Australian iPhone reviews hit the pre-launch deck

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Thursday, 10 July 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! From unauthorised reviews to authorised ones, the iPhone 3G will come tomorrow but the reviews have already arrived. For anyone that has been following the iPhone and the iPhone 3G for some time now, you’ll learn little that is truly new, but there are still some mini surprises. The first unauthorised review came from Dan Warne at APC Magazine who advised Apple Australia staff (Rob, Fiona and John) not to bother asking him how he managed to get hold of an iPhone 3G, although in the comments section he gave them a tiny clue. Warne explained all the new features and his impressions of them, which are all worth reading at the link above. He noted the 3G download speed seemed to be limited to 1.4Mbps, the speed AT&T said it’s iPhone 3G would work at, apparently to stop more battery life being drained by even faster 3G downloads. Given that Telstra has a 14.4Mbps capable network and the iPhone is supposed to have a 7.2Mbps chip, it was expected it might be able to deliver faster speeds on its network, possibly up to 3-5Mbps, but it appears as though this won’t be the case. We’ll be interesting in finding out for ourselves from July 11 onwards at a Telstra store if nowhere else. The speaker is louder, but not loud enough. GPS apparently works fast to get a lock, but Warne notes other phones can be slower, even dedicated navigation phones. Still, on my Nokia N95 (with v20 firmware) and an N82 which I’m separately testing, GPS lock is fast, indeed the N82 is faster than the N95, so I’ll be keen to test this out for myself. Bluetooth compatibility is better for in-car Bluetooth-equipped devices like modern car stereos, contact search is nice to see included at last, there’s some Australian localisation touches but Warne did note some stability problems in Safari. Warne also suggested to Belkin that it design an iPhone holder than you can securely suction cap to your windscreen while still being able to charge. I bought such a suction cap device for my existing iPhone from the local markets from some Chinese guy who had all kinds of cases, iPod and iPhone accessories, so they’re out there and I’m sure those market guys will start getting a ton more now that the iPhone is officially available in Australia – or at least, will be from tomorrow. Full details at the link above, but it was funny to see in the comments section that Warne wouldn’t detail which SIM card he’d used in the phone in case it gave away which carrier he’d sourced an iPhone 3G from. Until I read that I’d imagined he’d managed to get one smuggled in from overseas or something, but of course it would have had to have been one of the carriers locally, or at least, that would have been the easier path than any overseas import. Continued on page 2. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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