Apple iPhone 3G

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The iPhone 3G is the beginning of a new computing platform. With 3G and the App Store, the best iPod ever is now one of the best handheld computers ever. We struggled with a bunch of day-one bugs, but we're confident that Apple will work them out. Oh, and it's finally a decent phone, too.

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Over the past year or so, Apple has made a subtle shift from developing products to building platforms, and it's a move we applaud. Products are disposable. Platforms grow. We witnessed the shift in the last update to the Apple TV, which gave an old box new features. You saw it when Apple made the iPhone 2.0 software available to original iPhone and iPod Touch owners, as well as to the new iPhone 3G users.

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While not a huge physical upgrade over the original iPhone, the 3G hits two of the older model's critical weaknesses—poor phone call quality and slow Internet connection speeds—and makes it clear that the iPhone is now a platform, a pocket computer that software developers can empower to do anything its users want. It's a formidable smartphone (though not without weaknesses), a heck of a lot of fun to use, and a device that will grow with you.

What Hasn't Changed Much

By and large, the 3G looks, feels, and acts like an iPhone. It's still a big slab of touch screen with a single Home button. The display is the same 3.5-inch 320x480-pixel panel with multi-touch capabilities, but it's a little bit brighter than the previous iPhone's screen. There's a slightly thinner metal bezel around the screen and the back of the handset plastic rather than metal. It's also slightly rounded; the iPhone wobbles a little on a table if you push on its edges. The plastic back attracts fingerprints like nobody's business. A new metal grill over the earpiece and speakers helps improve the sound quality. And thank goodness, the 3G eschews the recessed headphone jack for a regular one that accepts ordinary, run-of-the-mill music headphones.

You still enter data on a touch keyboard that corrects your spelling, but still doesn't offer force feedback. That turns a lot of people off, but it's still one of the two best touch keyboards in the business (along with the LG Dare's.) The keyboard still rotates into wide mode for entering URLs, but not for typing text or e-mail messages.

The basic array of iPhone applications hasn't changed much. There's the Phone, iPod, iTunes, Safari, YouTube, Mail, Text (threaded SMS), Calendar, Camera, Photos, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Clock, Calculator, Notes, and Settings. Now there's a dedicated icon for Contacts and the App store. (For more on the App Store, see below.)

You still have to click a whole bunch of times to dial the phone. You can still pinch, spread your fingers, and drag them across the screen to manipulate pictures. Apple's Safari browser remains untouched, showing Web pages with beautiful desktop fidelity, but without Flash or Java.

The phone comes in 8GB (black) and 16GB (black and white) sizes, neither with a removable memory card slot. The iPhone's disappointing 2-megapixel camera, with absolutely no settings options (including no video recording) sadly hasn't changed; our 3G pictures looked identical to our 2G shots, though the 3G ones came tagged with GPS data. And there's no picture messaging to other phones (MMS), no removable battery, and you can't cut and paste text.

Speaking of batteries, the 3G has an even shorter rated battery life than its predecessor; 10 hours of 2G and 5 hours of 3G talk time, 5 hours of 3G data, 6 hours of Wi-Fi, 24 hours of music, or 7 hours of video. We'll test that over the next week, but in our experience so far, this iPhone may not even last a day of heavy use.