Apple’s new iPhone vaults ahead of rivals: Reviewer

 

Apple Inc’s new iPhone improves on earlier models, although owners of predecessors can get many of the advances through a free software upgrade, reviewers said.

The iPhone 3G S handset, to be released in eight countries tomorrow, offers longer battery life, an improved camera, more storage, better performance and the ability to use faster networks, features “users will crave,” Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal wrote in a review.

“The new iPhone doesn’t just catch up to its rivals -- it vaults a year ahead of them,” David Pogue of the New York Times wrote in a review yesterday. The inability to change the battery and lack of keyboard remain disadvantages, he wrote.

Still, most of the improvement comes from Apple’s OS 3.0, a free system upgrade for existing iPhones that “includes a much longer list of added features, some innovative and some long overdue catch-ups to other phones,” Mossberg wrote.

The new software adds copy-and-paste capability, a search function for the device, and picture messaging, also called Multimedia Messaging Service, or MMS.

“The changes make an already marvelous device that much better,” Edward C. Baig of USA Today wrote. “Not everyone should feel the need to splurge on the latest phone, however, especially if you have to pay full price -- the 3.0 software adds a lot of rich features by itself,”

“The new voice-controls feature that lets you make a call or control music on the 3G S by speaking into it wasn’t perfect, especially in noisy environments,” Baig wrote. “The battery on the new phone remains sealed, so you can’t carry a spare. It still doesn’t multitask quite like new rival Palm Pre.”

Video, Clean Screen

Other improvements noted by the reviewers include a new coating on the 3G S device that makes wiping the screen clean of fingerprints easier, the ability to record video and a compass which shows which direction a user is facing and integrates with Google Inc’s maps application.

“The 3.0 software and 3G S phone may not check off everything on your iPhone wish list. But they give iPhone loyalists plenty of new reasons to celebrate,” USA Today’s Baig wrote.

“I regard these changes as more evolutionary than revolutionary,” Mossberg said. -- Bloomberg