Apple’s latest phone, the iPhone 3GS, was announced at the 2009 WWDC today. The S stands for speed. The design is the same as the first 3G, but there are major speed improvements. Launching applications, viewing attachments and viewing web pages has improved. The phone is ready to deliver speeds of 7.2 Mbps once carriers are ready. The phone ships with a new 3 megapixel auto focus, white balance and exposure camera. To improve picture taking you can tap on the screen to force the phone to focus on specific areas (i.e. like a face for flower). The ability to take pictures in low light settings has improved and an auto macro feature can take picture of objects up to 10 cm away. One of the long awaited announcements was the ability to capture video. Video capture is at 30 frames per second VGA with audio. No HD quality videos on this phone. Once videos are captured there is a way to “scrub” and trim the video to just the content you want. Videos can then be shared via Email, MobileMe, YouTube and MMS. Hey! What about Facebook? It will be interesting to see how video capture will be built into applications. Another new feature available only on the 3GS is Voice Control. You can use your voice to make calls based on the names of people in your address book as well as control your music. Battery life, the nemesis of the iPhone, was also improved. The phone will be available on June 19th.
Features like video capture, voice dialing, longer battery life are what I call “about time” features. Other smartphones have had these features for some time now. I was disappointed to not see a camera on the front of the device. Face to face conversations will become pervasive in the future and the lack of second camera is likely a cost issue as well as a bandwidth concern for AT&T. Other than the video capability I don’t see existing 3G iPhone users trading up to this device. It’s not compelling enough. If you are an original 2G user from the first generation ending your 2 year contract the timing couldn’t be better.
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