While you’ve been gorging your goggles on all the lovely iPhone 3G S hands-on photos, we’ve been taking the speedy touchscreen phone for a spin to see if it’s as fast as it claims to be. Want to know if it’s worth queueing up for? Read on to find out…
Let’s get it out of the way from the go. The iPhone 3G S is fast – very fast. Thanks to the upgraded processor and memory, opening up apps is really quick, and even graphically intensive games like Touch Grind seem whizzy, so you’ll be relieved to know the iPhone 3G S lives up to its name.
Another new addition that stands out is the iPhone 3G S’s video editing, with the app coming across as easy to use and surprisingly powerful. Cleverly, it shows your footage as a range of frames. Hold down your finger and those frames expand, so you can see where you’re dropping your cuts, which should make up for the fact that frames are gone for good if you scrap them. Uploading video to YouTube is smart too – the iPhone 3G S compresses the footage before it sends, making it really speedy. Oh, the video quality itself? Throw your Flip camera away, it’s just been made redundant. Here’s a link to a video shot on the iPhone 3G S.
iPhone 3G S hands-on photo overload!
The iPhone 3G S camera’s autofocus system is nippy too. Point the camera at something and it immediately tries to lock on. No half-pressing buttons here, it just analyses the scene and locks on to the most prominent object, and blam. Here are a few examples of what it’s capable of:
Voice control on the iPhone 3G S meanwhile is nothing short of amazing. We asked the iPhone 3G S “What song is this?” and it answered. We shortened the phrase to “What song’s this?” and it worked too. “What’s this?” had it fooled, but that’s to be expected.
iPhone 3G S: all the official photos
“What group is this” also worked – but just gave the artist. Making calls, either by saying names or sounding out numbers also works a treat. The only downside to voice control, especially when using it while listening to music, is that is fades out the song completely to make its prompt beep, listens, beeps again to say it’s heard you and then executes the command. It’s a bit sluggish, and it’s a shame the song has to stop while you speak your instructions.
However, for anyone keen to avoid fumbling for a phone in their pocket, it’s a neat feature. The iPhone 3G S handled the range of English accents we threw at it just fine, from Queen’s english to Brummie.
The new compass in the iPhone 3G S is startlingly responsive too. Tiny movements are recognised, and adding it to Google Maps is pure genius. It finally makes the iPhone a must-have companion for pavement-pounders, as there’s absolutely no way you can get lost in a strange city, now that there’s no need to walk around trying to work out what way you’re facing.
Is the iPhone 3G S worth the upgrade? We need to spend a few days getting to grips with it and iPhone OS 3.0′s pros, cons and kinks before we can give a fair verdict, but it’s looking good so far. Stay tuned for plenty more coverage of Apple’s new baby.
Out Tomorrow | £varies | Apple (iPhone 3G S available at The Carphone Warehouse)
