Apple iPhone 3G Review

Look and feel

Give or take a fraction of a millimetre difference in the width and length, the iPhone 3G looks virtually identical to the original. The chief difference is the new glossy black, slightly bulbous rear plastic casing, which replaces the brushed stainless steel of the first edition. This looks and feels a lot better than it sounds, and enables Apple to include the new 3G chipset and the GPS receiver. Despite being larger than many smartphones, the handset still feels great in the hand and the iconic touch-screen interface looks as good as ever.

Features

The 3G iPhone fills in the gaps that are missing from the original to complete an excellent feature set. The most obvious improvement is the addition of 3G (it’s actually the faster HSDPA) data speeds. You can also download new applications to the iPhone 3G from the pre-installed App Store link. There’s a suite of enterprise functions, including push-email, calendar and contacts, as well as Microsoft Exchange, which wasn’t available on the original. However, our favourite new addition is the navigation function, which is made possible by a built-in GPS receiver. Navigation with Google Maps and the 3G iPhone’s large touch-screen is a treat.

Ease of use

Thanks to the large display and ingeniously designed touch-screen user interface, there is no better phone than the iPhone 3G for web browsing, game playing and for viewing photos, videos and music files. However, it must be said that the virtual keypad and QWERTY is not as easy to use for numbers and texts as mechanical alternatives.

Performance

The iPhone has always performed admirably, but it’s gone up a notch or two with its new improved features. The addition of 3G makes a real difference to web browsing and download speeds while using the mobile network. We were also very impressed by the phone’s navigation performance.

Battery life

The battery stood up well to an intensive weekend of full multimedia use, so we have no complaints on this score.