Tuesday, June 10, 2008

iPhone 3G


The Good Stuff
3G is here
GPS is onboard too,
Battery life hasn't suffered. It is up to 10 hours for 2G calls, five hours for 3G. Standby up to 300 hours, video playback up to seven hours and music playback 24 hours.
3.5in screen remains contrary to rumours of it being shrunk
A white edition (the back is white) - for those find this important
Flush headphone jack - at long last
Weight is cut 2g (most likely by scrapping the metal back in favour of a plastic one - see below)
Price - it's cheaper: $199 for 8GB and $299 for 16GB black and white versions and Steve promises it won't cost more than $199 in any country.

The Bad Stuff
It IS fatter 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3mm verses the original's 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
The sleek metal back is now plastic. It may be less slippy to hold but what about durability and build quality?
GPS is rudimentary working from a top down view, no 3D mapping
Screen resolution remains unchanged at 480 x 320 when many rivals have adopted VGA
Incredibly Bluetooth A2DP is still left off so no wireless music enjoyment
Video recording unbelievably remains absent
No front mounted video camera, no 3G video calling
Camera unchanged at two megapixels and no mention of any upgrades (flash, autofocus, etc) this one is a huge let down.
No details of offline mapping. It's likely to cost a pretty penny it seems
8GB and 16GB capacities remain, no 32GB edition for now
Steve didn't define the 3G (7.2Mbit had been rumoured) and it isn't specified even now
No wider codec support (AVI/DivX/Xvid remain a distant dream)
The dock has been removed from the bundle as Apple strips out costs just as it did when the iPod evolved (it seems unlikely the old dock will fit the curvier profile too)
No announcement of Flash for the web browser

In all then something of a letdown. The expectations were impossible but the unchanged camera, continued lack of A2DP and Flash support, same capacities, removal of the bundled dock and (arguably) the move to a more plasticy finish aren't welcome. Bulk has also gone up which is understandable but we're not blown away as we were first time around.