The UK Mobile Phone Blog

New Apple iPhone 3G S officially unveiled!

June 9, 2009 at 10:26 am by Dan | In Coming Soon Handsets, Mobile News, Mobile Phones

Let’s be honest, we all saw it coming didn’t we? Yesterday, in the keynote speech on the opening day of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced the successor to the iPhone 3G. How do you follow a phone as phenomenally successful as the iPhone 3G? Simple, with the iPhone 3G S of course. But after months of speculation, rumours and more, can the iPhone 3G S possibly live up to the hype? Read on as we tell you what you need to know about one of the most hotly anticipated releases in mobile phone history…

First things first; that name. With various titles floating around such as iPhone Video, iPhone V3 and more, the official name proved to be one of the few things nobody could pin down. Score one for Apple. The ‘S’ in iPhone 3G S stands for Speed but this isn’t just marketing jargon, when Apple say Speed they mean it. The iPhone 3GS has a new, more powerful processor built-in which promises faster all round performance. Apple claims that it is up to two times faster than the previous generation: launching messages is 2.1 faster, launching a web page in Safari is 2.9 times faster. It also consumes less processing power, which in turn helps to improve battery life.

The other part of the “S” is the support for the faster 7.2 Mbps 3G standard, over the original iPhone 3G which maxed out at 3.6 Mbps. What this means in theory (network allowing) is faster data transfer meaning web pages will load faster, Apps and music will download faster and video streaming will be a seamless. So with the iPhone 3G S Apple really can list speed as an upgraded feature.

The iPhone 3G S also flexes its muscles with new 3D Graphics support meaning faster and more complex 3D graphics are now a possibility on the iPhone. One of the main upgrades, it would seem, from the original iPhone 3G is power! But thankfully that’s not all. The camera, often the sticking point for potential owners, gets a long overdue upgrade from 2 to 3 Megapixels. The new improved camera offers images at a maximum of 2048 x 1536 pixels over the original iPhones 1600 x 1200 pixels. But as any camera enthusiast will tell you, it’s not all about the Pixels so you’ll be reassured to see the iPhone 3G S now includes Autofocus, the new tap to focus feature which also lets users tinker with white balance and new and improved macro and low light modes.

What’s more, with the iPhone 3G S you will finally be able to record video! The iPhone 3G S shoots at an impressive 30 frames per second in VGA resolution with auto focus, auto white balance and auto exposure. Apple have also confirmed that a host of editing facilities will compliment the new video recorder letting you trim videos and then upload them straight to video. Again, one of the major criticisms of the original iPhone was the lack of video capture but with the iPhone 3G S it’s been well worth the wait.

Another much rumoured feature that you’ll be please to see has made it into the iPhone 3G S is the digital compass. The inclusion of a digital compass means that the iPhone 3G S can now tell which way it is being pointed opening up the possibility for true turn by turn satellite navigation; an Apple approved Tom Tom app is already in the works and should be available to download when the new iPhone launches!

Elsewhere, the numbers speak for themselves; the iPhone’s maximum memory capacity has now doubled to 32GB with a 16GB version also available from launch (the 3G launched in 8GB and 16GB flavours). Battery life has also been improved with the iPhone 3G S offering up to 12 hours talk time compared to the originals 10 hours, 9 hours using Wi-Fi compared to 6 for the original, 30 hours of audio up from 24 and 10 hours video compared to the 7 for the original iPhone 3G. And despite the impressive boost in battery life and features all round, the iPhone 3G S is a mere 2 grammes heavier than its predecessor at 135 g and comes in at exactly the same dimensions measuring up at 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm.

Everyone knew Apple were planning on announcing the iPhone 3G S at this years WWDC and yet the fact we are still blown away at what the new iPhone promises, not to mention all the niceties of the OS 3.0 software, we simply cannot wait for this to launch. With a launch date penciled in for June 19th, keep an eye on the Blog and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s available to pre-order, exclusively at Mobiles.co.uk, part of the Carphone Warehouse.

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