First day with the iPhone 3GS
One thing I have to say about the original iPhone is that it was the only cell phone I owned since getting my first one around 1994 that I didn’t want to get rid of after six months. It was the phone that showed the cell phone makers that the technology really needed to be pushed, and Apple was the company that did it first. I think that if Apple hadn’t made the iPhone, we’d be stuck with revs of the Treo or iPaq, and not much more.
Since I have a launch day iPhone from 2006, I had never done a transfer of the contents of an iPhone before, so I researched a bit and realized that I had turned off the auto-backup feature of iTunes about a year ago. I reinstated it, and backed up my iPhone the night before.
I preordered my iPhone when they were first annouced, and it was delivered around 11am on Friday morning. I connected it to iTunes, which asked me if I wanted to set this up as a new phone, or restore it from the backup I had on the hard drive with my associated cell phone number. I told it to restore which it did, it transferred the phone number to the new phone almost immediately (my old iPhone now says “No Service”), and after about 30 minutes of backing up data, apps, music, SMS messages, and movies, I had my entire iPhone contents backed up to the new one. The only thing that was missing were my emails which I didn’t mind losing, and my voicemail password didn’t carry over, nor did my gmail password. Fixing my gmail password was simple since the iPhone asked for it immediately, but fixing my voicemail password was a little tricky. It asked me for my password the same way it would for email, but I didn’t know what it was. There was a little help “?” in the password field which sent me to AT&T’s voicemail system which reset my password immediately. The whole process took less than 60 seconds.
The first thing I wanted to do was try the compass to see how accurate it was. I realize that with all the other new features of the 3GS that the compass was probably the least favorite of some people, but since not many phones I know have one, I just wanted to play with it for a second. It was as accurate as I could tell, and if you go to maps and press the target icon twice, maps will show you which direction you’re facing.
Camera and video part 1
The second feature I wanted to try was the new camera. The new 3GS has a 3 megapixel camera which is a vast improvement over the nasty 1 megapixel camera the last iPhones had. The new camera also has an autofocus feature, and does video! I took my first video in portrait mode and tried to upload it to flickr. Flickr didn’t like the format of the video, so I posted it to youtube. Youtube properly pillarboxed the video by putting black bars on the side to fill the video out. I also posted the video to vimeo which told me I’d be in the encode queue for over an hour, and then it took almost 12 hours to encode a 14 second video. I think I’ll be sticking to youtube.
With my old iPhone now useless as a phone, I decided to wipe it to give to my daughter. The wipe procedure was going to take over and hour, so I went to Best Buy to get a windshield adapter for the iPhone since it’s now able to use GPS, and a new belt clip since my original one is starting to wear out. I found the Griffin Windowseat which works well if you keep the iPhone on the left side of the windshield. The problem with that is I also wanted to use the iPhone as my MP3 player, which means I would have to run the wire from the stereo in the middle of the car to the left side, over the steering column. I’m not very keen on this setup since it seems more work and mess than I want it to be, and if I need to plug the iPhone in to charge, that’s yet another cable to drape over the steering column.If I put the adapter in the middle, it’s designed in such a way that it takes up all the vertical space between my rear view mirror and the dashboard. I was hoping for something that would allow me to use it in the middle and not obstruct my view so much.
I got the Digital Lifestyle Outfitters HipCase since it’s the same one I bought with the original iPhone. It’s the same as before, but with a little patch of leather sewn into the back to compensate for the thinner 3G. It took some breaking in, but it’s working out very well.
Voice Control
With the original iPod still wiping, I decided to give Voice Control a try. This is exclusive to the iPhone 3GS, although I don’t see why you can’t use it in the 3G since third party apps deal with voice recognition just fine. This is great for driving, or when it would take you less time to find something embedded in your Contacts list than it would to say the person’s name.
What’s not in the video, is that the system will tell you if you have more than one person with the name you spoke in your Contacts list. For example, if you say “Call Bob”, it’ll tell you “There are multiple numbers with the name Bob”, and offer the suggestions. You can state the last name, and if there are multiple phone numbers for that person (home, cell), it’ll ask you which one you want to dial. Once you learn how to manage the Voice Control dialing this way, you can learn to say “Call Bob Johnson cell”. You can also dial by number (“call 1-973-555-1212″).
Voice Command will also control iTunes as you can see in the video. However, it’s tricky when it comes to artist’s names. For Jean-Michel Jarre, I had to pronounce it like a computer would read it: “Jeen Michele Jarray”. That worked.
Camera part 2
After getting my old iPhone set up for my daughter (who was ecstatic), I decided to try taking some pictures outside. The indoor ones were ok, but I wanted to see how well the camera too pictures in sunlight. I found that turning the camera 90 degrees for both picture and video produces better results.
Once AT&T turns on tethering and MMS, the iPhone will be an almost perfect digital companion. I say ‘almost’ because I’d still like the ability to use an external Bluetooth keyboard with it, and some other minor issues, but this will make other cell phone manufacturers look at the iPhone and realize they have a lot of catching up to do in the smartphone arena. I’m very happy with the iPhone 3GS and I’m sure I’ll be using it for a very long time.
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Comments
Looks good. can't wait until they're released in australia … why are the black bars on the left and right? I'm used to seeing the widescreen bars on the top and bottom…
@Terry,
The iPhone is 320×480 vertical, so when you create a video in portrait mode, that's what happens. At the time I didn't realize I should have made the video horizintally.
Looks good. can't wait until they're released in australia … why are the black bars on the left and right? I'm used to seeing the widescreen bars on the top and bottom…