Dave Thorp's Blog

After the disappointment of Apple launching their revolutionary iPad (basically an oversized iPod Touch) I was expecting Apple to come up with something really revolutionary with the new iPhone 4.0 software update. Seems I was expecting too much and having initially been deeply concerned I jumped ship too soon having moved to the Android powered Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 last week my thoughts now are that I jumped ship at just the right time.

So what did Apple announce in their software update. Well the following 7 things to be precise

Multitasking

I went into some depth as to just why I feel this unnecessary when I talked about the oversized iPod touch and basically my feelings were (and still are) that there is simply no need to have multiple open tasks on a mobile phone. Mail polls in the background, the iPod continues to play in the background and calls and texts still come through in the background. On a mobile phone that is more than sufficient

Folders

The first of many “new features” where Apple have merely jailbroken their iPhones and then decided what are the best ideas they can use. Useful yes. Revolutionary… hardly

Unified Inbox

All your email now in one place. Useful no as I only have one email account set up on my phone and if I did have more than one email account such as for work and personal I would want to keep them separate

iBooks

The book reader announced for iPad (but only available in one country… the USA) comes to iPhone. With a free Winnie the Pooh book. Unfortunately as I don’t live in that one country, this is as much use as a chocolate fireguard

Enterprise

No not the starship but some business features that are as standard on any other business phone. Some people may care…. I don’t!

Game Centre

Social gaming similar to xbox live, PSN or the open feint system (that many games already use) comes to the iPhone. Meh

iAd

Do not get me started on this “feature” of the new OS as if there was ever a reason not to upgrade this is it. Yes I know this site uses ads but in over two years of having them on I have made the net sum of £52 of which I can’t get at £26 until I reach the withdrawal limits with those affiliate networks. However I do not want ads on my mobile phone and there is a damn good reason why I use adblock plus with firefox on any computer I use. There is also a good reason why nearly 800,000 other users download adblock plus every week. Because we don’t want ads!

Sorry Apple but if this is the best you can come up with I really am glad I jumped ship to Android. I’ll end this post with my tweet which sums up my thoughts on this new OS

“So to summarize a load of features ripped straight from jailbroken iPhones and adverts. GET IN!!”

When the 3GS was first announced, I asked the question was it worth the hype? At that time of course as it wasn’t released, I didn’t have my hands on one. Now I do! So how does it compare to the 3G and is it worth people upgrading? This post will discuss this, as well as be a review of the handset

Appearence

The 3GS appears more or less identical to the 3G. Well in my case that isn’t entirely true as my 3GS has double the capacity of my 3G so has a different number on the back and is a different colour as I opted for the white version this time.

I did expect the white version to be white all over and not just on the back cover. The area surrounding the screen is still black so unless you look at it from behind there is no noticeable difference.

People seem to be raving about the new charger and rightly so as the charger changes from a bulky affair to one that is smaller than a standard electrical plug.

Interface

As is commonly known the new phone is little different in terms of usability from the old 3G with the new 3.0OS. However there is a noticeable speed difference when using the phone and navigating menus and the like.

New features

The much talked about compass seems to do exactly what it says on the tin and integrates with maps nicely. I am slightly concerned however that maps seems to try and determine my location from my home wifi network when at home and wifi is turned on (presumably as GPS always did suffer indoors). This has the nice side effect of banging me two miles to the west and near to PNE football ground rather then where I actually live.

The voice control feature sounds nice but can’t say I’ve tried it yet.

*goes to try it*

Well it seems to do alright. Probably about a 90% hit ratio with what I asked it to do. Would be nice to have the option to play a specific song rather than a playlist, album or artist though. Perhaps in OS 3.1

The camera autofocus seems to work well. I can’t say I’ve noticed much difference in picture quality though. I have not as yet tried the video camera.

I am yet to use MMS on the 3GS as I never was a big picture message user unless they were free and I used them instead of texts (last time that happened was with imode handsets). However as the 3GS’s MMS support is the same as the 3G’s but with video added I’m guessing it will be fine

I have not even attempted to use tethering. People seem to be very put off at O2′s pricing even though and O2 wont even permit its use without buying a bolt on though there is a hack to get round this. O2′s pricing on tethering seems to be on a par with their mobile broadband pricing though and as I already have mobile broadband I cant see me using this much.

So is it worth it?

The extra speed alone probably does make this a worthy upgrade. Voice control is useful though I would like to see the accuracy pick up slightly and additional control options.

However, my original opinion stands, it is not worth people paying silly money to buy the handset on PAYG or even worse buy out their contracts. Thankfully I managed to work round both those problems and went for neither option. The 3G does much that the 3GS does equally well or not much worse. Unless you must have the latest phone or really need the speed boost, voice control, video and a compass you should probably hang fire. The 3GS is an excellent device though, however many people feel that this is what the 3G should have been first time around.

Apple have apparently reported that sales of the 3GS over the first weekend were in the region of 1 million units worldwide. Not sure how that compared with the 3G though an accurate comparison is impossible as many 3G owners were unable to upgrade this time, and stock levels for the 3GS seemed to be higher than they were for the 3G. Not to mention all the technical issues that plagued launch day on the 3G were avoided this time round

Few days ago I predicted the iPhone 3GS was going to be a flop compared to it’s predecessors. Mainly due to O2 pricing it stupidly high and alienating their existing customer base. Seems I was right going off this picture of people queuing for the 3GS compared to people queuing for the original iPhone (which was also stupidly expensive I’ll add).

Full story and original image HERE