Not a Resource

My weak attempt at taking the same picture with the original iPhone and the new 3GS.

It ain’t the greatest camera ever put in a phone, but its ability to take macro shots is going to make it much more useful for me.

Strolled into to my nearest AT&T Wireless store around 8AM and by 8:20 I was walking out with my new iPhone 3GS (16GB, White). No fuss, no muss, no lines.

Coming from the original iPhone the first thing I noticed is how much better the 3G / 3GS feels in the hand. The slope of the back gets more of your hand on the phone for a more comfortable and stable grip. I wasn’t a big fan of the metal back on the original — I dislike metal surfaces on things that I frequently touch — so the plastic back is a welcome improvement for me.

The next thing you notice is that every application loads quicker. It isn’t so much fast as it is less slow. Opening the Calculator is maybe 1/3 of a second faster, Settings is easily a full second.

3G data service may not deliver the ubiquitous high-speed wireless Internet access that we techo-geeks yearn for but it is a noticeable and significant improvement over EDGE. I’ve been avoiding using my iPhone heavily outside of WiFi coverage because the experience hasn’t been that great but I can see myself using the 3GS much more outside of my home and office now…

Which is good because the WiFi on the 3GS seems a bit wonky. Sitting mere feet from my basestation the 3GS has frequently shown just 1 or 2 “bars” of WiFi signal strength, and this does make a substantial difference when using any application that pulls data from the Internet.

The camera is decent, a gigantic improvement over the piece of shit in the original. Nowhere near as good as certain phones that have put some effort toward replacing digital cameras — Nokia N95, many Sony K and W models — but it is vastly superior the cameras in any smartphone I’ve owned. The focussing system is a bit fussy up close but mostly seems to work. Lighting remains the greatest obstacle to taking great photographs but the 3GS does much better in challenging situations than the original, and under the right conditions you can definitely take pictures that look as good as those from a Y2K-era digital camera.

And lastly, the “anti-smudging” coating on the screen really seems to work. I wiped my sweaty face across the screen, gave it a quick wipe with my shirt, and the screen looked like it had never been touched. Then I stuck a screen protector on anyways.