Apple iPhone 3G review

Carefully carried through the office like an unopened birthday present, the Apple iPhone 3G gently made its way to our desk. Floppy-haired co-workers eagerly huddled around, waiting for the screen to turn on and display all the new goodies the iPhone 3G has in store. Questions echoed around the room: would 3G be that much faster than EDGE? Does GPS make it a more useful phone?

There was simply no doubt that this is an exciting product, but after the hype dissolved and people went back to their desks, we had some important questions of our own to answer. If anything, Apple knows how to hype its products and for the most part it delivers, but the original iPhone wasn't perfect and we were determined to see whether the iPhone 3G had enough to offer over its predecessor to justify an upgrade.

The iPhone 3G is available to buy from Apple, Carphone Warehouse and O2's online and high street outlets. You can buy it on a monthly contract, starting at £30 a month with a £99 upfront charge for the 8GB model, or £159 for the 16GB. You can get it for free if you pay more than £45 a month. Alternatively there's a pay as you go option too, if you'd rather not be on a contract, but Apple hasn't yet announced the price.

Design
When you open the lid of the iPhone 3G's compact box, you'll think it's not really that different to the original iPhone. The front section is indeed very similar to its predecessor -- the screen is the same size, the ear speaker and home key at the bottom look the same and the silver rim around the edges is the same as the old one too.

The iPhone 3G's curved edges make it feel thinner than its predecessor even though it isn't

It's when you take the iPhone 3G out of its box that you start to see the differences. The back section features plastic instead of metal and curved edges similar to the MacBook Air's. Technically it's thicker than the original at its thickest point, but the curved edges genuinely make it feel thinner. You'd expect it to feel more flimsy, but the type of plastic used makes it feel quite solid -- we do expect it to get scratched though.

Something else completely different in design to the original iPhone is the headphone jack. The original iPhone features a recessed jack, which only allows you to use headphones with pins that fit through the gap. The iPhone 3G's headphone jack is flush against the edge, meaning you can plug in any headphones, which will make a massive difference to the sound quality you can enjoy.

Overall, the feel of the iPhone 3G is, as expected, superb. It feels every inch how you want a smart phone to feel. It's neither too heavy nor too light, it feels solid without being overly bulky, and the screen -- almost identical to the original iPhone's -- is a joy to look at.

Features
When the iPhone first came out, many people were disappointed to see that it lacked 3G, among other things. As you may have gathered, Apple has fixed this -- in fact, it's gone one better and included HSDPA, which is an even faster version of 3G. And it makes a massive difference. Browsing the Web and watching YouTube videos is lightning fast compared to the old iPhone, which was hamstrung on EDGE. We loaded the Sky News homepage on the original iPhone in 1 minute 40 seconds. The iPhone 3G took just 40 seconds to load the same page -- over 2.5 times as fast.

The new headphone jack is flush against the edge, so you can use any headphones you like, meaning you should be able to enjoy better sound quality

GPS is another addition to the iPhone 3G's artillery -- and it blows the old model to smithereens. Compared to the original iPhone's cellular and Wi-Fi triangulation, using GPS on the iPhone 3G is far more accurate. GPS pinpointed our location to within metres rather than kilometres. For the time being it only works with Google Maps, which doesn't do voice navigation. Some pundits have suggested Apple isn't keen on third-party developers creating navigation apps, but we'll have to wait and see.