Tuesday Tech Talk #7

Hey all, time for another issue of Triple T. This one is going to be iPhone 3G S specific.

The Arrival

My wife signed for the phone from FedEx it arrived about 30 mins after I went to work. She sent me a text to let me know it had arrived. On my lunch break I went home as I usually do where my wife had placed a pair of scissors next to the container holding the iPhone. She knew I would want to tear into the box right away which I did.

The Activation

I took the phone out and plugged it into the MacBook. The first part was activating it via AT&T which went trouble free as I had already setup my plan when I ordered it from the Apple Store online. Next was the Apple part of the activation which was just syncing and restoring from the backup from my old iPhone. During this time I managed to eat dinner with my wife as I let it do it’s own thing. My phone # transfer to the new iPhone took less than half an hour and it was ready to head out with me when I went back to work. So I put the new old iPhone which as of this point is nothing more than an 8GB iPod touch at least until Kristen activates it to use for her mobile phone.

Features

First thing that caught my eye was the Compass. You probably wouldn’t think much of it but wow is this thing accurate I turned and faced every direction and this thing is spot on accurate! On my way to work at a red light I decided to use Voice Control to play some music but it found nothing. Than I realized when I was syncing it in order to save time I didn’t have any music put on it yet. Once I was back home though I synced it and clicked on everything in iTunes All Songs, All videos,Al movies, all everything. It’s the 32GB model and it can hold my music,video, and photo library in it’s entirety.

Push Notification

For the first couple of days it was hard to find an app that I regularly use that supports Push. So I downloaded the AP app as my friend Dave mentions he uses and it supports push. I now get breaking alerts on my phone now. There is also a weather alert app which if you live in the South or Midwest is very handy. Than last night AIM and BeeJive’s apps were updated for Push. I don’t use BeeJive but AIM I do and Dave was the first person to send me an IM that was pushed to my home screen on the iPhone (thanks dude!). Still hoping for more apps to support Push like Yahoo Messenger and maybe Facebook depending on if you can specify what you want for alerts (comments, wall posts, etc.) One thing I did notice is the the final scores of the Angel games are now popping back in now since I upgraded. For a while they were not showing up on the old one. Also look forward to the ESPN Scores app supporting Push as was demoed at the WWDC.

Camera

The camera is now a 3MP over a 2 in the previous model. That’s cool for a phone camera but for low light it is very grainy in quality. In good light it is a good camera. But it can shoot video now on the 3G S and this is really cool. Being what has gone on in Iran this past week with more people having video capable phones it will make things harder for dictators to censor. But this could be a blog post onto itself (check my previous blog post for my thoughts there). Needless to say I have been enjoying shooting video of our little man. It even has the ability to upload directly to YouTube, MobileMe, or MMS (unless of course you live in the the US...thanks AT&T...NOT!). You can also email your videos too.

The 3G part

Being that I live in a town that AT&T has not installed 3G service in yet (thanks AT&T...NOT!!) I have not experienced 3G yet, but next week the 3 of us are headed to Hattiesburg, MS. which does have 3G so I will be able to judge on the speed difference than. You do have the ability though to turn off and on 3G in the settings which will save battery life when you live in a town on the EDGE.

The Screen

The screen is great! I’ve been using it for 5 days now and it is smudge free. Whatever coating they are using now is solid and fantastic.

Buying Advice

If you already have the 3G model the only thing you will be missing is the video capability. If you can live without that than the 3.0 update pretty much gives you everything the 3G S offers. If however you are an iPhone EDGE owner than I would highly recommend getting it. You don’t have any of the early upgrade high premium price issues from AT&T and the storage capability is quite larger than the original models. I had the first generation model so I was due for an upgrade and I am quite happy with the 3G S.