ITProPortal give two articles in their email newsletter this week. One sings the praises of Apples's new iPhone 3GS, and the other advises leaving it alone.
I reproduce both together below to try to give some balance.
The Pros.5 Reasons Why You Should Upgrade Your iPhone To 3GS ASAP36 hours ago, Apple's brand new iPhone 3G S was released and was plebiscited as the best iPhone ever with many features that made it almost the ideal smartphone but there's a big problem.
Apple decided to slash the price of the old 8GB iPhone 3G to a stupidly low $99 (ed: it is very unlikely though that your monthly contract price will go down subsequently) which introduced a conundrum to prospective iPhone users. Should one pay a 100 percent premium to get 50 percent more features.
But the iPhone 3G S is so good that it is actually worth investing in a new model rather than stick to your 3G model. We've managed to find five reasons amongst the plethora on offer on why you should bag one ASAP.
(1) Need For SpeedThe new iPhone is faster. Way faster. Apple benchmarks says that it can launch messages 2.1 times faster than the old iPhone 3G, load Simcity 2.4 times faster and view an Excel file attachment 3.6 times quicker. Crucially, the Sunspider test which is a Javascript benchmark is twice as fast as the old 3G. The 3G s uses a 600MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor that carries a 256KB L2 cache and is built using a 65nm manufacturing process.
(2) Better InternetThe iPhone 3G S has a 7.2mbps HSDPA connection option which allows it to download files way faster than before. Arguably your network needs to offer this kind of speed but it is always good to know that your iPhone will be up for it. O2 apparently does not offer HSDPA for now which means that users will be stuck at 3.6Mbps.
36 hours ago, Apple's brand new iPhone 3G S was released and was plebiscited as the best iPhone ever with many features that made it almost the ideal smartphone but there's a big problem.
Apple decided to slash the price of the old 8GB iPhone 3G to a stupidly low $99 (ed: it is very unlikely though that your monthly contract price will go down subsequently) which introduced a conundrum to prospective iPhone users. Should one pay a 100 percent premium to get 50 percent more features.
But the iPhone 3G S is so good that it is actually worth investing in a new model rather than stick to your 3G model. We've managed to find five reasons amongst the plethora on offer on why you should bag one ASAP.
(3) Sharper Camera With VideoThe 3 Megapixel camera still lacks a flash but you do get autofocus and auto white balance. Not only do you get better low light performance (won't get that through OS 3.0 upgrade) but it also comes with a 10cm macro capture capability. Obviously, you can also do video with the new one. That's a 30FPS, VGA (better than VHS, almost DVD) quality complete with audio AND an API.
(4) More Onboard MemoryThe new iPhone 3G S offers up to 32GB memory, which is twice the amount offered on the previous top of the range model. This means more space for your iTunes songs, videos and applications. This also means that the iPhone has caught up with the rest of the competition. Only the new Nokia N97 offers that much built-in storage.
(5) Great battery lifeExpect up to 5 hours 3G Talk time (12 on 2G) and up to 9 hours worth of WiFi internet on the new iPhone 3G S. You can aslo watch up to 10 hours of movie with audio playback extending up to 30 hours. This is a massive improvement on the previous iPhone 3G which could offer only up to 6 hours of browsing. This is even more significant when you consider the fact that the new processor consumes more power than the older ARM11 model.
And lets not forget the other features that are unique to the 3G S like built in digital compass, native hardware encryption, much better accessibility as well as voice commands that can be used to control your iPhone.
See:-
here.
The ConsiPhone 3GS : Don’t Bother, Just Pick Up The Original On The CheapOn purely a spec comparison the recently launched Samsung HD surpasses Apple’s 3GS on all counts. From screen, camera, data speeds, versatility (microSD), video recording etc. The list is seemingly endless.
Orange’s lacklustre push of Samsung’s handset is perverse. On the other hand why did Samsung launch with the bland Orange network? The good part of the 3GS is to show what an achievement the original 3G was, especially with the OS 3 update.
The 3G is now being sold as the poor person’s iPhone is giving users 95% of the functionality at 60% of the cost (ed : even less than that).
The 3GS will be the seen as overpriced and under specified for the money, the 3G however will continue to win favour with the masses so by a fluke of chance Apple will keep in with the market.
But this abysmal update will have to be swept away soon or otherwise the competitors will start sweeping away Apple.
See:-
here.