The big event known as “Jesus Phone: The Third Coming” is now over, and I have a handset to play with for a while.
As I used the iPhone 3GS today, I was particularly interested in features specific to the device since I have already put the new iPhone 3.0 software through its paces on an iPod Touch.
The 3GS-exclusive features include:
Internal compass. Big whoop. It’s pretty, and it works. Next! All kidding aside, I look forward to apps that put this compass capability to creative use.
Voice control. I was initially befuddled about how to access the new iPhone’s much-ballyhooed voice-recognition features; a friend reminded me that I have to press down the phone’s one physical “home” button for a few seconds.
I promptly ran into a problem; the phone wouldn’t respond to my voice prompts.
Turns out the earbuds I was using, Atomic Bass models from Radius Products, flat-out would not work with the iPhone 3GS (for calls or anything else). The basic buds that ship with the iPhone, as well as a pair of fancier Apple In-Ear Models, did function just fine.
The iPhone was pretty good at understanding my requests to call people in my address book, but tended to mangle Latino surnames.
Just for the record, my surname is not pronounced Oh-JAY-dah-ZAP-ah-tah, and that of my high-school chum Julio Sanjurjo is not pronounced San-JOOR-joe. Trust me on this, Apple.
The voice that reads back the names sounds vee-eery familiar; that’s right, I’ve heard her before.
Also, as the esteemed Chris Breen of Macworld points out, voice-controlling iPod items doesn't work very well. This is disappointing since Apple's touch-screen handhelds have always struck me as clunkier-to-use than the ones with physical click wheels. I had hoped the voice features would remedy this; seemingly no.
Video camera. The iPhone now shoots video, and even lets you edit it before sharing it online. Apple has made all of this drop-dead simple. I was shooting video with just a few taps, and could trim my recorded footage via a couple of touch-controlled sliders.
Uploading to YouTube was then a breeze, and didn’t take very long at all. My attempts to publish video via Apple’s own MobileMe didn’t go as well. Upload attempts seem to work as intended, but the footage never showed up online.
E-mailing the footage did go fine. This is going to be a hoot; brace yourself for gazillions of kid vids, Mom.
