Apple iPhone 3GS - 16 GB - Black (Orange) Smartphone

At the time of writing this review, there are over 327 reviews of iphones on ebay already. Let's add another!
I bought the phone offline from ebay, i wanted one because the electronics store where I work has everything that works off ipods/iphones. There are sound-docks, lighting controls, multi-room audio and even home cinema amps that can be controlled via iphones/ipods.
I had been using an N97 mini for 6 months, a good phone but lacking any outstanding features. The iphone is the exact opposite: great features but only an adequate phone.

The camera quality is reasonable, it's fine for ebay pics!

The text messaging threw me at first, but having each person's conversations in their own individual 'folder' is actually quite useful. I'm forever having multiple text flex's with multiple people so this is a useful feature.

Call quality is fine, making and receiving calls is nothing surprising. As you would expect.

The music playback quality is outstanding through a good set of headphones; use a cheap pair and it always sounds compressed. Pop the iphone through a high-end hi-fi system playing back lossless files and the clarity, pitch and resolution really is impressive. Video playback through the Bose V25 of 'The Dark Knight' looked almost DVD quality.

I would very highly recommend putting a screen protector on it as soon as you buy it because of the amount of wear & tear that will probably befall it.

Battery life is acceptable if the wifi & bluetooth are switched off. The phone charges whilst docked with itunes anyway. People complaining about 2 hours life just listening to music must have had every feature switched on!

itunes itself is a little rigid, i'm not really a fan of having to log on and sync the phone, find the files i want, transfer them, autofill the tunes, then disconnect. I suppose it's because i'm used to drag & drop like the other phones i've had. I reckon i'll get used to this over time tho.

All in all, the phone markets seem to be saturated with Blackberry's, iphones, or clones of them. If you were to bump into a fellow iphone user (about 50% of the uk population....lol), you'd think 'it's another person with an iphone, where's the individuality?' Well, buy yourself a decent case and be happy with the fancy ipod you've just bought. At least it can make calls!

After being a Windows Mobile user since the very first SPV mobile phone i thought id take the plunge and purchase an iPhone 3G 16gb.

I said to myself, i wasnt going to start a new contract and that I wanted to use my existing contract on another network as im not with o2, with the iPhone so i purchased a Gevey 3G turbo sim.

The sim card is installed over the top of your sim and then inserted into the iPhone. This tricks the iPhone into thinking it has a valid sim card.

The iPhone itself is very responsive. With almost 0 lag in any of the menus and the only time the iPhone has ever crashed is using a Third Party app which i downloaded via the App Store (this was facebook and this has a history of crashing according to other iPhone users)

Step 1 - Activating the iPhone.

You need to download iTunes via Apples website and install on your PC / Laptop. I did this and connected my iPhone. You do need to have an O2 pay as you go sim card to enable your iPhone to activate and also to update the phone with your music, pictures, videos, contacts, calender entries, etc

The o2 sims are easy to get hold of, the latest "free sims" available from o2 are 3G so this enabled me to activate my iPhone and also put some music on it.

Step 2

Use iTunes to do a software update if need be. This updates the firmware of the iPhone to the latest version so when apple release fixes, they release a new version of the iPhone Firmware. Again you need to have the o2 sim in to do this as it uses iTunes.

This all worked flawlessly WITHOUT deleting any of my existing information. Now with Windows Mobile backing up was a must. Because of iTunes your data is backed up anyway so this all happened very smoothly.

Step 3

Using the iPhone day to day.

SMS texting. This I admit does take some getting used to but after only a weekend of owning the iPhone 3G im happy to say everything is working perfectly. It would be nice to be able to text landscape by turning your phone around but im sure Apple will include this in a future update.

Phone calls - quality excellent. No dropped calls, everything worked as it should.

Internet Browsing - Now this is the best portable browsing experience that i have ever had! Opera on Windows Mobile is getting there but this is excellent. No flash support but I soon forgave apple when i was watching Never Mind the Buzzcocks from the BBC iPlayer website! Stroke of genius!

Google Maps - this works fine also. Very simple to zoom in and out and plan routes. Bring on TOMTOM! Thats all i can say! Turn by turn navigation is a must!

Listening to music - The quality of the music is excellent and browsing my albums is so easy. This is how it should be!

App Store - Loads of apps available, brilliant! Great being able to add extra programs to your phone wherever you are, without having to plug your phone into your pc to do it! Facebook (brilliant shows you just what you need to know and navigating your facebook profile is simple) VNC (view your pc / laptop from your iphone - i use this a work so excellent that it was available on the app store - free!)

Camera - Good quality, not that great in low light but most phone cameras are the same. There are new phones out now with better cameras, im sure the next iPhone will feature a better camera.

Email - Works like a dream, did have to tweak the settings tho, but works fine.

Conclusion

How touch screen phones should be, everything is a joy to use and you never get tired of it. Recommended :)

The iPhone 3GS is the fastest, most feature rich model so far, and if you don't already have a iPhone 3G it's well worth the money. If you do have an iPhone 3G though, it's not quite so cut and dry. The 3GS may be faster than the 3G when it comes to rendering pages and general operation, but the O2 data network makes the faster 7.2mbps HSDPA support moot, while the inconsistent Wi-Fi performance is also a bit of a worry. For now though, the iPhone 3GS takes the crown as the best consumer handset available, but with the imminent Palm Pre and new Android based handsets on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how long it keeps it.

On the surface, the iPhone 3GS doesn't look much different to the older 3G, especially if the latter is running the latest 3.0 version of the firmware (more about that later). But one of the key changes isn't a new feature, it's the 3GS' ability to do exactly what the old iPhone can do, just faster.

The 3GS has seen an increase in speed for the main processor, along with a new graphics chip, while there's also more memory on tap. The result - according to Apple at least - is that the 3GS is up to twice as fast as the 3G, which is a pretty bold claim.

The 3GS sports a 3-megapixel camera, which may seem low by contemporary standards, but you shouldn't get carried away with the megapixel numbers game. What you need to remember is that the sensors employed by mobile phone cameras are pretty tiny, so squeezing more pixels onto them is not necessarily going to give you better pictures. In fact, there's every chance that the images will look worse.

The other major new addition in the camera department is the ability to record video. This is another one of those features that the iPhone haters have been harping on about since Apple launched its phone, but I never really missed video recording on my phone. Now that the iPhone does record video, I'm sure that many will still complain that it only supports 640 x 480, and of course, there's no zoom function.

For any runners out there, the 3GS is also compatible with the Nike+ fitness system. Assuming you have a pair of Nike+ trainers and the Nike+ sensor, you can fire up the Nike+ app on the 3GS, head out the door and start pounding the pavements.

When the original iPhone launched, one of the best features was the seamless integration of Google Maps. When the iPhone 3G arrived with its built-in GPS receiver, Google Maps just got better, giving you the ability to find your current location and plot routes to your destination. With the 3GS the Google Maps app has got better once more with the inclusion of the digital compass.

Mobile Me now sports a feature called Find My iPhone, which, as the name suggests, allows you to find your iPhone, wherever it may be. So, assuming you've lost your phone, you can logon to your Mobile Me account, and bring up a map showing you exactly where it is. If the map is pointing to your house, it probably means you have to look harder, but if it's pointing to the bar that you passed out in last night, it's time to head back to the scene of the crime.

Not all the new features in the iPhone 3GS are hardware based. Apple's ongoing firmware updates bring new functionality to its phone on a regular basis and the latest 3.0 version - which ships on the 3GS - has a few neat tricks up its sleeve.

i bought iPhone 3G 16GB and i installed many apps and used it in all aspects.

as being a Computer Engineer and technical oriented person, i am sharing my opinion;

i'll rate this product on scale of 10 as : 7.5
see my findings as good & bad features below:

Good Features:
a) It has a best class touch screen which understands your gestures like zoom, rotate, flip and scroll. you will really love this.
b) Big screen, which is ideal for viewing movie & youtube videos.
c) it has a huge space 16GB. you can store many items in it.
d) attach to computer as Camera device and you can copy paste item on its memory.
e) it has a Quick Charge for charging it to 65% in 10-15 mins of charge.
f) nice on screen keyboard, you will love typing on it once you get your hands on for 3 4 days.
g) Free apps available which extends many functionality.
h) Wi-Fi connection and Exchange email support with Push Technology, you are on the top.
i) you will have one of the best Music Phone ( inbuilt iPod ) functionality.


Bad :

1)it doesn't not have Radio. ( you cant listen your stored music all the time. 2) no hand writing recognition, you will feel tired typing long emails on its keyboard.
3) no Flash on Camera !!
4) no AutoFocus on Camera ( sometime you will see as photo come as VGA in evening) ..
5) its Toooooo Costly with comparing all its features.
6) it gets scratch very easily on its body, if you are not habitual of using cover.
7) all of its accessories are costly.
8) it doesnt give yo very good grip, when handling in one hand while clicking the pic, you may slip it.
9) no front camera, cant have VGA calls.!



Overall the product is good, but you will love it only while handling and doing work on it, probably wont be satisfied with camera & no radio functions.

if you are wishing to buy it, all the best.

I have long been a fan of Nokia N95 8GB and various N-SERIES phones. But I love to browse the internet, and the web browsing experience on the iPhone blows everything else out of the water.

It is so simple to use, I have owned many PocketPCs and installing applications were so complicated. But with the iPhone you can click on the app store and download loads of free applications and games. Also the iPhones supports international keyboards, it lets you change the keyboard to Japanese, Chinese or Arabic (very userful to me because I study Japanese and Arabic :)).

It has a massive 8GB built in memory and the battery life is amazing compared to my N95 8GB. I have played my MP3 player on my iPhone from the start of uni and left it running till the end of the end and it still had half the battery left... unbelievable.

I love going online, just a few taps and I'm on my GMAIL account and my other Uni account (Microsoft Exchange Server). Even though the phone doesn't support picture messaging... I just send a higher quality version of the picture by email instead. And since the web browsing is free, I dont get charged anything for it. How cool is that?.

I have converted three full movies and I still have 2 GB left on my phone. iTunes lets me import my existing collection of music from CD to the iPhone and it automatically makes a backup of my contacts... no messing about with Nokia PC Suite. Also when I connect my iPhone to any pc, it automatically starts recharging.

Now that I have this phone... I can't imagine any other phone that can do the same. I have tried the new samsung touch screen phones and lg pixon.... but the web browsing is very slow and takes ages to react.

iPhone is the best phone on the market at the moment if you are into music, video playback and web browsing. If you need it for high quality images... buy a digital camera!!!. A MUST BUY!!!