name. You don’t even need to explain what it stands for. In the case of the iPhone 3GS, there’s absolutely no shortage of meanings for the appended consonant.
Speedy
This, of course, is the easiest to relate to and the most noticeable once the device boots up. Compared to the 3G, the 3GS is substantially faster on just about every front. Based on a completely different processor and demonstrating the benefits of a (mostly) hardware-independent OS you’ll see performance improvements on just about every front. Applications launch nearly twice as fast, 3D graphics render more smoothly and the phone has the performance to support a host of new features. Combined with the snappier browsing provided by the latest version of Safari, the electronics have been reengineered to exploit advances in 3G networking as AT&T continues its upgrade to a 7.2Mbps network.
Even if the phone company hasn’t boosted the bandwidth in your neck of the woods yet (they expect to complete the transition nationwide sometime in 2010), the faster processor improves reduces latency, the amount of time the device spends sorting out the network signals and rendering the output. Again, the difference here is incremental, but very noticeable. Another change in this category is battery life, which is somewhat improved, rather significant considering the overall performance boost. However, we noticed that applications that make extensive use of 3D rendering or audio signal processing do drain power with considerable zeal.
Speech
According to the early pundits, voice dialing was certain to be an omission that would virtually guarantee the failure of the iPhone. Apple, it seems, was simply waiting until the device could do it better than anyone else. Thanks to the Google Mobile App, we had a preview of what was in store. Now, with the 3GS hardware, we’re getting a look at what Apple really had in mind and some hints on where the technology may be heading.
As it stands, Voice Control’s vocabulary is limited to phone dialing and iPod access, but you don’t need to be a linguist to recognize its potential. First, it’s an extraordinary implementation of speech recognition for a portable device, proving itself remarkably accurate at finding names in your contact list by a full name or nickname or simply speaking the numbers. It performs this feat almost instantly. Secondly, Voice Command is non-modal: you don’t have to have the phone or iPod applications open to issue instructions. Holding down the Home button (or center button on the headset) for a couple of seconds will tell the phone to start listening for your instructions. This opens up all kinds of possibilities as Voice Command expands, as it inevitably will, to other aspects of the phone.
Shooting Sharper
The 3GS represents a significant improvement in imaging. Moving from two to three megapixels, the image can hold 50 percent more detail. To help make sure you have those details, the phone now has an extraordinarily cool auto-focus/auto-exposure system. Multi-touch gestures will allow you set the focus and exposure based on a specific area of the screen. In all but the most favorable shooting situations, this will make a huge difference in your results.
It wasn’t enough to simply add video recording to the phone. It added a rudimentary trimming feature, as well. To do anything more, you’ll need to import the movies into iMovie, but Apple didn’t make that particularly easy. You still need to email the clips to your Mac. Fortunately, a recent update to Ecamm’s PhoneView ($19.95 and well worth it) will pull in your movies (as well as just about anything else on your phone) via the USB cable. Also, if you’re still using iMovie ’08 or Final Cut Pro, you’ll need to remember to keep the phone horizontal with the home button on your right, otherwise the image will be cropped to the middle third.
Sense of Direction
The combination of the GPS and Google Maps had iPhone users singing You’ll Never Walk Alone (or drive, bike or take a bus, for that matter). But the two big limitations were that the phone never really knew the way it was facing and, if you were out of range of any data sources, the position information from the GPS was something less than useful. The built-in compass on the 3GS is a complete game-changer.
Most obviously, it opens the door to real navigation software, ranging from the Map App’s ability to reorient itself to third-party applications from AT&T, Navigon and TomTom that compare favorably to the features you’ll find in a dedicated device. However, the real breakthroughs should start appearing with the release of the 3.1 OS. Then, the GPS, compass, accelerometer and camera all start working together to provide an experience being called “augmented reality.” In a nutshell, this means your location, direction and phone orientation are used to pull up data that is keyed over the image from the phone’s camera to show you where things are and the distance they are from you. An early demo of this technology helped locate transit stations. Accessing an online database, you would be able to get information on timetables, routes and available connections. We believe that this has the potential to be one of the greatest breakthroughs in handheld technology since the smart phone.
Slick
There’s one new feature that is obvious each time you touch your phone: the oleophobic screen. Its primary function is to allow the screen to be cleaned with a quick swipe of a soft cloth (microfiber lens cloth seems to work best, but a T-shirt or well-worn jeans will do the job, too). But the benefits go well beyond cleanliness and clarity. Your fingers glide across the screen like the skater on a perfectly manicured rink. This feature hasn’t topped the list in many of the reviews of the new phone, but it’s little touches (so to speak) like this that helps push a product over the line from merely “outstanding” to the “insanely great.”
“Sometime Soon”
That’s a phrase that we’ve heard a lot since the release of the 3GS. The phone and the OS have been ready to roll for tethering (serving as a 3G “modem” for a laptop) and multimedia messaging (MMS) but the iPhone’s exclusive American carrier has not. As the days grew shorter and nights grow longer, we began to wonder about the network’s ability to come through on their promise to deliver these features this summer. MMS was set to make its debut on September 25, a few days past the actual autumnal equinox (and this issue’s press deadline) with still no official word on tethering. From what we hear, the features are working well for users in most other countries that offer the 3GS. Sadly, MacDirectory’s travel budget wasn’t quite up to sending their reviewer to Europe to test them out.
Successful!
If you were counting on buying your new 3GS from one of AT&T’s outlets, you probably discovered that the phone was an instant sellout. Most stores, it seems, barely had enough inventory to survive the first few hours and customers faced a minimum one-week wait. Apple as far more generous with its own stores, but after the first couple of weeks, shortages started cropping up in their stores around the country and the online inventory locator kicked in.
Even though the refinements were more subtle than some expected, those subtleties add up to an exponential leap in capability. iPhone developers now have a host of new tools at their disposal. Combined with their seemingly infinite imagination and creativity, we’ve only seen the first glimmers of what the 3GS can do.
$199 (16GB)
$299 (32GB)
-- with 2-year AT&T contract
