The new iPhone – great or not ?

About a week ago Apple announced the new iPhone 3G S. Everybody was buzzling about it for months. Sneak peeks, spy photos, assumptions, but nothing. Apple is one of the manufacturers that does remarkable efforts to keep their new products a secret until release. I don’t know how they manage to do it, but they do.

So the new iPhone was announced and everybody jumped 3 meters above the ground. Everybody are excited and fascinated. But is it worth it ?

To be honest I was little disappointed. As I wrote a few months ago, when I bought my iPhone I was really sceptic about it and it surprised me. Now that I love my iPhone, I was expecting that the new one will fix all of the bad things that new old one had and it will make it the ultimate device, but it didn’t.

Let’s go through the new features:

Up to 2x faster

Of course better speed is always a good direction a device could go into, but I really find it kinda useless. You don’t improve the one thing you are best at. It just doesn’t make sense. As I said in my previous post about iPhone, it is the fastest device I know. The Windows Mobile and Symbian ones, are just no match for the iPhone speed. And what did Apple think ? “We should make this device faster, just because we can, not because it is needed”. Good feature, but senseless.

Can record and edit Video

Nice feature, which was a MAJOR drawback in the old versions of iPhone, but this is not really device dependent. It is a feature represented by the new iPhone OS 3.0. So if you have an iPhone 3G, when you upgrade, you will have that feature. Great, but you can have it on the old one also.

3MP Camera

Compared to the old one (2MP) it is not such a breakthrough. 3MP cameras are WAY old now. The latest Nokia, SonyEricsson and Samsung phones have 8MP cameras. My opinion is that if they didn’t spend so much effort on the fastest processor, but instead they had put in at least 5MP camera, this would have been much better.

Voice Control

Great feature ! I have similar one on my current iPhone using third-party software (Vlingo) and it is just awesome ! I hope this is an OS feature, not device dependent, but I will know more when I install the upgrade tomorrow morning (this is the release date of iPhone OS 3.0 – 17.06.2009). I will write an article about the 3.0 OS also later on.

Built-in Compass

Another good feature. Not vital, but interesting. The main purpose of this one is to help you navigate by showing you exactly in which direction you are looking at. I have worked with a lot of different GPS systems, including Toyota Land Cruiser’s one, which has a built-in compass. YES, it is nice, but NO, as I said, it is not vital. More of a add-on than a needed feature.

Cut, Copy and Paste

FINALLY ! This is the MOST annoying feature that the old iPhone has. The lack of cut, copy and paste. It is normal that all of the users have been wining about that one. Absolutely vital future, but also not device depended. You can get it with OS 3.0

MMS Support

Another feature which was strangely missing from the old iPhones. But it is not a mystery. The lack of MMS support and Bluetooth transfer is a following of the WAR that Apple has been leading against Piracy. Little extreme, but understandable. This one is also coming with OS 3.0

Overall Search

The ability to search the whole content of an iPhone from one place. Nice feature, coming with OS 3.0.

Internet Connection Sharing

A feature which was present in all the other mobile phones since the past 10 years is finally coming to the iPhone. Not something that everybody will want or use, but it is nice to have. Because despite the fact that the iPhone is a great Internet communication device, it just cannot do it all. Not sure if it is OS or device dependent.

Voice Memos

Not something remarkable. Tons of free third party applications support that in the old iPhone.

Others

There are also some other minor updates which I won’t cover there. If you want to learn about them, just visit Apple’s website.

Conclusion

So keeping in mind all the new features, is it worth throwing away your old iPhone and buying the new one ? Well it is generally your choice. There is no right answer. I can give you much better opinion after I play around with OS 3.0 a little bit. If the new OS covers the new things nicely, then switching is really not necessary, but time will tell.