Anand Reviews the Apple iPhone 3G

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.