At A Glance:

The iPhone may probably be second to none in terms of the buzz it has generated around the world. Part of this is due to the penetration of the Internet, while part of it may also be that the iPhone is seen as something to be desired. So good is the extent of the marketing.

In the box (prototype)
- Transceiver unit
- 1 standard battery
- Charger set

Exterior
The iPhone 3G is very flat. It is long, no doubt about it, but it feels a little more like a Nintendo game from the 80s then what you would expect from a handphone. Our review unit is in white, which denotes that it is a 16GB model.

Buttons/Screen
The screen is 3.5 inch one, with an OS that thrives on responsive graphics such as slider buttons that you can drag across the screen with your fingers. The buttons are all metal and placed around the edges of the device. The volume toggle is on the left and the Sleep/Wake button is on the top of the device.

What passes for a menu button is at the bottom of the screen. Pressing on it gets the main menu with its set of icons back onto the main screen.

Hardware
The iPhone 3G weighs 133 grams and most people exclaim on the flatness of the device the first time they see it. The dimensions are 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 and the screen itself is a 16 million colour TFT type displaying 320 x 480 pixels in what is pretty stunning graphics.

The iPhone has a few sensors built into it. The light sensor adjusts the screen brightness according to the ambiant lighting. The proximity sensor turns off the screen when you put it up to your ear to take a call. Finally, an accelerometer detects the orientation of the device. I just didn’t like it very much when it kept rotating a photo that someone else shot at a funny angle.

Charging is done via a slot on the bottom of the phone. However, the shape of the device meant that it rocked slightly from side to side when you place it on a flat surface during usage.

Full specifications can be found here

Software
The YouTube program was nice. It connects directly to YouTube and lets you watch videos on the move. If you can afford the rather stiff data charges, that is. Still, this can be something to play with in one of those free Wi-Fi cafes or hotels.

Let us touch a little bit on the Safari browser here. First of all, it does not do multiple pages and it does not cache data very well, causing a lot of reloads. Reloads, on a mobile network, are costly affairs. The other thing is that the Maxis 3G network to which a Malaysian iPhone is locked to is pretty fast, but only when it is working.

During some testing, we found that the 3G network isn’t too good and the browser just freezes up. When it does switch you to EGPRS, the speeds aren’t too great. Simple things like loading up a BBC webpage could take random tries for up to an hour.

Even as I write this, my favourite gaming site has just issued an advisory saying it is now iPhone compatible but it won’t support a couple of my favourite games.

Camera/Video
The camera is a 2.0 megapixel type, which was a disappointment to many iPhone fans who were hoping for something better than the camera on the first iPhone. 2.0 megapixel is really scraping the bottom of the barrel in mid-2009.

There is no dedicated camera button, and this means that you will have to unlock the phone and activate the camera from within the graphical menu. This is a rather unwieldy way to get a camera to work. Well, we’ve seen worse and it’s a matter of a learning a new way to activate the camera.

Connectivity
The iPhone supports HSDPA 1.8 Mbit/s, 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, EDGE and GPRS. It has Bluetooth for local connections and an airplane mode to turn the radios off when you can’t have RF interference.

The reviewer’s manual mentioned something like ‘fit 10 radios into a device this small’, but I think that it is downright deceitful to leave out the FM radio and then make you buy it from the App Store. Talk about missing the point with the radios.

Apparently, the radio works on iPhone 3G firmware but I’ve got a much nicer music box and couldn’t be bothered to spend a world wide wait downloading the application to try.

Games
The iPhone does not come with built-in games. The user is expected to choose and download what they want from the App Store.

Editor’s Opinion
This is a very nice phone. It is easy to see why everyone is talking and lusting after one. However, it also involves learning to use a phone in a new way and there are lots of applications that you can download, install and play. Yes, it will probably look like your first Windows PC a year from now – loads of crapware that you have forgotten even exists.

Yes, it may be a hot phone that can do a lot of things. The problem is that you will have to go to the trouble of getting and testing the ‘lot of things’ mentioned earlier. Secondly, I’ve never liked a phone that forces me to get my music from a certain source, or plays my videos in particular formats. Too much trouble for a little bit of dings and dongs, I say.

Conclusion: People with iPhones do very little work. They spend lots of time tweaking the device.

• Tags : Apple iPhone 3G