iPhone 3GS Long-Term Review

As most of you know, I upgraded to an iPhone 3GS back in July. An improved camera plus video recording were big selling points for me, and I could see how voice control would make an immediate difference in my daily use, adding yet another layer of convenience and ease of use to both the phone and the iPod apps.

But, what intrigued me most of all were the promised speed improvements. Apple said the new model would be twice as fast as the iPhone 3G; now, in computing terms, that’s no mere speed bump, it’s a major leap in terms of performance. Imagine your existing desktop computer running twice as fast as your current set up. That was it: I was sold…so I picked up a 3GS on launch day.

As outlined in my initial thoughts on the device posted earlier on PDA-247, I was immediately impressed by the speed and responsiveness of the 3GS. Side by side with my old 3G the difference was marked, and, having used the 3GS for just a few minutes, I knew that there was no way I could go back to anything less. The 3G is no slouch, but it felt positively plodding in comparison to the 3GS.

I’ve tried to cover all the bases in the following review; bear with me if there’s something I’ve missed. I’ve split the review out into various sections to make it easier to write and easier to follow; I’ve also given a grade for each area. Bear in mind, however, that a great smartphone is more than the sum of its parts, and I firmly believe that the 3GS is a truly great smartphone.

No discussion of the iPhone 3GS can take place without referring to the OS it is running. Now at version 3.1, iPhone OS is polished, virtually all of the earlier gaps and omissions are well and truly plugged, yet there’s still plenty of room still to grow. Overall, the combination the 3GS’s power and the recent OS updates makes for a compelling mix.

But let’s start at the very beginning, with the phone itself.

PHONE – 9/10
Without any fanfare, Apple has beefed up the earpiece, speakerphone and ringtone volume on the 3GS, making the phone far more useable in noisy environments. Conference calls are still a doddle to set up and visual voice-mail is, of course, a godsend. With the addition of voice dialling via the voice control app, and Spotlight search integration, placing calls on the iPhone has never been easier.

WEB BROWSING – 9/10
With the increased speed, performance and stability under the 3GS’s hood, Safari still sets the standard for web browsing on a smartphone.
Pages load quickly, render accurately, and scrolling and zooming are as smooth as butter. On earlier incarnations of the iPhone, Safari would quit suddenly when system resources became overloaded, but that has never happened on the 3GS. I can happily switch between eight open web pages without ever having to reload a page, even after using memory and processor intensive third part appS like Real Racing, for example. No Flash support is the only limitation.

MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT – 10/10
With iTunes on board I can download iPhone optimized music, videos, movies, TV shows, audiobooks and podcasts from one centralized location. I can even rent movies. Apple keeps tweaking and polishing the UI and controls, and using the app is a pleasure. The YouTube app is similarly fully featured, with complete account access and management. Finally, the release of iTunes 9 has added even more features and flexibility to content syncing.

EMAIL AND MESSAGING – 8/10
Both the Mail app and messaging app do a lot of things awfully well.
Mail just does a phenomenal job of displaying emails, with attachments rendered more faithfully than on the vast majority of competing devices. If using IMAP, I can navigate and file emails in folders just as I can on my desktop mail client; and the ability to search ALL my emails, even those which are left on the server, has transformed Mail into an extremely powerful reference tool. Just like on my desktop/ laptop, I use mail as a general info dump, secure in the knowledge that I can find anything later just by pulling up Spotlight. For people with multiple accounts, the app could certainly benefit from having a universal Inbox, and I would love the ability to flag emails and create smart mailboxes as I can on the desktop, but, overall, it is a pleasure to use.

Threaded SMS and MMS are well catered for by the iPhone’s built-in app, but until AT&T throws the switch on MMS, I can’t comment on it, though it looks to be well implemented and fully integrated with the rest of the device.

As for instant messaging, there are any number of third-party options available in the app store. Pick of the bunch is BeejiveIM with push notifications.

PIM – 7/10
The iPhone calendar is a curate’s egg.  It takes too many taps to enter an item and the lack of a default alarm setting is simply annoying – it means you manually have to set an alarm each time you create an appointment. To those used to more feature rich third-party apps on other platforms, it is almost ludicrously simple and bare.
However, I find the app lightning fast to navigate, and it does a fantastic job of displaying the relationships and conflicts on my schedule. If Apple paid some serious attention to it, adding a landscape weekly mode – for example – it could be superb. Opening up the Calendar APIs to third parties would also be welcome.

The Notes app, however, is a joy to use – to me, it is almost the quintessential iPhone app – fast, simple and with just the right amount of functionality. It looks like a yellow legal pad, and that’s exactly how I use it – with the advantage of it being completely searchable. You can email a note with one tap, and flick between notes just as you would on a paper notepad. It doesn’t have categories, but I just use keyword searches to find what I need. Apple’s built-in data detectors mean you can just tap on an URL, a phone number, an email and even a street address to launch the appropriate app. If you need categories, tags and other paraphernalia, there are, as they say, other apps for that. Me? I’m sticking with the built-in Notes for fast capture and email for permanent note storage.

Tasks. Hmm – there’s still no built-in task app and I doubt there ever will be, but there is a huge choice in the app store. My picks of the bunch would be Appigo’s Todo or Omnifocus (I use the latter, synced over the air via MobileMe).

GOOGLE MAPS & NAVIGATION 9/10
Apple’s implementation of Google Maps is as sweet as they come, and the 3GS’s extra speed, power and built-in compass just take it to the next level. The app loads and locks on to my location within just a few seconds, and the compass orientates the map to the direction I’m facing with just another tap. As a quick and dirty navigation and reference tool it can’t be beaten. Meanwhile, turn by turn navigation is addressed by the veritable explosion of such apps which have appeared in the App Store, including familiar names such as TomTom, Co- Pilot and Navigon, as well as a few less well known providers.

CAMERA – 8/10
The 3GS’s upgraded autofocus camera is fast and easy to use and works extremely well in decent lighting, both in still and video mode. Macro mode takes sharp pictures, making the camera ideal as a portable scanner for receipts, notes and the odd business card. With a bit of work, you can get some half-decent low light shots, but without a decent flash you will always be struggling. Video can be quick-edited on the device and uploaded to YouTube with a tap. As elsewhere on the iPhone 3GS, speed is everything in the camera app; it’s quick to launch, responsive, and saves photos and movies in a flash (excuse the pun), making it viable as a point and shoot camera replacement.

3RD PARTY APPS – 9/10
There’s simply nothing out there which matches the breadth, depth and, in many areas, quality of apps in the App Store. Gaming, in particular, has taken off, so much so that it has been publicly discussed by gaming giant Nintendo and inspired a bit of trash-talk from Sony. The sheer size of the App Store encourages diversity and competition, and the momentum behind the platform means that the iPhone is often the first or, in some cases, the only device to be targeted by developers. Despite some well publicized problems, the App Store is a huge success and a massive positive for both end users and developers.  One other overlooked aspect of the third party scene is that most apps plug-in and integrate with the rest of of the device, whether it be Google Maps, Email, Contacts, Safari, Location services, the camera or the iPod – and it makes for a cohesive experience which is unrivaled.

MULTITASKING – 6/10
Contrary to popular belief, the iPhone 3GS is a multi-tasking wizard,
chock-full of apps and processes which already run in the background:

iPod music
Voice recorder
Voice control
Visual voicemail
Phone
App and music downloads
Http audio and video streaming – with the ability to pause etc.
controlled via the iPhone’s headset.
Mail and messaging
Phone
Push notifications
Simultaneous voice and data over 3G
Calendar alerts
Alarm clock
Stopwatch
Timer

However, there is still a ban on third-party background processing, making apps such as Pandora Radio and other music services less functional than they are on other devices. Battery life and performance concerns are cited as the main reasons why this isn’t allowed and, given the problems other devices have in this area, Apple clearly has a point.

Having said that, with the increased power and capabilities under the 3GS’s hood, I would be very surprised if some form of limited 3rd party multitasking is introduced in the not-too-distant future – but we might have to wait for the next gen iPhone for that to happen.

PERFORMANCE AND STABILITY – 10/10
The pay-off for Apple’s decision to prohibit background processing for third party apps is an incredibly stable user experience and excellent battery life. As I’ve repeated several times, everything on the the iPhone 3GS is faster, smoother and more responsive. The beefed up processor and top of the line graphics means it’s virtually impossible to get the 3GS to fall over; no lockups, no slowdowns, no lag, just the reassurance of a device which works first time, every time.

DATA ENTRY AND VOICE CONTROL – 9/10
I love using the iPhone’s keyboard. As I’ve said many times before, I type faster, more accurately and with less strain than on a small physical keyboard, and I’m equally adept in either portrait or landscape mode. Put simply: I would never go back to a physical keyboard on a smartphone. Built-in data detectors, and the elegantly implemented cut, copy and paste, make swapping info between applications a breeze. Writing and editing text is just a joy; in fact, most of this article was written and edited on my 3GS. Voice control for both phone calls and iPod needs no training, and, once you get used to it, works very well indeed. My only gripe is that it doesn’t yet select individual songs.

CONNECTIVITY AND SYNCING – 8/10
There are plenty of connectivity options on the iPhone – EDGE, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth, and the 3GS switches between them seamlessly as needed. A2DP has been added into the mix, and, suddenly, I can’t live without it – I get a kick every time I turn on the engine of my car and the audio switches instantly, with no pauses or skips, from my headphones to playback over Bluetooth. Syncing options vary, depending on your needs and each third-party app; options include: USB, WiFi, MobileMe, Microsoft Exchange and various cloud services. These days, I only hook up to my desktop to transfer large media files and for backup; everything else is handled over the air.

SCREEN – 10/10
There may be the odd screen out there with higher resolution than the iPhone’s, but the balance of sharpness, brightness, responsiveness and useable real-estate on the 3GS is still as good as it gets. In my opinion, 3.5 inches seems to be the ideal for a touchscreen phone; anything smaller (like on the Palm Pre) and you end up with buttons and controls that are too small); anything larger, and you have a device that is simply unpocketable.

BATTERY LIFE – 9/10
Definitely a significant improvement over the 3G – talk time is much the same, but in almost every other area – music playback, wifi etc. – it has been extended by a good 20% or more. These days I have 3G, wifi, and Bluetooth turned on all the time, with the screen brightness set to default (which is more than bright enough for even the sunniest of days), and I never have to worry about the iPhone’s battery. If you are a heavy voice user, it probably makes sense to switch off 3G until you need it because this will double your talk time. Much fuss is made by critics about the iPhone’s lack of a user-replaceable battery, but, given the huge range of top up batteries, car chargers and cases incorporating batteries, this really is a non-issue.

ACCESSORIES – 10/10
The iPhone’s and the iPod Touch’s enormous popularity has guaranteed that a huge ecosystem of third party accessories has been developed around the platform – everything from skins and cases, to dedicated speaker systems. (Ironically, my favorite accessory is made by RIM – the Blackberry Music Gateway, but I’ll talk about that in another review.) To say that iPhone uses are spoilt for choice would be an understatement.

BUILD QUALITY – 10
I can’t fault the build-quality of the iPhone 3GS in any way. It’s sleek and solid with nary a creak or rattle. A lack of moving parts really helps here.

UI AND EASE OF USE – 10/10
No one has yet been able to match that immediacy, that sense of a physical connection to the UI which is found on an iPhone; it’s what still sets the iPhone apart from its rivals and is one of the defining characteristics of the iPhone user experience. The extra speed and graphics performance of the 3GS simply takes that responsiveness to another level.

The best way for me to describe it is by comparing a soccer genius like Pele to any number of highly-skilled, talented players. You can see the difference immediately: the ball is connected to Pele’s feet as if by magic, moving between them fluidly, seamlessly and effortlessly. That’s the iPhone 3GS difference: no lag, no stuttering, no delay, no hesitation – just the feeling that the UI and your data is directly connected to your fingertips.

Combined with the utter simplicity and predictability of the single “Home” button which sits below the iPhone’s screen, you have a minimalist, elegant and immediately understandable UI which even a three year-old can use. No menus, no superflous controls, no key combinations to remember or program; just an interface which, more often than not, tells the user exactly what is needed to complete the next action.

CONCLUSION:
The iPhone 3GS – even more than previous models – has absolutely nailed the overall user experience. It’s stable, fast, fluid and and just plain fun to use. As a consumer-orientated smartphone it is head and shoulders above the competition. That’s not to say it is perfect – of course it isn’t; Apple still has room to improve the calendar, open up even more developer APIs, improve the notifications system and extend the device’s multitasking capabilities. Personally, I still think it’s early days, and that the best is yet to come. To use another analogy: if the iPhone 3GS were a racehorse, it would be be a thoroughbred early in its career, with power and poise in spades and just starting to hit its stride. I’m enjoying the ride.

OVERALL SCORE: 9/10

by Trevor Caswell (aka, Lazyboy)