iPhone 3GS, Worth the Upgrade?

• 03 August 2009
• Apple iPhone,Mobile Solutions
• Written by Editorial Team
• Tags: Hosted Exchange, hosted SharePoint, iphone, iphone 3gs, Video Editing

If you’ve been a user of the original iPhone, you might be wondering if the new iPhone 3GS is worth the upgrade. With all of the mobile device boundaries broken by the original iPhone, what could they possibly do to make it better?  iPhones already come with so much, including ActiveSync capabilities to work with hosted Exchange or hosted SharePoint, cut and paste, landscape mode and more. There is more in SharePoint Magazine on this topic. What’s left? Well, we’re here to take a look and examine the new updates.

First mention, but not the coolest, is the upgraded capacity. Instead of the original 4-8 Gigabyte (GB) memory, we now have the choice of 16 or 32 Gb. Who doesn’t want more space for movies, music and apps? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been floating at my 8-gig capacity for several months now.

A couple of the smaller changes are worth mention. Apple has added a remote to the supplied earphones, so we can control certain things without pulling the iPhone out of our pocket.

The battery life has had a few changes as well. Talk time is the same on the 3G network, but has been extended from 10 to 12 hours on 2G. Standby remains the same at 300 hours. For Internet use, the 3GS battery life is still 5 hours, but on Wi-Fi, it has been stretched to 9 hours. Video playback is up to 10 hours and audio playback is now at 30 hours, adding 6 to the original iPhone’s impressive 24 hours.

Now to the coolest update. Video recording and editing.  How awesome is that?  The new 3GS iPhone can record VGA (Video Graphics Array) video up to 30 frames per second with audio.  With tap to focus, photo and video geotagging, and video editing capabilities, the new 3GS certainly has made some worthwhile changes. I, for one, will be headed out to get a new one.

Oh, and if you ever get lost in the woods, and DON’T want to use the regular GPS, you can go the old fashion route and use the new iPhone’s digital compass. Useless, but cute.