The iPhone 3G S is the fastest iPhone, yet. I hate stuffing multiple gadgets into my jeans. But it is uncool for a tech guy living in Silicon Valley to carry around a manbag. I’ve tried and it feels a bit awkward. So far my iPhone has been the best all-in-one pocketable device but with a few areas that needed improvement. The weakest feature of the iPhone 3G is the camera–it sucks. The new iPhone 3G S has a much improved camera and a whole lot more. If you want just one device in your pocket (or purse) that does it all and does it well the iPhone 3G S, in my opinion, is simply the best pocketable do-everything gadget available. Yes, better than the Palm Pre. Here are ten reasons why you should seriously consider getting the iPhone 3GS, in no particular order:
- 3.2 Megapixel Camera: Autofocus. You can also manually focus. It has macro that get you real close. Bokeh? Yup.
- Video: Flip? Good bye. The iPhone 3GS can take video with a 640 x 480 resolution at 30fps. That’s good enough for most applications. You can trim the video and then tap to upload to YouTube. Nice.
- Voice Control: You like your RAZR because it has voice control? It took a long time (too long actually) but the iPhone 3GS has it too. Just press the button until you hear a tone. “Call Mom.” And you’ve got Mom on the line.
- GPS: The full-blown kind. With a compass to make it more accurate. Tom Tom announced its Tom Tom for iPhone. No need to have a separate GPS device.
- Voice Memos: A student and need to tape lectures? Or just want to record your own? This feature save a lot of hassle.
- 7.2mbps HSDPA: Data transmission speeds are twice as fast. That’s always nice in a Web 2.0 world. Let’s hope AT&T delivers.
- Longer Battery Life: 3 more hours of data on WiFi to 9. 6 more hours of audio to 30. 3 more hours of video to 10. talk time is the same at 5 hours.
- Water & Oil Resistant: Wow, this is a surprise. You don’t have to worry about water or oil spills on the iPhone 3GS.
- Nike+: Built-in support. Great for those that love to walk, jog and run.
- Faster Processor: Everything is faster up to twice as fast. The fact that you have to close an app to get another running takes much less time. You almost don’t miss background processes with fast task switching.
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Oh common,
you do realise that all this was realised long time ago in the typical windows mobile smart(pda)phone? :)
Take a look at the HTC, Toshiba, Sony, Samsung, Asus, etc. The design, user interface (skin), screen(resolution) size of your choice, >5 Mpx cameras, GPS builtin (standard these days :) ), speech recognition based control sw (builtin or install any other), HDSPA (>3 yrs standard in euro land), easy programming (.net compact framework), lots and lots of software to choose from and so on.
@rmask
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I realize there a lot of very good smartphones out there from brands that you have mentioned. I also realize that I have a US-centric view since I live in the US and depend on cellular services in the US. In countries like Japan or South Korea the situation is much different with Apple iPhones almost nowhere to be found, except inside a few stores.
Let’s talk about cameras. Again there are other smartphones that have many more pixels, optical zoom, xenon flash, etc. But what I like about the one in the iPhone 3G S is that you can pick the object you want to focus on resulting in bokeh that you only find in advanced cameras. I love that feature. I’m not sure that other smartphones have this feature but please let me know if there are. High ISO in low light? That’s awesome too.
Video recording has been around too. But the quality of most videos taken by smartphones aren’t that great. I haven’t seen the video quality of the iPhone 3G S myself, but from the looks of it, I am thinking it’s one of the best even with a limited 640 x 480 resolution. It does take video at 30fps, which is good enough for a large majority of non-pro users who capture video.
But even more important than all of the features is the fact that the iPhone brings all of them into a beautiful little package that is easy to use. And don’t forget the thousands upon thousands of apps that you can download on a whim to get things done or just have fun. No other smartphone platform offers you the amount of selection the iPhone does. It isn’t even close. I should have made a top 11 reasons to buy. :-)
Hi Jin,
> But what I like about the one in the iPhone 3G S is that you can pick the object you want to focus on resulting in bokeh that you only find in advanced cameras
my HTC touch diamond 2 has this and all the other newer models does too (for some time).
>High ISO in low light?
Camera is 5Mpx, Iso 800, Video 640*480@30fps :)
>No other smartphone platform offers you the amount of selection the iPhone does.
Are you sure, even symbian has more sw than apple :)
>It isn’t even close.
Of course, win mobile has probably 10 times more than apple.
Cheers :)
I’ll admit I got very excited about the new iPhone 3G S. I currently use the iPhone 3G and that has a rather crappy camera and when I saw the selective auto-focus and high ISO (the picture that was shown during WWDC was absolutely brilliant) I was very impressed.
Yes, you’re right. Your HTC Touch Diamond 2 has the ability to selectively auto-focus that results in good quality pictures with that bokeh magic. I am sure other smartphones have this feature too. Since I only own the iPhone, I will admit that I am biased as I know very well the good and the bad since I have to live with it. After going through a rather long list of reviews for the HTC Touch Diamond 2 there seems to be a consensus that picture quality is very good. You do need to hold it quite steady and in bright sunny days exposure can be a bit tricky. But that’s with almost all smartphone cameras. Low-light performance (despite the ISO 800) was a bit lacking according to Into Mobile. The ability for any camera to take solid pictures in low-light is a feature that is an absolute requirement for me since I’m getting tired of missing too many pictures with my iPhone. And because I am lazy it takes a bit more effort than I would want to bring out the 20D. Hardware wise the Touch Diamond 2 is the only smartphone from HTC that allows you to take VGA (640 x 480) video according to Pocket Now. But InfoSync World saw some waviness and pixelation. I’ll list all the reviews that I looked at the end of this comment.
It was difficult to find the total number of apps for a given mobile operating system. The easiest one was from Apple’s WWDC when Phil Schiller was introducing the iPhone 3G S. Yes, I know: it is not to be trusted 100%, but that’s all I have at the moment. Here’s a quick rundown: Palm (18), BlackBerry (1030), Nokia (1088), Android (4900), iPhone (50,000). Now Windows Mobile was missing but I did find an old InformationWeek post that stated there to have been 18,000 apps back in July 2008. This is very unscientific but let’s say that the number of apps simply doubled in just a single year from 18,000 to 36,000. That would still put the number of apps for the iPhone ahead. If the number of Windows Mobile apps tripled, which could have happened as well, to 54,000 then WinMo has a slight edge over the iPhone.
Here is the list of sources that I checked to find out more about HTC’s Touch Diamond 2’s photo and video capabilities with brief (very brief) summaries:
Mobile Tech Addicts
http://mobiletechaddicts.com/2009/04/21/htc-touch-diamond2-review/
The camera takes brilliant pictures.
Very impressed with colours and exposure.
Very responsive camera.
Pocket Now
http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=reviews&id=1134&p=3
Only HTC device to offer VGA recording.
Selective autofocus allows you to focus quite well on a subject.
This picture came out super crisp and clear, with accurate colors.
Must be completely steady while taking a picture or it may come out blurry.
No flash.
Slash Gear
http://www.slashgear.com/htc-touch-diamond2-review-0142492/
Image quality similar to Touch HD.
Important to hold phone steady when taking pictures.
Lighting important.
Snaps are taken quicker than before.
InfoSync World
http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/cell-phones/htc-touch-diamond-2/10294.html
Not blown away with picture quality but were still pretty good.
Almost good enough to print.
Light handling is biggest problem: overexposure on sunny days.
Touch focus system a nifty feature.
VGA recording quality not very good with waviness and pixelation.
Into Mobile
http://www.intomobile.com/2009/06/09/htc-touch-diamond2-review.html
Impressive camera and pictures.
Low-light performance still a bit lacking.
Auto-focus is fast and accurate.
You can get bokeh in your pictures.
Brighthand
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=15290&review=HTC+Touch+Diamond2
Good quality shots. Exposure can be better.
Background often blown out when taking pictures on a sunny day.
Camera was something of a disappointment.
cnet
http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/htc-touch-diamond2/4505-6452_7-33527312.html
Quite impressed with picture quality.
Video quality was OK but a bit dark and grainy.
>the picture that was shown during WWDC was absolutely brilliant
photoshoped?, the cmos used is outdated already and there are’nt any real camera lenses in 3GS
Omnia, imho has better camera (more precise colors) than my TD2 (or any HTC) (thou the screen is low res). And the news about Omnia 2 just leaked :)
>The easiest one was from Apple’s WWDC when Phil Schiller was introducing the iPhone 3G S
The link, that apples propaganda people supplied, imho is very “*****”.
The number of win mobile licences sold per year is a lot higher than apple’s, meaning much bigger market potential. Not to mension the choice of freeware or opensource.
PS. Did you know you could cook your own ROM for your win mobile device? Being a tech guy yourself, you should check the xda developers site for tutorials (or get a nice premade ROM) , after some reading there, I think you’ll get the htc afterall :)
PPS. HTC TD2 ROM (kernel, interface, sw) is already ported to the other (htc) devices, do that with iphone :)
I think your tech knowledge regarding smartphones is leagues ahead of mine. I did not know you could cook your own ROM for your Windows Mobile device! That’s just cool in a geeky kind of way. :-)
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