Apple iPhone 3G

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. Looks-wise the iPhone 3G isn't very different from the front, you still get the large screen that's very easy to use and the home key, which takes you back to the main menu and offers a few shortcuts. When you turn it around you'll see that instead of a metal back there's a curved plastic one, which is still as slippy as the old one but fits easily into a pocket. A massive improvement over the first iPhone is the 3.5mm jack that's no longer recessed, so you can plug in any old headphones. Of course it's not the outside of the iPhone 3G that packs the most punch, it's the new features which will have you jumping out of your chair. As the name suggests there's 3G which means you can access the Web much faster, in fact we've tested it out and we've calculated that it's two and a half times faster browsing the Web over 3G than it is using the original iPhone's EDGE connection. The next big feature on the iPhone is GPS, which pinpoints your location to within a couple of meters and can be used with Google Maps. This is a huge improvement over the old iPhone, which relied on cellular base station and Wi-Fi hotspot triangulation to figure out your location. It's a really great addition to the iPhone because now app developers can make apps that use your location to provide you relevant information, such as nearby cafes or cinemas. And that's the really big thing about the new iPhone platform, app developers can now create third party apps that utilise most of the iPhone's features including the accelerometer. Take this iPint app that's a bit of fun but works by using the accelerometer and replicates a pint in an amusing way. On a more serious note, there's support for Microsoft Exchange, which opens up the iPhone to business users and while some may struggle to leave mechanical keyboards behind and switch to a touchscreen, we think many business bods are going to love the iPhone. But is the iPhone 3G all good - are there any problems? Well you still can't send MMS messages, which is annoying, you still can't copy and paste text and you still can't shoot video. But these are issue which we hope can be solved through software updates. As for the hardware itself, this is a superb piece of technology that with age we think will continue to get better, particularly if people start coming out with some really cool apps.