I’ve spent the past 45 minutes messing around with my new iPhone 3GS and the first thing I have to say is a great big “THANK YOU APPLE!”. I don’t want to speak too soon, but it seems that Apple has actually released a killer product. The iPhone 3GS is undeniably, noticeably faster than the iPhone 3G.

The Breakdown

• Speed, Speed, Speed - The new iPhone 3GS, bar none, is incredibly fast. Load times between switching apps, searching and playing games are almost eliminated in comparison to the 3G. Fastet I’ve seen in terms of PDA devices, and insanley faster than the iPhone 3G.
• GPS - Google Maps GPS position lock is way faster than on the iPhone 3G. I guess the updated hardware includes a better GPS component? The Compass tool is also kind of cute. I don’t see myself using it much, but it seems to be pretty accurate.
• Safari - Surfing is noticably faster.
• Mail - Extremely fast. Much quicker than on the iPhone 3G. Finally!!! You can search through your emails, including IMAP! I use Google Apps to manage my email and I can now search, from my iPhone 3G S through over 10,000 emails on my mail server. The search is real-time, and yes, it’s extremely fast.
• Search - The iPhone 3G S also features a “Searchlight” style search function. From the home screen, you can click the magnfying glass and search the entire phone (including email) and the search pops up in real time as you’re typing in the word. Brilliant.
• Camera – 3 Megapixel camera. Auto focus. Touch to Focus. Macro… It’s incredible. It’s fast. So fast that you can take sequential pictures!
• Video Camera – 100 times better than any Jailbroken video app such as Cycorder. The video records smooth, plays smooth and with the click of a button you can email it as an .MOV attachment, upload it to YouTube, MobileMe or send it as an MMS message!
• Tethering (use as a modem) – Sometimes I say tethering and people look at me like I’m speaking Mandarin. Tethering is finally here, and without Jailbreaking! The tethering took me 2 seconds to configure and it works incredibly well.
• MMS – I didn’t really want to mention this, because I think MMS is stupid if you can use email. But, they’ve added it, and it works perfectly.
  
  
• Copy/Paste – Duh… This should have been a no-brainer in the first iPhone. Either way, congratulations to Apple for adding this feature. It works amazingly.
• Voice Control - Wow! I thought it would be cool to finally be able to call people using voice dial, like I used to back in 2001 ; and it is cool. But Voice Control offers so much more than dialing your contact list. You can also control your iPOD with it! Say the name of an Artist or Album and it fires up the songs. Great feature, obviously adapted from the new iPod Shuffle.
• Find My iPhone – This feature is very cool and works very well. You click find it in MobileMe and BAM! There it is on a map. You can also send a message to the screen and wipe the data, should the theif decide to keep on running.
• Games – Fast, Fast, Fast.
• Battery – I haven’t had it long enough to accuratley make a comment on the battery life of the 3GS.

Overall, incredible update. The iPhone 3G S is unbelievable. The only question now is, do I need to Jailbreak? And, when will it be possible? It seems that Apple spent some time adding the features that I really want/need. I have been a jailbreaking fan since day one, and many of the tools I use on a daily basis are tools that were given to me through the magic that is Jailbreaking. However, now that these tools are part of OS 3.0, and the phone runs lighting fast with no glitches thus far, do I really need to jailbreak? I think the answer is no, but I don’t want to jump the gun.

There are two features that I’d love to see on this phone without having to Jailbreak it:

1. Quick swipe to activate/deactivate Bluetooth, Wifi, 3G (cydia: SB Settings)
2. Notification in the status bar of email, sms, missed calls, etc. (cydia: Status Notifier)
3. Ability to email voicemails to myself for archiving (cydia: voicemail forwarder)

Three things I will miss, should I decide not to jailbreak my iPhone 3G S. I think I’ll spend some time searching the App Store to see if I can solve this legitimately.

I’m sure as I play with the 3G S a few hours more I will find some other great features… check back for updates!

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