3G iPhone reviewed, nothing learned

NYTimes (Pogue), WSJ (Mossberg) and USAToday (Baig) all got their mitts on the 3G iPhone.   Amazingly, not one of them had anything original to say.  Nothing you couldn’t make up by looking at the specs or images of the iPhone and postulate.  Just FYI, we’d have had those screws off and been digging around the guts within 30 seconds of recieving the device…but maybe thats why we have to wait like all of you schmucks too.

http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/452319854

Baig’s insights:

Doesn’t work with Firewire docs.  Audio Quality better for calls and songs through speaker.  Geotagging pictures is cool.  GPS functionality works better – but could have driving instructions.  Back is "curvier"

Pogue:3G means that you can talk on the iPhone and surf the Internet simultaneously, which you couldn’t do before.  According to Apple, the iPhone’s G.P.S. antenna is much too small to emulate the turn-by-turn navigation of a G.P.S. unit for a vehicle, for example.  One coming program, called iCall, will give you free phone calls when you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot. Another, called G-Park, exploits G.P.S. to help you find where you parked. Yet another, Urbanspoon, is “a cross between a magic eight ball and a slot machine:" you shake the phone, and it randomly displays the name of a good restaurant nearby, using the iPhone’s G.P.S. and motion sensor.

…and grandmaster funk WSJ Mossberg: iPhone 3G’s battery was drained much more quickly in a typical day of use than the battery on the original iPhone, due to the higher power demands of 3G networks….Also, in the U.S. and in many other countries, the iPhone is still tied to a single exclusive carrier, whose coverage or rate plans may be unacceptable to some….One drawback: While you can have both personal and Exchange email accounts on the new iPhone, if you synchronize with Exchange calendars and contacts, your personal calendar and contacts are erased…..One side benefit to 3G is that in some areas, voice coverage improves. At my neighborhood shopping center, where the first iPhone got little or no AT&T service, the iPhone 3G registered strong coverage. But I still found that calls regularly broke up on some major streets. In New York City, riding in a taxi along the Hudson, one important call was dropped three times on the new iPhone. Finally, I borrowed a cheap Verizon phone and got perfect reception…..Bottom line: If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge, if you can live with the higher service costs and the weaker battery life.

Our Take: 3G+GPS>battery+Service price=buy.  Biggest dissapointment: Camera.