Friday June 19th can only mean one thing: it’s iPhone 3G S day. Apple’s new smartphone has arrived, and we headed down to their NYC store to pick up one of the new handsets. You can read our full first-impressions over at SlashGear, plus some of the highlights here.
Apple are keen to remind us that the “S” here stands for Speed, and our initial experience with the iPhone 3G S certainly bears that out. Not only do applications – both native and third-party – load more quickly, but graphics in visually-intensive games show a marked improvement in the few titles we’ve already downloaded. More useful day-to-day, perhaps, is the way the iPhone 3G S now whips through email-stuffed inboxes and contact-loaded address books. This was always one of our key frustrations with the original iPhone and iPhone 3G, and together with the storage boost is arguably worth the $100 premium over the newly-discounted iPhone 3G 8GB.
The camera – now 3-megapixels with autofocus and video recording – still lacks manual settings, and the white balance and exposure remains over-enthusiastic, but we’re enjoying the touch-focus and straightforward clip trimming tools. We’d enjoy it all the more if we could edit copies of individual clips, rather than irreversibly edit the originals, though.
The last two significant hardware changes are the new digital compass, which now means the iPhone can tell in which direction you’re facing, and the prolonged battery life. The former will probably only come into its own once third-party turn-by-turn PND apps arrive, but the latter we’re hoping to see the effect of even sooner. It’s obviously too early to make any particular judgments on runtime, but we’ll be watching closely to see if the iPhone 3G S really does last longer than the iPhone 3G.
Two big questions remain: is the iPhone 3G S worth upgrading to, and is it the best smartphone on the market? You’ll have to wait until our full iPhone 3G S review next week to hear the answers, but until then check out our full first-impressions post over at SlashGear.
When will Iphone can use office such as Word or Excel?
ok so I just got off the phone with ATt’s Iphone tech support and MMS will not be supported till later this summer.
He did mention that on the website there was a disclaimer about MMS in the us not being supported till summer of 09. My issue is the email all of us got with the 15 min video about all the features states no where in the video or on the page around the video that mms will not be supported. My husband broke his phone this week so he needed to get one. He thought he was doing me something nice and got me the new phone since it was suppose to support MMS (I send a lot of pixs back to the office for work and to family for kids). This was as bad as not supporting exchange email!!!
There is alrady office for iphone or ipod touch. This software is called Quickoffice. I am pretty sure you can get it from the app store at the price of 20 dollars or free if you know how to crack it
What a disappointment! Battery doesn’t get me through 5 hours. I thought it might take some time to ramp up, however, I have had it for two weeks now. It is virtually useless. I switched from a Verizon LG Voyager with Navigator. It wins hands down over MAPS….when in NYC last week I tried to find the nearest Apple store….try it, MAPS pulled up every “apple” business and businesses selling “apples” and people named “apple” except the apple store! I ended up taking my marbles and going home. Expensive cell service that is marginal with poor interface….sorry for a few tricks I’d rather go back to LG