Games Consoles

The Apple iPhone

I can’t think of another cell phone product in the last couple of years that has received the same levels of hysteria and exposure as the Apple iPhone. One of the main problems was that the first Apple iPhone had it’s problems and was far from perfect and lacking in some critical features such as 3g.

The price was way to high, the levels of contract where to narrow and it was only released into a small  set of countries which of course kept in from many potential buyers. But now that is all set to change with the release of the new Apple iPhone 3g.

The iPhone 3G, is no longer a toy for a few wealthy people and has turned into a serious contender at any level. It’s aiming for business users with it’s Apple iPhone Exchange mailing service and also the general public with the support of the App Store and 3rd party applications makes it more than just a phone and moves the Apple iPhone 3g into the realms of PDA.

So is the Apple iPhone any good compared to other major brand cell phones out there? Well we will try to answer that question in the review below.

Apple iPhone hardware

The new iphone 3g is easily recognizable as the changes to the looks are very subtle from the original. The main display screen is still the same, this is not a problem as it was always rated very highly by consumers. The high resolution and bright display measuring 480 x 320 3.5 inches is great.

Of course the only downside to the display was – and still is – that it is a collector of fingerprints and smudges. One of the aesthetic point I’m ot to sure of is the change of the back plate for silver to black or white. The white version is available if you purchase the 16gb model. After saying that the plastic used in the new iphone is of good quality and a step above the usual level.

I guess one of the reasons Apple move from steel to plastic for its rear casing is the fact that the new Apple iPhone 3g as far more connectivity possibilities. The Apple iPhone is now compatible with HSDPA, Bluetooth, GSM, EDGE, GPS and WiFi and so should receive no complaints when it comes to logging on.

The new iPhone body is marginally thicker at the center than what its predecessor was but the edges are tapered and so making it thinner than to original cell phone. This helps in giving the illusion that the phone is thinner that it actually is. One of the other issues is that the new iPhone does not come with a docking station as standard like the original did so it’s another added expense as you need to lash out an extra $30 or so.

One of the many plus side of the new Apple cell phone is the greatly improved quality of the calls when using the iPhone 3G. It’s a widely known fact in the industry that 3g calls are better than regular GSM but Apple also made some major improvements in the GSM call quality to. The quality of the calls on both 3g and GSM, using the iPhone was very good and much better than the original.Apple iPhone.

It’s important to keep in mind that call quality is determined by cell phone coverage and coverage varies quite a lot between GSM and 3G networks and this is dependent on where you are at that time. Another point that need to be understood is that 3g requires more battery power than GSM and Apple has put a lot of effort into preserving battery life but the Apple iPhone 3G does not do any specific real time signal detection to help in determining whether you have a better GSM or 3G voice coverage. To ensure your using the right network for your needs will require a little manual digging and configuration work with the iphone settings.

The actual battery life figures supplied by Apple for the new iPhone 3G include the following: 10 hours talk time on 3g/GSM, 5-6 hours 3g data transfer, 6 hours for WiFi use, 7hrs for video use and 24 hours for music. These figures are pretty accurate according to our test and I have no problem in agreeing with these figures. It is important that you remember to ensure you turn off the push and fetch data service as this can affect the battery life of the iPhone by almost 25%.

The tests below where done making sure that 3g and WiFi was turned on.screen brightness and other control setting set to medium. We found that we manged to play Music files continuously for 29h 50m. The video playback was logged at 6h 35m and the use of the browser and email function, GPS or data transfer times came in a shade under 61/2 hours.

You will find that in the first couple of days when you get the new iPhone 3g you will be charging it every day but as you settle down a little and to novelty wears off then you should see an increase in times. The 61/2 surfing time is not great so be warned.

Apple have also upgraded, developed or fixed – depending on your opinion – several of the gripes associated with the old version of the iPhone and a good example of that is the dual proximity sensors built into the new iPhone to detect how close the cell phone is to your face or ear. Another point is the camera, although it’s generally the same as the old phone we found the images seemed a little crisper and sharper. This is still a bad point for the iPhone as it’s main competitors have moved on greatly in this area not only offering far greater mega pixels – up to 8m in some cases – but also manual focus and other dedicated digital camera functions.

Two of the biggest issues with the original Apple iPhone have (thankfully) been fixed. There was a lot of complaints about headphone jack and the speaker volumn and it seems that Apple ave been listening because the new iPhone 3g has corrected bot problems. The new headphone jack is now been made flush with the device and this mean that any standard headphones jack of 3.5m will be compatible with the iPhone 3g without the need for an special adapter. The new jack has a far more solid feel to it and takes away those worries you had weith the old iPhone of damaging the headphones or the device itself.

The second major issue is the speaker volume, this has been significantly upgraded giving your calls and media use much more control of the volume levels. It’s still not a loudest best or loudest speaker on this market and still lags behind the likes of Nokia and Samsung as it still remains mono but it’s a big improvement on the old model that was hard to hear and distorted easily if pushed to hard.

Speed test and location tracking

I would guess that the most important reason that people would consider the new Apple iPhone 3g is the increase 3g data transmission and i am happy to say that we where impressed by the new data transfer skills of the iPhone 3g. The cell phone managed data speeds of 290 – 550Kbps in the United States and is on par with most of it’s major competitors, and on networks based of overseas in Europe and Asia where the data rates are faster still, the score where even better. We saw data transmission scores of over 710-830Kbps. Of course the speed of your individual iPhone 3g will be very much dependent on your network providers, and considering that there is a large difference between suppliers I suggest you shop around.

Another area that surprised us was the GPS software. Is was pretty quick to locate your position especially for a cell phone. Most devices and cell phones use the traditional GPS receivers and this is enhance by the use of cell phone towers to help triangulate your position. The new Apple iPhone 3G is one of the first devices that uses AGPS and Skyhook’s own proprietary WiFi-based person location system. This gives it a great advantage in accurate location by increasing the locator possibilities to  three. The speed of the location was impressive at around 2 to 3 second for a fix. There is one important point to understand when you talk about the iPhone 3g’s GPS capabilities, and that is it’s clearly only intended to be a personal, location finder smartphone and not a truly dedicated global position device. There is quite a big difference between the two.

It makes perfect sense as to why you would replace your in-car GPS system with a iPhone 3g if it was capable of full GPS capability that is.

The iPhone 3G location finder device as A good, large screen and It’s connected to the internet – using your contract that you already pay for – so this allows for easy map updates and traffic information alerts. The problem is that the new iPhone 3g uses Google maps app and this doesn’t provide true turn by turn map route guidance.

It does provide a level of direction information but i would not advise trying to use this as your dedicated GPS system and should only be used as a stand-in. Of course the beauty of the new software system is that it supports open apps development so I’m sure that some smart guy will make a small fortune when he develops iPhone GPS for the new phone.

more to come…..

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