Anand Reviews the Apple iPhone 3G
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 16, 2008 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
The App Store & Firmware 2.0
The first iPhone lacked support for 3rd party applications, Apple wanted to control the iPhone user experience and the last thing it needed was an open platform where anyone with a computer could whip up an app, potentially making the phone look bad. It also didn’t really matter at first since the most important apps for the iPhone already came with it and were made, pre-polished, by Apple.
Apple couldn’t be the sole developer for the iPhone going forward, once the platform was proven, it was time to open it up to other developers. With the announcement of the iPhone SDK, developers were given access to seemingly the entire iPhone platform and went to work.
The applications are available to download over either the cellular or WiFi network using the App Store that is a part of the 2.0 firmware update. Both iPhone and iPhone 3G owners get access to the App Store and, as the name implies, it is a store that allows you to purchase and download iPhone apps.
You need to input your iTunes account information to access the app store, but once you have you can browse apps by featured ones, category, the top 25 or search manually.
The top 25 free apps
Apple also includes user reviews in each of the app listings, so you can get a good idea for whether or not an app sucks before you download it. Unfortunately there’s no demo system currently in place, which would be a very useful addition, similar to game demos and trials on Xbox Live. For now, you have to rely on user reviews and ratings for an idea of whether or not the apps are worth the money.
The Google Mobile App isn't very popular with the masses
Pricing on the apps ranges anywhere from a couple of bucks for the cheapest things to $50 for the most expensive ones. Thankfully, some of the best applications in the App Store are free (a handful of which I will talk about shortly).
You can also download apps on iTunes and they will sync to your phone the next time you plug it in. A record of the apps you’ve downloaded is kept on Apple’s servers so you won’t be paying twice for them if you lose your phone or need to wipe and reinstall.
Installing the Google app
Apps install very easily (almost too easily), just select the pricetag in the App Store, click install and it’ll download/install in the background. You can still use your phone to do other things while this happens. The whole process takes a handful of seconds over 3G or WiFi, largely depending on how big the app you’re installing happens to be. You are always prompted for your iTunes password upon installing a new application, presumably to prevent someone from racking up App Store charges on your account without you realizing.
Ask and ye shall receive
Removing apps is just as easy, just touch and hold down on one of the icons, the screen will start shaking and click the X next to the app you want to get rid of.
And now we have the flipside to the lower barrier to entry on the iPhone 3G. Apple’s motivation here is the App store, much like the point of selling tons of iPods was to build support for the iTunes store. The reason the iPhone 3G costs $199, the reason Apple sold out to AT&T this round, was to make sure more people would buy iPhones, thus making the platform more attractive to developers.
Whether or not the iPhone 3G is a success actually doesn’t matter, the big kicker here is that Apple gave all iPhone users whether 3G or not, access to the 2.0 firmware. Apple’s reasoning is simple: it simply wants a bigger install base for the App store, and giving away the upgraded firmware to all is the best way of doing it.
On top of that fact is the reality that the iPhone 3G hardware just hasn’t changed that much from the original device, it would be extremely un-Google of Apple to charge for the firmware update. A good friend of mine once said that intentions are rarely purely altruistic, Apple’s free-firmware-upgrade for existing iPhone owners is a perfect example of that.
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buckdutter - Friday, August 22, 2008 - link
AT&T's coverage could indeed be better, but then again they are still rebuilding from when they decided to switch from TDMA to GSM, instead of following the natural path to CDMA, which Verizon, Sprint, and Alltel (soon to be Verizon) use, as well as many more localized carriers. The problem with CDMA is that it is going nowhere. The majority of the world is GSM, and CDMA is becoming more and more marginalized, in fact in the next 4 or 5 years CDMA will be practically phased out in the US. Verizon (and Alltel) will be switching to LTE, a GSM based technology which will be a rough transition - either resulting in sacrificed coverage, or more expensive devices (like Verizons expensive "world edition phones") that will run on both their networks. Either way, they will be doing what AT&T (Cingular, whatever) did 4 or 5 years ago, and much later in the game.Meanwhile AT&T will make a natural transition from their 3G, which is in all fairness not nearly as widespread as EVDO at the moment, to LTE. Sprint will be going WiMax. Not one major carrier in the US or abroad has made a commitment to the future of CDMA. Verizon has held on to EVDO as long as it could, and has prolonged having to switch, but they are beginning to hit the limitations of EVDO, meanwhile 3G is just getting started, with AT&T planning to follow suit of carriers abroad and boost the speeds to around 20mbps in mid-2009. EVDO will be topping out around 3.2 at most, if even that.
While having used all the services I strongly disagree with saying that Sprint or T-Mobile even come close to AT&T for coverage, it is largely regional subjective, and is really not fair to work in experiences in one localized area into the review for the phone. Like them or hate them, AT&T recognized early that GSM was the roadmap to go. Like it or hate it, blame Verizon for delaying the inevitable for so long...it makes no sense for Apple to make a CDMA phone when it is so limited in implementation globally. Because of that decision they are the most widespread GSM provider in the US (the US was a little late in getting into the GSM game).
In the end, AT&T may have a lot of ground to cover, but we should be excited what at least one U.S. carrier took the leap and is building out a GSM network in the states, even though it meant making the sacrifice of less coverage in rural areas as they build the new network out. It will be interesting to see how Verizon copes with having to change over.
Hrel - Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - link
Over 2 years the new iphone plane costs an extra 60 bucks, but the upfront cost is 300 dollars less. The iphone 3G is less expensive in every way; even with the incremental increase in contract cost. I'm confused that I need to point this out considering you say it in your article then contradict yourself by saying the old plan and phone was less expensive. Total cost over two years the new one is 240 dollars less.maxnix - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
With no user replaceable battery, it is a toy, not a reliable business device.It seems to me that 90% of the users I see are fiddling about on it with their fingers and not even 10% use Bluetooth. Are there still no voice driven commands? That's how I use my phone.
Seems like a great device for someone who wants to make calls on their iPod when they are not listening to a lossy audio source.
Jobs is the new PT Barnum in that he fully exploits the "A sucker's born every minute..." credo. The world is full of lemmings.
maxnix - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
Welcome fanboys to AT&T's limited 3G. The rest of the world has been there for 5 years.Lezmaka - Monday, July 21, 2008 - link
I think there's a fairly obvious (to me anyway) reason why the talk time measured is almost half the time the specs state, beyond the best case scenario stuff.In most conversations, there's a significant amount of dead air. Even if it's only 1/10 - 1/4 of a second at a time, over the course of several hours, that will add up. But with most music, there's almost no dead air. Even when the person isn't saying something, there's at least some sound being generated. Detecting that dead air and not transmitting would probably be the best for battery life, but even if it continually transmits, the compression would reduce the amount of data transmitted to almost nothing.
I would guess that choosing an audio source that more closely matches an actual conversation would provide a somewhat more accurate test result. But I'm not expert, so what the hell do I know?
Giacomo - Monday, July 21, 2008 - link
Ehm... No man, there's no way this could influence battery life. No matter how intense is the information in the call, most of the energy drain is due to the "line" itself... Keeping the full-duplex conversation online.Everything else left to the battery is the loudspkeaker consumption... But it's a ridicolous amount, you won't be able to measure its impact.
Giacomo
donhoffman - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
Actually the original commenter on this was correct. This is a time-honored technique for getting more battery life out of cell phones. Channel allocation for voice calls is done at call setup. A continuous data stream is not needed to keep up the "line". If either end of the call has nothing to send, it does not need to transmit, saving significant power. The technique used in this article probably does underestimate the battery life. Not by 100%, but maybe 20-30%. Transmit power is much larger than audio power. That is why you get 24 hours listening to music on the iPod side, but only 5 or so hours doing cellular phone calls.nichomach - Sunday, July 20, 2008 - link
Not wishing to get into whether the new iPhone is all that, I'd note that the enforced PIN code when using Exchange is usually a policy setting defined in Exchange, and there's a choice about enabling it. That choice'll be made by your Exchange admin(s). If they enable it - personally, I do - then I'd expect it to be enforced on any device that claims to support Activesync. One of my arguments with Nokia's Mail for Exchange client, for instance, is that it doesn't (or didn't) properly support policies like that; that the iPhone does makes it a viable choice if I end up with a director demanding one. If you're using your phone in a corporate environment, then you may be sending and receiving confidential stuff. Enforcing a PIN and supporting remote wipe properly is the sine qua non as far as I'm concerned.Schugy - Sunday, July 20, 2008 - link
Openmoko will have the best 3rd party support while Nokia and Google (Maemo / Android) have their own ressources. But regarding their openness they are evil. The FIC Freerunner is a nice phone but the Openmoko project still has to develop a lot.On the other hand I think that a Open Pandora handheld with a USB HSDPA modem (maybe builtin in future revisions) is a lot more usable and even has game controls. Telephony and navigation could be done via a bt headset+voip and gps receiver.
All the platforms will feature ports of killer apps like pidgin IM, scummvm, evolution e-mail and lots more. Ports of gnash, the GNU flash player, are possible too but I would suggest to get rid of these stupid and annoying banner ad players. A nice stream or download link for mp4-files will make your full featured (fullscreen / post processing filters) mplayer happy.
cleviticus - Saturday, July 19, 2008 - link
A basic one-line plan with Cingular (I know they go by AT&T now)without ANY extra features runs you $45/month and that is with just enough minutes to tell people that you'll call them back after nine. Unlimited internet and data runs $45, last I checked, and that somehow doesn't cover much texting, something I do a lot of. Texting is another $10. So to get service and data BEFORE tax you spend $90. My provider offers unlimited voice/data/text/GPS/e-mail for $100 with coverage that exceeds AT&T's.That fact alone is enough to keep me away from the iphone for good. I admit that the interface is unbeatable but the functionality of the phone is not. That being said I don't think it deserves as much attention as it receives. Also coverage varies drastically from city to city. In NY my phone works great but in Vegas it blows. In Chicago I'm golden but anywhere between Arkansas and Virginia- forget about it. I used cingular for two years and their coverage was only good in large metropolitan areas. As soon as I got out of the inner city my reception was weak and I couldn't even text. I think they are a horrible company but since they bought up most of the old bell empire- they're here to stay.