gadgets and technology devices: Apple unveils iPhone 3G successor ‘iPhone 3GS’

Apple unveils iPhone 3G successor 'iPhone 3GS'

iphone-3gs

WWDC 09 is done and this years biggest announcement from Apple is probably here. Apart from a refreshed 15″ & 17″ Macbook pro and addition of 13″ MBP; Apple unveiled the all new iPhone 3GS. The biggest competition for the Apple iPhone 3GS is the iPhone 3G itself. Lets see how the iPhone 3GS does compared to the iPhone 3G. While the iPhone 3G still lives with a $99 price tag, don’t expect it to to last long!

Some big drawbacks of the iPhone platform is taken care by the iPhone OS 3.0. This would benefit both the iPhone 2G, 3G and the 3GS. However there are some features like MMS which won’t work in the 1st Gen iPhone due to hardware limitations.

Structure wise Apple sticks to its bar shaped design, 3.5 multitouch display, a home button, a power button, vibrate mode toggle and the volume controls. But the iPhone 3GS has a major hardware upgrade, its all hidden under the hood. A faster processor, better battery, double the RAM (speculated), a 3MP autofocus camera etc. 3GS also gets Video recording, Voice Control & Digital compass!

Its clear that Apple has moved (rather is moving) from a good Internet smartphone to a media intensive device. Something that will allow you to play with digital content extensively (Read Videos) and at the same time let you upload it online (Send to YouTube).

With the 3GS, the iPhone platform gets the much rumored and expected 32GB upgrade. This now eliminates one of the few advantages that Nokia N97 had over the current iPhones. While several 5MP, 8MP and 12MP camera phones have been unveiled by Sony Ericsson, Nokia and others; Apple only upgrades the iPhone 3GS camera to 3MP up from the 2Mp on the iPhone 3G. However this comes with a video recording feature. Knowing the picture quality of the current 2MP iPhone camera, I feel the 3MP would be good enough wit autofocus. Also the video recordings would be at 30fps, that matches the competition!

3gs

iPhone 3GS still sees a good integration of Google services and we can expect Google to build/customize/improvise more products for the iPhone platform. Voice controls also debut on the iPhone 3GS. Bluetooth P2P for games was spoken off, but bluetooth file transfer still isn’t a reality with the iPhone. However Jailbreaking and App Store makes up for a lot of other things . iPhone 3.0 OS also brings AD2P to both the iPhone 3G and the 3GS (1st gen is left out of this).

AT&T’s recent network upgrade allows users to use the 7.2MB HSPA network capabilities offered by the iPhone (guess ATT is still expanding capacity). This comes with full movie downloads (rumored), TV show downloads, video uploads, MMS and a lot more. All in all the Internet usage on the iPhone will take a good jump. Though identical on the design front, the iPhone 3G and 3GS have a lot of difference in the specs sheet. iPhone 3GS adds 2gms of weight to the iPhone 3G (at 135gms) and is equally slim.

iPhone 3GS sounds like a little differentiator from the current iPhone model. Somehow this hints to me that the next iPhone would break this and present a new design with extreme hardware features. For the moment good hardware and best software is what Apple is banking on.

More on the iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone 3GS, Competition and WWDC analysis on iPhoneHelp.in