For those of you who are still teetering on the fence about whether or not to pick up the 3G iPhone are in luck. The first reviews for the phone are in, and so far everything looks to be peachy keen. Here is a few key quotes from the reviews, and what the consensus is.
Walter Mossberg’s Review Synopsis - “If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge, if you can live with the higher service costs and the weaker battery life. The same goes for those with existing iPhones who love the device but crave faster cellular data speeds. But if you already own an iPhone, and can usually use Wi-Fi for data, you probably should hold off and get the free software upgrade before deciding whether it’s worth getting the new hardware.”
Edward Baig’s USA Today Review - “Apple’s claims that 3G speeds are twice as fast as Edge were confirmed by my own download tests. It generally took 10 to 30 seconds to load popular websites through 3G, a lot zippier than when I accessed the sites on Edge. Oddly, parts of the pages sometimes showed up first on the older iPhone screen”
“The physical size and shape of the new iPhone hasn’t changed much. There’s the same lovely 3 1/2-inch multi-touch display. The new device is a bit curvier on the back than the first one.”
“Apple has improved overall audio quality of the device. The speaker phone sounded better, as did music played directly through the phone’s speaker.”
“As with its predecessor, iPhone 3G doesn’t support popular Web browsing standards such as Adobe Flash, Windows Media Video or Java. And there’s still no removable battery.”
David Pogue’s New York Time Review - “So the iPhone 3G is a nice upgrade. It more than keeps pace with advancing technology, and new buyers will generally be delighted.”
“Above all, the iPhone is about to become a dazzling hand-held game machine. The games revealed so far feature smooth 3-D graphics and tilt control; in one driving simulator, you turn the iPhone itself like a steering wheel, and your 3-D car on the screen banks accordingly. Other games exploit the multitouch screen, so you and a buddy can sit at opposite ends of the screen and fire at each other.”
“Unfortunately, most of the standard cellphone features that were missing from the first iPhone are still missing. There’s still no voice dialing, video recording, copy-and-paste, memory-card slot, Bluetooth stereo audio or phone-to-phone photo sending (MMS). And when the battery needs replacement after a couple of years, you’ll still have to pay Apple $86 for a replacement.”
