So my wait for the new iPhone 3GS was over earlier today, and I ‘ve had a few hours to play with it now, and form some early Day 1 impressions of it. If I had to sum it up in just a few words, I ‘d need only two: Speed Demon.
It really is substantially faster, way faster, and at everything I ‘ve tried so far, not just in certain places. I ‘ve got a short set of speed test numbers comparing my iPhone 3G to the 3GS listed below “ just a few I was able to do before the 3G had to go to work with the wife.
Speed Demon
These are just a few little tests I did quickly this morning to see how fast the new 3GS is compared to the iPhone 3G in carrying out some common actions:
Open the full New York Times home page (time until the blue in the status bar gets all the way across and page is static):
|
Test Action |
iPhone 3G Result |
iPhone 3GS Result |
| Load full New York Times front page in Safari over a 3G network connection | 44 seconds | 14 seconds |
| Load full New York Times front page over a WiFi connection | 39 seconds | 12 seconds |
| Load everythingiCafe iPhone light page | 10 seconds | 3 seconds |
| Launch App Store & wait until it stops saying ‘Loading ‘ | 19 seconds | 4 seconds |
| Launch Twitterrific & await full refresh of main timeline | 20 seconds | 5 seconds |
| Open Tweetie & await full refresh of main timeline | 17 seconds | 4 seconds |
| Take new pic with Camera app & await saved thumbnail completion | 3 seconds | 2 seconds |
| Open AP Mobile News app & await full front page load | 22 seconds | 8 seconds |
That ‘s all the tests I had time for earlier “ will do some more over the weekend, but in the meantime I can also say that the 3GS just feels ‘blazing ‘ in nearly every sort of action I ‘ve tried it out with so far. Apps launch much quicker, page loads in Safari (as seen above) are way quicker, everything just feels considerably zippier. Even restarts of the iPhone feel quite a bit quicker.
Other Day 1 Thoughts / Impressions:
The 3GS feels a little touch heavier / solider in the hand than the 3G, as expected, since it is just a tiny bit heavier than its predecessor.
There;s nothing much to report in terms of 3GS box contents “ they are minimal. You get a power plug-in, a sync / charge cable, headphones, and the slim ‘Getting Started ‘ type guide, and that ‘s about it.
The boxes are still handsome and near identical to the 3G ones:
The new camera “ and especially the autofocus feature “ are very cool. Video recording is easy to do and the videos land in your Camera Roll “ from where you can share them via email or directly to YouTube.
Voice Control is one of the features I ‘ve most been looking forward to. I ‘m very glad to see it and it mostly works well, but I ‘m a little disappointed at the limited range of commands it supports right now. Its abilities cover making calls and controlling music on the iPod app (not Last.fm or others).
Way back in the day when I used Voice Command on Windows Mobile, you could launch applications, pull up a contact ‘s details, interact with your calendar and more. I would definitely like to be able to use Voice Control to launch apps, to search with Spotlight, and to interact with contacts and calendar items. I hope this area will see updates soon.
Those are some of my quick Day 1 impressions. What are yours? How are you finding the new 3GS so far? I ‘d also love to hear whether you are finding similar speed increases.
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TAGS: iPhone 3GS launch day
