iPhone 3GS Announced – 3G gets OS3.0
June 8, 2009 by Paul Willen
Filed under Apple iPhone
Today Apple announced the iPhone 3GS on the WWDC in San Francisco. In this article a shot wrap-up about what has been announced today.
Speed
The new iPhone 3GS is not really different from the “normal” 3G. The “S” stands for speed: The iPhone 3GS is over 2 times faster than the normal 3G in most applications.
Camera
The camera of the iPhone 3G is a 2 Megapixel camera. From day 1 people have been complaining about camera. So Apple built in a new camera in the iPhone 3GS. The new camera is a 3 Megapixel camera with autofocus AND with this camera it is also possible to record videos. The videos can be edited directly on the iPhone and when done they can be sent to several services like MobileMe, Youtube or Email.
Voice Control
Voice Control is a feature with great potential. Just tell your device what you want to do with it. With the Voice Control feature it is possible to tell your device to call Remo Knops just by saying “Call Remo Knops” or dial a numer by saying “Call 123456789″. You then get a voice returning your command with what the iPhone is doing like “Calling Remo Knops”. Unfortunately the demo on the Apple website did not convince me. The quality of the pronouncination is just not good enough I think.
With Voice Control it is also possible to control the builtin iPod. You can start all songs from a particular artist, start playlists or ask the iPhone 3GS which song is playing right now.
Compass
The iPhone 3G will have a digital compass. With the digital compass the maps application reorientates when you are tuning. I hope there will be an application like Google Sky Map available soon for iPhone users.
Battery
The iPhone 3G S has a battery improvement. Using internet (on Wifi) lasts 9 hours (this was 6 hours on the 3G), Video 10 hours (was 7 hours), Audio 30 hours (was 24 hours), 2G talk 12 hours (was 10 hours) and the 3G talk time stays at 5 hours.
Overall I think its a good improvement for people listening to songs and using the internet a lot.
iPhone OS 3.o
iPhone OS 3.0 will be a major software improvement for exiting iPhone users. The new OS has more than 100 additional features compared to the previous OS versions. The most important feature updates will be:
- Cut, Copy & Paste
- Landscape Keyboard
- Tethering
- MMS
- Spotlight Search
- Voice Memos
- Improved Calendar
OS3.0 will be availabe for the iPod Touch (upgrade will cost $9,95) for the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS (free)
TomTom for iPhone
Finally – after way too long waiting TomTom comes up with an iPhone application. The TomTom applicaion looks very much the same as the familiar TomTom Go, One and Navigator interface. Luckily TomTom is not exclusively for the iPhone 3GS, but can also be installed on the iPhone 3G. The TomTom application should be in the iTunes Store “soon”.
TomTom will sell an accessoire (the TomTom car kit) for secure docking of the iPhone and better GPS Performance. I hope this means that this accessoire does not NEED to be used becasue the GPS-signal would be to weak - We’ll see.
Conclusion
I think the new iPhone 3G S is a cool device, but far from mindblowing. There’s no really convincing WOW!! in the presentation we saw today. The only thing I couldn’t have thought was TomTom, but that’s because they waited way too long with a decent TomTom iPhone application. So to be honest: I’m a little disappointed, but let’s wait for a final conclusion before we have the iPhone in our hands .
His first mobile phone was a Mitshubishi Galaxy and after that the first Orange SPV running Microsoft Smartphone 2002. After owning a lot of devices he now mainly uses a HTC Touch Pro 2 and an iPhone 3Gs 32GB
Paul is employed as an .NET Application Developer with a focus on Sharepoint.
my iPhone was actually a gift from my girlfriend. i really love this phone and i think that this is the best phone that money can buy. i like the features and the design.