Full review: iPhone 3G (Part One)

By turns brilliant and maddening, the original iPhone took the wireless world by storm last year, so it's no surprise that its faster—but power-hungry—successor feels like a bit of a letdown. While the iPhone 3G is a Web browsing speed demon, its half-baked GPS abilities disappoint, and its missing features—such as picture mail and video recording—stick out like a sore thumb. And yet ...

... the iPhone is still something special. Its ground-breaking touch UI—which thrilled users and terrified competitors—is still here, complete with some clever refinements, along with a best-of-class mobile browser, the best iPod ever (no, really), and now a slew of third-party programs courtesy of the just-launched App Store. So yes, the iPhone 3G may be saddled with some missing and/or middling features, but it's definitely an improvement on the already stellar original. And its potential as a mobile platform—now supported by thousands of eager developers—is truly exciting.

[Note: Thousands of would-be iPhone customers are rightfully furious at Apple and AT&T for Friday's in-store activation train wreck. The kinks appeared to have been ironed out by late Friday, but there's no question that both Apple and AT&T should have planned better for the launch-day rush. Click here for the latest news.]

Let's begin with look and feel. At first glance, the new iPhone looks almost identical to its predecessor, and looking at them both head-on, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. (Can you?)

But differences there are, starting of course with the new, glossy black (or white) backing, which replaces the brushed aluminum back on the original. It looks gorgeous when carefully polished, but once you pick the iPhone 3G up, it's Smudge City. And if you hold the iPhone up to your cheek long enough, the back begins to feel a little, well ... slimy.

I'm also concerned that the glossy plastic will scratch more easily than the old brushed-metal design; so far, I don't see any scuffs or scrapes, but I've only had the new iPhone for a day or so.

The iPhone 3G feels a bit thinner and lighter than the original, thanks to its tapered sides. In fact, it's actually a hair thicker at its thickest point, though it is indeed slightly lighter—about a tenth of an ounce less, to be exact—than the old iPhone). The 3G's clever tapered design does comes with a price: a slight wobble when you place the phone on a flat surface, like a tabletop. Overall, though, I prefer the feel of the iPhone 3G to the now boxy-looking 2.5G version.

The iPhone 3G's new metal volume rocker, "silent" switch, and sleep/wake button, look and feel better than the plastic originals. A more notable improvement, however, is the new headphone jack, which is now flush with the iPhone case and capable of taking any standard 3.5mm headset plug. Finally.

The new iPhone's screen is gorgeous—razor sharp, with pixels packed as tight as a drum—but it's the same 3.5-inch, 480-by-320-pixel display on your old iPhone. As has been noted by other reviewers, the iPhone 3G's screen looks a bit warmer (tending toward red) than the iPhone 2.5G's cooler, bluish display—but I didn't notice that until I did a direct screen-to-screen comparison. On its own, the 3G's display looks perfectly fine, and even a bit brighter, to me.

Calling quality on the iPhone 3G was excellent—noticeably better than on the old iPhone, with a much louder and clearer speakerphone. I dialed some friends on my old iPhone and then called them back on the 3G, and my pals immediately noticed the difference. Is reception better? Hard to say. I tried some calls in the living room of my Brooklyn brownstone, where my iPhone 2.5G (not to mention other phones with different carriers) regularly craps out; reception started out fine, but quickly turned into a garbled mess. Oh well. 

Now, let's talk features—the most important, of course, being the iPhone 3G's access to AT&T's high-speed HSDPA network.

When the first iPhone came out, we complained bitterly about the pokey—if not snail-like—Web surfing over its EDGE-only data connection. Well, the iPhone 3G plows through the Web at a much faster clip—two, even three times as fast.

Testing indoors with the iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.5G side-by-side, I first tried CNET's gargantuan (sorry, guys) home page, which takes serious time to load even on a desktop browser. Over EDGE on the old iPhone, CNET.com took anywhere from a minute to 90 seconds to load; on the iPhone 3G, it took scarcely 30 seconds—pretty impressive for a cell phone. The New York Times home page, another monster, only took about 25 seconds on the new iPhone, versus (again) anywhere from a minute to 90 seconds on the iPhone 2.5G.

Looking at the numbers, the EDGE-only iPhone managed an average download speed of about 96Kbps in my tests (peaking at 150Kbps), while the iPhone 3G scored a 321Kbps average, topping out at 428Kbps. Your mileage may vary depending on your location.

Overall, Web browsing on the iPhone 3G really blew me away. At last, it's feasible to pull up the New York Times home page when you're not in Wi-Fi range. That said, when you are using Wi-Fi, the difference can still be dramatic. When I switched my old iPhone into Wi-Fi mode, the handset tore through the CNET home page in 20 seconds and scored a blistering 896Kbps download speed (peaking at 1190Kbps). That’s to be expected, and it's consolation for any envious owners of the original iPhone.

Also, keep in mind that AT&T doesn't offer 3G coverage everywhere; check AT&T's coverage map to make sure you're in a region with 3G access.

Click here for part two of my review—including GPS, the App Store, Exchange support, and more.