iPhone 3GS: One Week Later [Updated]

Posted on June 26th, 2009. Written by James.

Last week we all witnessed the launch of the iPhone 3GS, as you can see from the header photo no everyone is happy about it including my iPhone 2G. AT&T and Carphone Warehouse sold out of pre-orders.

According to O2 they out sold the iPhone 3G launch day by lunch time on the iPhone 3GS launch day. O2 sold more black iPhone’s than white ones with a ratio of 3:1. So after seven days since the launch; What are our thoughts and feelings about Apple’s latest offering?

If your a regular visitor to RazorianFly or follow myself or Arron on Twitter you’ll be more than aware about how ecstatic we we’re about the iPhone 3GS launch. We provided live coverage of the event from both Manchester and Bristol, and our Twitter friend Karl also provided his story of the event from Birmingham!

We’ve had our iPhone 3GS’ for a week now, they’ve been put to good use doing all our daily tasks such as managing our lives, our Twitter accounts, RazorianFly from WordPress, playing games like Peggle [App Store] and of course making the most of YouTube and all the new iPhone OS 3.0 features! We thought we’d bring you our impression after a week with the new iPhone and how much we just love this offering from Apple.

James

Having upgraded from an original iPhone to the iPhone 3GS, I have probably had a slight different experience to those who upgraded from the iPhone 3G. First of all I finally broke free from using Edge and what a relief that was, epically after being on it for around 18 months. I noticed a difference straight away with Twitter Apps such a Tweetie [App Store] and TwitterFon [App Store], Instead of waiting what felt like minutes for tweets to appear they we’re loading up almost instantly!

The physical feel and shape of the iPhone changed after the launch of iPhone 3G, no longer did it have a flat alloy backing but it was curved slightly and make out of a plastic composite, the iPhone 3GS also carried the same physical design and shape of the iPhone 3G. Of course, I’ve played with the iPhone 3G, in Apple Stores and my friends handset but this is much different to when you actually own one. I must say I was a little unsure of what to expect at first because the iPhone 2G had such great build quality
and felt incredibly robust and solid.

The main focus of the iPhone 3GS is of course speed and this iPhone does not fail to deliver. Whether your loading up a game such a Need For Speed [App Store], opening the iPod.app or using Safari everything is so much more seamless and smooth than on the other two iPhone generations. One which Apple really pride themselves on with the iPhone 3GS is its Javascript Benchmarks, MacRumors recently reported on this saying “The JavaScript performance on the iPhone 3GS only 12X that of the MacBook, a remarkable statistic for a smartphone.”

Photo Credit – seckelberry (Flickr)

Just looking at the graphics, you can see that the iPhone again is setting new standards for the mobile industry. With iPhone OS 3.0 on the 3G Apple even managed to reduce the bench marks by two thirds, bring the 3G down to only 36X that of a MacBook. If these results are anything to go by we should seen an even bigger decrease in times in the future, perhaps even our iPhones running even closer performance wise to our beloved MacBooks.

The inclusion of Nike+ support is a welcomed to the feature iPhone 3GS especially after the iPod Touch 2G was given the feature last year. First of all it stamps out the need to invest so much into Nike+ as all you now need is the sensor for you shoe and away you go! This is a fantastic feature just like on the iPod Nano and Touch, I’ll be checking into this and how well it works for an article coming up here on RazorianFly over the summer.

Of course one of the most talked about features of the iPhone is the camera, now with the ability to record video, take better pictures than ever with the 3MegaPixel camera and of course the inclusion of ‘tap to focus’. The camera.app also now lets us trim our video clips after we’ve taken them, currently we can only trim the initial length of the footage but hopefully in the future Apple will give us more features making it more like iMovie on the go! With the addition of video capture I’m sure many people including us here at RazorianFly are looking forward to the possibilities of apps such as QIK hitting the App Store, meaning we’ll be able to provide live feeds right from our iPhones over 3G/WiFi without having to be Jail Broken to get the application.

I was never a big YouTube iPhone user before the release of iPhone OS 3.0 or the iPhone 3GS, mainly because as all original iPhone users know Edge is just so slow and a short YouTube video took literally forever to load! Now with 3.0 and 3GS I find myself on YouTube a lot more often both for research and for fun. The feature I like most about YouTube now is that you can sign into your account and watch all your subscriptions right from your iPhone, couldn’t be more convenient. And of course as we have seen this week, YouTube’s mobile uploads have sky rocketed with the release of the iPhone 3GS seeing an improvement of 400%.

Like every iPhone 3GS user, I had to record a sample video to test our the process and video quality. Apple thought this one through and again delivered an easy and seeming-less experience, making me want to shoot more videos on my iPhone and upload them to my account! For a while now I’ve wanted to get a Flip camera mainly because of its size and ease of use but now owning the iPhone 3GS its stamped out my want and need for one and I’m sure its the same case for many others too.

I have been a MobileMe customer for a couple of years now, I joined when the service was first know as Dot Mac. I’ve always loved the service and its features, in fact I’d be lost without now, there is no way I could rely on another company to provide such a service. MobileMe has many useful and handy features but with the addition of iPhone OS 3.0, MobileMe customers saw a new feature come to life ‘Find My iPhone’. ‘Find My iPhone’ does exactly what it says on the tin, if you loose or misplace your iPhone, you can simple log into me.com and use the feature to locate your iPhone on Google Maps.

As well as locate your iPhone you can also send a message to it, make it ring for two minutes, even if the iPhone is in silent mode and also remotely wipe the handset right from the web. Of course there’s fun to be had with the feature too, you may have seen my ‘Self Destruct iPhone‘ wallpaper featured on our RazorianFly Wallpapers site, that was a result of playing our with the message feature of ‘Find My iPhone’. I hope I’ll never have to use ‘Find My iPhone’ as a result of it being stolen or lost but it sure does give me piece of mind and another reason to continue being a MobileMe customer with this benefit.

Photo Credit – HereIsJames (Flickr)

Push Notifications have been on everyone’s wish list for a while, especially as Apple won’t allow applications to run in the background on iPhone, push notifications are the next best thing and one of the features we were all looking forward to with iPhone OS 3.0. So far there has been somewhat of a lack of apps in the App Store with push notification this has been due to issues on Apples end of things and an apparent back log of app’s waiting to be processed. TapTap [App Store] fans, I’m one myself, have welcomed and embraced the feature, now when your challenging a friend to beat your score, as long as there in your friends list you can push a challenge right to there iDevice! Of course, this isn’t need but it really adds to the TapTap experience and the badge icon allows you too keep an eye on how many outstanding challenges you have if you can’t play them right then and there.

The one application with push we were all eagerly waiting for was of course BeeJive IM [App Store]. I’ve only been a BeeJive user for the a few weeks but couldn’t wait and when the update finally came out, most of us we’re more than impressed! Sadly a few users noted that the application would constant crash or not sign into there IM services. Myself and Arron we’re in luck though as we haven’t encountered any issues and even spent an entire morning chatting without any issues and everything working incredible well. For those that have had issues with the latest BeeJive IM, BeeJive have submitted an update to Apple to fix all it’s current issues.

These are just some of the things I’ve really enjoyed and picked up on this last week using the iPhone 3GS, not to mention all the new hand features such as notes picking up phone numbers and mail addresses, voice control, shake to shuffle and the syncing/backup speed with iPhone 3GS.

Arron

Having upgraded from the iPhone 3G, my experience was admittedly a little different to James. The iPhone 3G was my first ever iPhone, the question is; Why did I jump for the iPhone 3G, and not just wait? Apart from being a huge Apple fan, and admirer of all their hardware products, I jumped on iPhone 3G because of – 3G. I wanted to be able to connect to the internet while also not sacrificing speed. Cue, 3G. Saying that, I can totally understand why some of you waited and I bet most of you are glad you did.

So why did I plunk for iPhone 3GS?, after all we all know this is a relatively small update to the iPhone 3G. Well a few things caught my eye. Firstly, video recording. “.. But, OMG just jailbreak your 3G 11!!1?” – Well, yes I could of (and at one point actually did), but for some reason I wanted to do video the Apple way – and am I glad I did. Next on the list was of course the camera. It looked ‘okay’ at WWDC09, but didn’t strike me as earth-shattering really (still, nice to have I thought). Next on the list was speed. Although not showcased at WWDC, so I hadn’t actually tried the speed increase for myself, I took Apple on their word. Again, I was glad I did.

A week ago I bought the iPhone 3GS 32GB at the Trafford Center Apple Store, Manchester. One week on; How is it fairing? This phone is incredible. Truly. The speed increase is second-to-none, voice control works as advertised, and the camera and video (as seen in our iPhone 3GS impressions post), are great – for a phone. Although only 3MP, the camera is noticeably different to that of the 3G.

The only thing which is letting the phone down at the moment is iPhone OS 3.0. As I tweeted just a few hours ago, iPhone OS 3.0 clearly still has a few bugs, most noticeably is that of the OS assigning the wrong icons to different individual apps. So much so, I’ve found the phone can now (randomly and intermittently) assign icons to apps, of apps which are no longer on my iPhone. I know – Weird right?

That said, I can overlook this. It’s software, and software can be patched, in minutes. Overall, I can’t wait for Apple to get their groove on with that unspoken heard of iPhone OS 3.0-featured apps, as I am loving my new iPhone 3GS.

Karl

You may remember Karl from our iPhone 3GS Launch Event article, Karl contributed his story about being first in line at the Bullring Apple Store for the launch and now brings us his impressions of the iPhone 3GS, one week later.

Like Arron and James, I have now had the iPhone 3GS for seven Days. I have only had the iPhone 3G for 2 months before and loved the idea of being able to record video, with out having to jailbreak. A friend of mine brought my iPhone 3G, so I was without iPhone for two days; I was worried I might have made a mistake.

I recall being first outside the Bullring and the first to walk out the shop with the new iPhone 3GS. I’m so impressed with the extra speed increase, I play a lot of Mafia wars etc and it used to take a while to load, that is a thing of the past now, few seconds and I am playing. I love the compass on maps, Ill admit to driving around and watching the beacon showing me the way I am going, and just hope we will not have to wait to long for TomTom software and dock.

Video editing is great being able to record and then clip, click another button and its on YouTube, how much more simple could you want it to be. Photos are so much nicer, better colour balance, and simple to use auto focus on a selected area as well as macro shots.

I find I’m using the spotlight option a lot, as I have literally hundreds of apps installed and by using the spotlight option I can locate my apps very fast, just by typing the first few letters in. It’s so much quicker than scrolling through screen after screen of apps looking for the one you need. I’m must be lucky as not come across the bug on icons yet.

Overall the iPhone 3GS is like a turbo charged 3G but pimped up along the way, maybe Apple went to Westcoast motors from Pimp my ride, to pimp my iPhone. I have hopes that Apple may consider releasing an update later to make it a little faster if the new processor that is being used can run faster, as I was saying to James, you could just see the news if they did that say before Christmas or the next iPod Touch launch, and a gift to us all. Only time will tell.

What do you think about your new iPhone 3GS? Got any caveats?
Let us know in the comments below!