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Tuesday 10 June 2008

What Do We Think of iPhone 3G?

iLounge have added a useful article on the new iPhone 3G.

I will be upgrading simply because I'm unable to say no to shiny new gadgets, especially when they combine: Apple, Internet, Email, Development Opportunities & Phone! - It's simply impossible for me to not buy this device! Yes - I know, I'm reminded how geeky this is by Mrs Meineck often!



Image: Courtesy of Apple

Looking at it with a more balanced head, in terms of new features iPhone 3G is an evolution not a revolution - but this evolution will IMHO help it transform from being the shiny gadget of a few lucky and cash-happy geeks to a device that will permeate through the enterprise and be very popular on the street.

Despite this, there are some embarrassing areas of lacking:
  • Proper Bluetooth implementation - why cant we send and receive pictures with each other? Yes e-mail allows sharing of photos but a large number of my friends don't have e-mail configured on their phones, and often we like to share photos down the pub, bar etc.
  • Why doesn't it support stereo Bluetooth - this is such an obvious feature for the latest iPod device.
  • Better camera - from the keynote it was obvious that the sample images they used must have been taken on some fantasy uber iPhone because with the current camera there is no way you could get that sort of quality. 2MP was good 10 years ago, but the camera is shocking compared to even 2005's standards of auto focus low light sensitive camera phones.
  • MMS - Sure MMS is a costly technology compared to sending an email with attachments - but why cant I at least receive MMS messages natively without having to log in to a cumbersome website, not even optimised for the smaller screen? Lots of my friends send MMS because their phones aren't setup for e-mail, and MMS works well for them.
  • Storage - 8GB and 16GB were a bit disappointing - but only because this isn't an improvement on the previous models.

Also amusing/depressing to note that BBC NewsBeat this morning reported the iPhone 3G as thinner, because in the keynote it was reported as “thinner at the edges”, when actually it is thicker overall but has tapered edges which are thinner. They also reported that it comes with Sat Nav - when actually it only comes with GPS enabled Google maps, which although supporting directions isn't exactly the sophisticated Sat Nav like TomTom. (I don’t expect this out of the box, and know it's on the cards from third parties as additional premium software, just annoyed to hear the BBC report so shabbily).

Oh well, you will still see me in the queue on July 11th!

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

See you in the queue. Right behind me :)

Anonymous said...

Nice article.
There's at least a couple of years of life left in my XDA yet, so no iPhone for me :).