New iPhone Update

[iFurkz]

heard theres a new update coming out to fine tune 3.0 anyone know when this is happening. lets hope they speed the iPhone up to its previous spec

[Jimmy97]

Uh dude, 3.0 is faster than 2.2 by quite a margin.
3.1 isn't set yet.

[Purplemonky]

They SAY its alot faster but ive only noticed a minimal speed upgrade, if anything. My iphone defo feels slower most of the time compared to when it was 2.2.1 and more constant!! More bugs aswell -.-' hope apple pull their fingers from their arses and fix my phones short comings since 3.0 man.

[JMG]

I didn't notice a speed upgrade in 3.0 from my 3G phone, but my 3GS is a whole different story! It's almost twice as fast in all aspects.

[Jimmy97]

That's hardware wise.
I dunno, I've noticed significant speed upgrades in 3.0 and very few bugs (but bugs nonetheless). This is especially in opening applications (Messages, Settings mostly). And also, tests have been conducted and 3.0 is definitely faster than 2.2 on the 3G.

[iFurkz]

That's hardware wise.
I dunno, I've noticed significant speed upgrades in 3.0 and very few bugs (but bugs nonetheless). This is especially in opening applications (Messages, Settings mostly). And also, tests have been conducted and 3.0 is definitely faster than 2.2 on the 3G.

i think what i was trying to say is that opening apps is slower, but some do feel more responsive once opened and running.

also my batt life is worse by about 3 hours less a day, but i think its due to having PUSH on with IM+ etc

[ReyZero]

I'm have the same problems with my 3.0, applications seem to start a lot slower, like photos takes ages to pop up, but once in it's faster.

WITH THAT SAID, some of the games I've been playing have FPS drops, which never happened on 2.0.
It's like on 2.0 frames were constant 30fps (just making a number up for example purposes)
And the 3.0 is doing 45-45-45-45 then it drops to 15 for a second, then back to 45-45-45

[Jimmy97]

Hmm. I must be lucky then. Applications open up way faster. And I remember seeing a chart where 3.0 (on a 3G) was like twice as fast as 2.2, and the iPhone 3GS twice as fast as 3.0 on the 3G. So far 3.0 has been great for me. Hell of an improvement, plus the features are great. I've noticed some bugs though, none major, but they do need to be corrected. But it's a major software release and bugs are inevitable, so I don't really care.
Oh and, Safari is marginally better. Hasn't crashed on me yet, and caching is way better and pages can load in the background (if you're on one tab, other tabs load as well). I remember being frustrated that I had to be on the tab for it to load when using 2.2, especially seeing as my internet's slow so I'd have to wait like a minute for each page which was exhausting. And the "open link in new tab" feature was desperately needed.

[iFurkz]

Jimmy the chart was released by apple.... i.e bull####

[Jimmy97]

Nah it wasn't the chart I'm talking about. It was somewhere on Engadget or iClarified but I can't seem to find it.

[Purplemonky]

"Nah" wow for the ilounge grammar police, thats pretty poor mush...

[hanky]

The processor in the 3GS model is supposedly much faster if you're comparing phones. The battery is also 15% smaller. Joy.

[eaglesteve]

Nah it wasn't the chart I'm talking about. It was somewhere on Engadget or iClarified but I can't seem to find it.

Jimmy, you're not wrong. I have done test myself comparing 3G and 3GS. The speed difference is substantial, but it depends on which website it is. Some the difference is'nt that much. Here are some of the test results I've conducted:

Website-------------------------------3GS----3G
Render www.smh.com.au-----------10s----44s
Render www.asia1.com------ -------15s-----36s
Render http://cin.inspiriting.com-----5s---9.7s
Render http://cijinspiriting.com------7 s---14s
Render www.mobilehornet.com------9.2s---18.5s

I did the test using my home wifi, which is itself on a slow broadband. The tests were conducted sequentially, to avoid contention between the two devices. All cache and cookies were cleared before each run. Test time measured from the pressing of button to the progress bar completely disappear.

You guys who have both devices might want to try it yourself.

[paul100]

Well, in my review the latest (iphone 3GS) is the fastest, in my use & its so far so good.

[jhollington]

3.0 provides a performance boost for any iPhone or iPod touch in web-browsing related tasks, as they've incorporated a whole new (and faster) webkit engine. In our tests, the performance increase in this case was noticeable, although not so dramatic as to say it was twice as fast.

As other have said, it also largely depends on what types of sites you're visiting and what kind of rendering is going on. Things like Javascript will be noticeably faster, but it's not going to make the web pages transfer over the air any faster than they did before, so you'll still be waiting for that.

Outside of anything related to web-page rendering, 3.0 can be a bit slower, as there's more happening in the background, especially with features like Push Notifications enabled. Memory also plays a part, and you'll likely find that if your device is getting sluggish, it speeds up dramatically after a reboot.

As for the 3GS, it's going to be much faster than the 3G for several reasons: The CPU is 1.5x faster (600MHz vs 450MHz), it includes twice the RAM (256MB vs 128MB), and for those who have the coverage, the 3G chip now supports 7.2mbps HSDPA speeds, versus 3.6mbps in the old iPhone 3G.

Page 6 of our iPhone 3GS Review (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/entry/apple-iphone-3gs-16gb-32gb/P5) shows some speed comparisons for web surfing speeds between the 3G and 3GS in different cities. The improvement here in Toronto, where 7.2mbps speeds have been available for some time, was actually quite noticeable -- with double the transfer speed, pages actually did load around twice as fast on the 3GS as they did on the 3G.

[paul100]

As the update & the iphone 3GS increases the speed of surfing the internet. And the speed at which other applications function. We should also take one more thing into consideration. The Battery : many people have reported that, after the recent update their battery drains out soon than before. I think Apple should work on this bug and fix it, ASAP.

[hanky]

As the update & the iphone 3GS increases the speed of surfing the internet. And the speed at which other applications function. We should also take one more thing into consideration. The Battery : many people have reported that, after the recent update their battery drains out soon than before. I think Apple should work on this bug and fix it, ASAP.

What can Apple do? Their own greed has done them in with this problem. They made the phone small, refused to allow any third parties to offer their own user replaceable extended batteries. The only solution is to somehow offer an even more powerful battery in a smaller space that won't overheat... and they will charge current owners for this "enhancement" to the phone which they will never admit is a real problem. As I mentioned in my other thread, running the phone with GPS and 3G will barely give you over 1 hour usage. Using 3G without GPS might give you a little more time but still well below what is acceptable.

People can laugh all they want at the Pre. Seidio already has an extended battery out for that phone that doesn't add any heft. The new Verizon Blackberry is damn nice for those who prefer it and with a snappy new media player that solves a LOT of media problems. The battery life on that device blows away the iPhone. With coffee shops now shutting down the power ac outlets due to the economy, it makes charging my iPhone that much more challenging. I'll say this much about a Blackberry - while I may not like it as much, I'll take a phone that works over a dead one.

[jhollington]

As the update & the iphone 3GS increases the speed of surfing the internet. And the speed at which other applications function. We should also take one more thing into consideration. The Battery : many people have reported that, after the recent update their battery drains out soon than before. I think Apple should work on this bug and fix it, ASAP.
Actually, I think most of the problems users are seeing with reduced battery life are all about perception. We've done specific testing of the battery life on the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 3G under 3.0. In both cases, we're quite disappointed that we're not seeing better battery life, which we really feel should have been improved, but at the same time, we're not seeing significantly worse battery life than in the 3G.

Battery life has been one of the problems with the iPhone since the 3G came out last y ear, but the 3GS has not made things any worse -- it's merely failed to improve upon them as we feel that it should have.

I suspect that most users who are perceiving worse battery life on the 3GS are simply experiencing what I call "shiny new toy syndrome" -- you're playing with the device more, downloading apps, shooting video (which is a new feature and has a serious drain on the battery), and playing with the device in general.

Playing games has always had a drain on the battery, and this drain is slightly increased in the 3GS due to the faster CPU and GPU hardware, but the does not appear to be significant over the 3G, likely due to the new GPU being more power-efficient. Other apps don't really use the full processor speeds during normal operation, in the same way that your computer rarely runs at 100% CPU utilization.

In terms of raw performance specs for actual things like call time and iPod audio and video playback performance, the 3GS comes in at the same battery life as the 3G did. Disappointingly not great, but no worse than the 3G was.

What can Apple do? Their own greed has done them in with this problem. They made the phone small, refused to allow any third parties to offer their own user replaceable extended batteries.
I don't see how the word "greed" applies here. An obsession with form over function? Absolutely, but none of us who have been working with Apple products for years are particularly surprised by this. However, greed doesn't factor into it, as Apple is not charging draconian prices for battery replacement, and the majority of users never need this feature anyway.

Frankly, if it was about "greed" then Apple would have made the battery user-replaceable and tried to sell more batteries at relatively exorbitant prices. Heck, they could have even made sure that the iPhone only worked with their batteries -- something that other cell phone and digital camera manufacturers are actually starting to do.

There are some good battery options for users who need extended battery life in the form of battery cases and other Dock Connecting accessories, and the iPhone does have one significant advantage in that area over other phones: Since it uses the same charging connector and standard as the iPod, the availability of charging accessories is much higher than it would be in other places. Chances are if you're sitting in an airport, you can find an iPhone (or iPod) charger or battery pack.

A user-replaceable battery would be great, but the lack of one is not the end of the world, particularly since other reasonable options are available. Further, the nice thing about a Dock Connector power accessory is that you don't need to actually power off your iPhone to "change" the battery... Just plug in the external battery and carry on with whatever you were doing. Some of the options, such as the Mophie Juice Pack Air and Incase Slider are also extremely unobtrusive, and simply take the place of a case you would probably already put on your phone.

As I mentioned in my other thread, running the phone with GPS and 3G will barely give you over 1 hour usage. Using 3G without GPS might give you a little more time but still well below what is acceptable.
I'm not sure where you're getting these numbers. Obviously if you're walking around actively using Google Maps with the GPS on, you're going to get more limited battery life, and an hour wouldn't surprise me,, since you're actively using 3G data, the location services, and the screen. However, that's far from typical use of the device.

On the other hand, I can easily get a day's use out of my iPhone if all I'm doing is carrying it around, doing light e-mail (ie, checking messages and tapping out short responses), and doing light work like checking my calendar and tasks/notes apps, looking up the occasional web link, reading some RSS feeds, and using the phone for about an hour to an hour and a half. Based on this, it definitely needs to hit a charger by the time I get home at the end of an 8-hour day, but it definitely lasts the day. So in other words, I can generally get through an average day where I'm using the iPhone normally for business purposes, although I carry around an extended battery just in case I need to do more with it.

I'm not debating that the iPhone's battery life is disappointing in general, but the lack of a user-replaceable battery isn't a solution to that, nor a serious hindrance considering the plethora of other options out there. On the other hand, Apple really does need to get over their obsession with design and look at ways in which the battery life can be improved, even if it means building a slightly thicker iPhone than they might like. Sadly, those of us who have followed Apple for years know this is very unlikely to change, since they place such a high priority on the form and design of a product.

[daihard]

That's hardware wise.
I dunno, I've noticed significant speed upgrades in 3.0 and very few bugs (but bugs nonetheless). This is especially in opening applications (Messages, Settings mostly). And also, tests have been conducted and 3.0 is definitely faster than 2.2 on the 3G.

I'm with Jimmy97 here. I've noticed 3.0 to be faster than 2.2 on my 3G. I've also seen much fewer instances of apps freezing since I upgraded to 3.0. Mafia Wars, for instance, used to freeze mid-fight at least once a day. Never once on OS 3.0.

For those who are unhappy about the iPhone battery life, please name a viable competitor that has a better battery life than the iPhone. How about the G1? The Palm Pre?