The best gets (mostly) better: two weeks with the iPhone 3GS

So about, uh, two weeks ago, I picked up an iPhone 3GS at a local AT&T store. How insanely popular is this device? Well, I went to an AT&T store because I was still annoyed at being barred from entering an Apple Store on launch day when I wouldn’t agree in the mall corridor to buy the phone. Since the best I could do then was offer that I would probably buy it, but that I wanted to see it first, the kindly Store personnel and the security behind them would not let me pass. The whole thing was funny to me because cell phones are hardly the most expensive thing Apple sells; but I was told that even with these measures, there were 30-minute delays for the people inside who had already committed to purchasing the device. Good times.

AT&T gets a bad rap, and sometimes that’s deserved, but I was in and out of their store in moments. The whole purchasing process is kind of funny; they handed me my new phone, now active, but still with the plastic wrap clinging around it. I was told the data plan would activate on my phone within five minutes of purchase; I saw the “3G” appear on my screen before I even hit the door on my way out. I threw the phone (a white, 16-gig model) back in the box for the ride home. Since then, I’ve been putting it through its paces, deciding whether I want to keep it, and here’s what I’ve found:

The good

Headphone jack: My “old” phone was the O.G. iPhone, which has a standard-sized but recessed headphone jack. iPod headphones, with their tiny connectors, plug in easily, but many headphones won’t without an adaptor. I think I’ve bought about four of those adaptors. They’re annoying and easy to lose. No need for them now with the 3GS’ flush headphone jack. Plus, at work, I’m frequently testing audio connections, so being able to plug any mini cable into my phone is incredibly convenient.

3G: I might be nuts, but I could swear that the longer I’ve had my O.G., the worse AT&T’s normal voice network and EDGE data network (which is to say, not the 3G they’re pushing on newer models) have performed. In my wildest pre-purchase dreams, a 3G iPhone would switch seamlessly between the two depending on which gave me the best reception. And that’s exactly how it works. I almost always have three or more bars of reception, and I have yet to have a phone call where it was particularly difficult to understand the other person, something that happened from time to time on the O.G. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that a recent Times article scared me straight on talking while driving.) Phone calls over 3G seem to sound slightly clearer, but most of the improvement can be credited to having good signal strength more often. The phone even held up like a champ during a brutal argument I had on the walk in to work the other day, exactly the kind of talk where I would have had to “what?” a few times on the old phone.

And that’s not even touching on the data speeds offered over 3G, which freaking rock if you have a good signal. Hole Punch Sports loads in seconds. E-mail seems instant, and fast even with pictures attached. I now often find myself listening to the Pandora app in my car, and it’s honestly only a little slower than using Pandora on a desktop PC. It’s a very nice option to have. I was mostly satisfied with the EDGE speeds I was getting on the old phone, especially since I can use the faster Wi-Fi at home and work, but 3G is a nice bump.

Faster chips/more memory: The iPhone 3GS has a faster processor than its predecessor, and supposedly has twice as much RAM as Apple’s first two phones. It is a noticeable but small increase in responsiveness for the most part, but a few changes stand out. First, you can open multiple browser tabs in Safari and flip between them without the pages having to reload as often; they almost always had to reload when flipping through tabs on my old phone. Second, you can correct mistakes more quickly; if you accidentally hit the wrong app you can hit the home button and quit it almost instantly, which is lovely. And third, the keyboard lag I found myself battling more frequently with the iPhone OS 3.0 update on my old phone is pretty much gone. That said, I hope Apple can optimize the 3.0 firmware more for older phones because that lag’s annoying.

Camera: The still camera has one more megapixel (3 total) than older iPhones, but also adds an autofocus feature. You simply tap on the screen in the camera app on the object you want to focus on, and it adjusts. It also adjusts the white balance, which seems to have a bigger impact on many images. In any event, having already taken hundreds of pictures on my old iPhone, the improvement is very welcome. (I don’t have any samples to put up since I’m not sure people want random pictures of themselves on my blog, but you can find side-by-side examples of the improvement on many sites, including the fantastic iLounge.)

The camera also does video, at 640 by 480 resolution at 30 frames per second. The quality is pretty good, and the microphone picks up sound better than I expected. So far I’ve mostly just used it to make people around me really self-conscious.

Improved location stuff: The iPhone 3GS includes GPS, which Apple first introduced on the 3G. My first-generation iPhone could determine its location by triangulating from various wireless networks, and would generally give me a circle of a few blocks including my location. That was, honestly, almost always good enough, though while driving in unfamiliar locations a few times it lead to confusion. GPS is more accurate, natch, though while indoors once it showed me to be somewhere I wasn’t (though I was pretty close to there). The phone also includes a digital compass, and can rotate your Google Maps to face the direction in which you’re holding the phone. I navigated around Manhattan with my brother last summer just fine without this feature, though of course it’s better to have than not.

The same

There are many things which haven’t changed on the iPhone, but which are too awesome to ignore. My favorite feature is probably Visual Voicemail, which shows your voicemails in a list, labeled with either a phone number or the name of the caller, if you have the number in your contacts. You just tap a message to hear it, which beats calling in and dialing through menus by a country mile. I wish I’d had this a few years ago, when my church responsibilities meant I got a lot of calls and short voice messages from people I’d only need to speak to briefly.

The App Store, featured in countless commercials over the last year, still offers tens of thousands of programs. Most of my favorites just end up being information you could look up on the Web packaged more conveniently, like say the New York Times app, but I also like a few games and the option to download the Dictionary.com dictionary straight onto my phone.

Apple’s built-in programs, like Safari and Mail, are wonderful, but I’m also a fan and devout user of the unsung ones. I like the Notes app a lot and use it for everything from shopping lists to work reminders. The countdown timer on Clock is something I use everyday; certainly it beats racing across the apartment to shut off the oven timer. Calendar went from convenient and easy to downright indispensable once Google started offering free over-the-air syncing to Google Calendar. The threaded view for text messaging, which makes texting look more like an instant messaging window where the conversation goes back and forth, is a small bonus that I’d never want to do without. The iPod is of course outstanding, too; portable video is almost comfortable on the 3.5” screen.

Oh, and the one thing I adore about AT&T is having rollover minutes.

The bad

3G data plans: The original iPhone mandated a $20/month data plan when used on AT&T. That included unlimited web and data as well as 200 text messages (or five bucks worth). The 3G iPhones require a $30/month data plan than includes no texts. Particularly if you get a texting plan, you can see how things get more expensive in a hurry. I sort of dodge a bullet on this because I should get a discount through my work. Since AT&T didn’t offer plan discounts on the first-gen iPhone, I should only end up paying like two bucks more per month, though they didn’t apply the discount on my first bill (yes, I am working on this). [Correction: the discount was already on first bill, but so was a nearly-equivalent upgrade fee I didn't know I'd be paying.]

Battery life: One small improvement Apple made on the 3GS is the ability to turn on a battery percentage indicator, an option that has turned me into a neurotic mess. I’m constantly calculating in my mind that, if my last phone call took 12% of my battery, how much longer will my phone last? Yeah, I got issues.

Two features use up battery particularly quickly: video recording and 3G, especially 3G phone calls. Judging from the percentages I think I’d get three hours or so of talk time over a 3G network. I can remember talking once on my first-gen iPhone for three hours in a row and using maybe half the battery. As it is, I use my phone for a few calls and texts every day, plus a lot of data over Wi-Fi, which uses less power than cell network data. My old phone could often get seven or so hours of this kind of use without needing a charge, meaning I could use it a lot; the 3GS tends to last more like five or six hours. That may not sound like a huge difference, but it’s noticeable, and makes me less willing to rely on the device as an iPod and a phone, something I did frequently with my first gen. I have a nearly-dimensionless iPod nano that holds all my music, so this isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for me personally, but it makes the device a bit less cool. So far I have always made it through the day without recharging, though it has been close a couple times.

I would also say my first-gen’s battery was a champ while travelling a few times last year, though perhaps the 3GS would do similarly if I switch the 3G off. (Not sure, though, because I haven’t had the willpower to leave it off for a full day; it seems to do better without 3G, but not dramatically so.)

At home I get good reception either way, so I will probably just turn off 3G when I’m home or when I know I’m going to be on a long phone call and be fine in the long run. Of course, if you could swap the battery this would be no big deal, and I really wish you could, but you can’t.

Durability: One thing I don’t like about the iPhone is that it still feels just a touch too precious in your hand. When I got home from that AT&T store, I immediately applied a screen protector film and put my phone in a case.

My first-gen phone stood up to some abuse; I didn’t have a case or cover for months, and it was nearly spotless until one day I accidentally dropped it screen-first on a table corner and got a nice little scratch. Nothing ridiculous, but it is noticeable. The very next day it slipped out of my pocket onto the tile floor of my office and got a couple more scratches on it. That’s when I started using a screen protector and a case. I’ve gone through a couple screen protectors since but haven’t done any more damage to the screen. The 3GS has a new coating on the screen which is intended to prevent smudging from your fingers and face, but this is useless to me because I plan to have a protector on it at all times. I couldn’t even tell you what the new screen feels like.

Anyway, my first-gen never stopped working great, but the general feel of the iPhone (like the 3GS’s plastic shell and the non-removable battery) make you sort of hope to take care of it well enough to last you through your contract. You can shell out for an AppleCare extended warranty but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t cover losing or dropping your phone, so I didn’t bother.

So, those are my thoughts. Overall I think this is the best phone going, especially for me, so I’ll probably hang onto it, though I have another week and a half to do a return. I’ve been intrigued by many other phones lately, especially the Palm Pre and the HTC Hero, but so far nothing else has caught my eye quite like the iPhone, despite a few drawbacks.