Hands on with the iPhone 3GS

June 19th goes down as a memorable day because it’s the launch day of the third iteration of the iPhone, Apple’s ultra-portable, innovative brainchild. While many 3G users may not be upgrading to the 3G S quite so soon due to upgrade pricing issues, or they may not see the 3G S as enough of an upgrade to the previous generation, there are some people out there that do believe this is a worthy upgrade [for now].

There are no cosmetic changes that set the 3G and 3G S apart. No one will be able to tell that you are holding the latest and greatest, because all the changes are internal. The 3G had a processor of 412mHz and 128mb of RAM. With the 3G S, there is now a 600mHz processor and 256mb of RAM. An improved graphics core generously helps the rendering of 3D graphics from such apps like games.

While most probably won’t notice the difference in speed if they are new iPhone users, there are videos out there that demonstrate how fast the 3G S is compared to the 3G. Apple has made claims that it’s 2x faster than it’s predecessor, and from the looks of the videos on tech blogs, this claim seems to be holding true.

It would take at least a second or two to register the action after tapping various buttons in apps on the 3G. With the 3G S, there is little to no delay in getting the phone to what you want. Everything seems to move quicker and more fluidly, and games get a major boost from the faster processors by loading and looking better than they ever did on the 3G. The 3.0 software feels even snappier than it is on the 3G. Even booting up and shutting down has gotten a speed bump.

The camera is, to me at least, a big improvement over the previous 2 megapixel cameras. It’s now 3 megapixel (not a major difference) but also has autofocus and automatic macro mode (~10 cm). On the previous two versions, you could never take a good pic up close and resulted in a blurry image that doesn’t help anyone.

Autofocus will focus on the center point of the image. But if there’s a part of the photo that you would rather have as the focus point, tapping on it will make it focus on that part instead. And when the camera is about 10 cm from an object, it will go into an “auto macro” mode – but let’s be honest, it’s not exactly the best macro you’ll ever encounter, but that’s a given. For what it’s worth, the camera has been improved much over the previous versions, definitely.

The 3G S also adds video recording to the mini-computer, and it does it very well. You toggle video camera by the button in the lower right when in the Camera app, and then you can do video in either portrait or landscape mode, though portrait videos are sideways when uploaded on a computer. Video taken on the 3G S look fairly decent for VGA quality and may be comparable to Flip Ultra series cams, but there is no HD quality yet for iPhone.

Editing is simply cutting scenes out of the video that you don’t want and keeping the ones you do want in. You select from scenes at the top, and once you select a highlighted segment, hitting the Trim button will throw out everything else. The only drawback of this is that it’s not really like iMovie software, where you can cut out multiple scenes and do transitions and all that fancy video editing. This is very basic “keep only this, throw the rest out” editing.

There’s now one-click publishing to MobileMe or YouTube (beware of the compression of YouTube). You just add a title, description, tags, and category for YouTube, and it will then be compressed and uploaded directly to your YouTube account. Once it’s published, it will give you options to share the link by email or to view it, or do nothing. Publishing to MobileMe is similar – add a title, description, and pick an album to put it in. Once it’s compressed and uploaded, you can view the link or share by email, or nothing.

Video quality is good enough. It’s not outstanding like an HD camcorder, but it doesn’t completely suck either. If you search for videos recorded on an iPhone 3G S, you may actually find some comments that say they would have never thought it was recorded with an iPhone!

Voice Control is another 3G S specific feature. You can use it to call someone, or start playing music from the iPod. It doesn’t work that well in a noisy environment (but really, what phone does?), but in a quiet place, it works rather well. It has picked up on my voice commands pretty well, from calls to playing specific artists from the iPod app. While the iPod is playing, you can bring up voice control again and say a command like “What song is playing?” to get the voiceover feature (like on the iPod Shuffle) to talk to you. You can even say “Play more songs like this” and it will activate the Genius feature with the current song.

The Compass feature works fairly well, showing you which way is North. Since the feature just came out with the new phone, there isn’t that much of use for it yet. But once turn-by-turn GPS apps such as the TomTom become available, I’m sure the integrated Compass feature will become much more useful.

The battery life on the 3G S seems slightly better than that of the 3G. I’ve used it extensively since I got it and it takes a while for the battery to fully drain out, even with gaming during the day. Another feature that the 3G S has over the previous two is that you can also turn on an option to display the remaining battery percentage remaining next to the icon. I find this way better than just having the icon, as I can precisely see how much life remains for the phone.

The screen has gotten a much needed oleophobic coating that makes it more resistant to fingerprints and smudges, and can be cleaned easier than before. I’ve noticed this – just a swipe on my shirt will clear the screen to be crystal clear. Use the phone all day and drag your fingers all over the screen – you’ll see much less smudging and fingerprints than with the 1st gen and 3G. The oleophobic coating is only on the screen though, the rest of the phone doesn’t seem to have it.

These are the major changes that differentiate the 3G S from the 3G. Overall better performance, much improved camera, convenient video and editing, useful digital compass, voice control, better battery life, and cleaner screen! Hard to not want these features, right? I personally feel that the hardware upgrades are worth upgrading to if you can get subsidized or early upgrade pricing.

I’m glad I’m ditching the 3G for the 3G S, and you should too.