Apple iPhone 3G Cell Phone Review - Hardware

Hardware has always been Apple's strong suit and the iPhone 3G is no exception. It sports a great display, a powerful on-screen keyboard, albeit one that requires some training, and 8 - 16 GB of storage, good stuff all around.

Text Words Per Minute (12.30)
We were able to type at a speed of 61.50 words per minute on the iPhone 3G. This is an incredibly fast score, but it comes with a caveat: our test typist has been using the original iPhone for about a year. To put this in perspective, we gave the iPhone to someone who has never typed on a touchscreen before. He typed at 18.25 words per minute. What this means is the iPhone's onscreen keypad has a steep learning curve. Once you get the hang of it, however, it can be just as fast as a physical keypad.

For an interesting comparison, check out the Instinct and the Dare. Both of these phones use touchscreen keyboards like the iPhone 3G, yet they had relatively average typing scores. There are two reasons for this. The first arises from inferior hardware: the touchscreen on the iPhone is more responsive than either the Instinct's or the Dare's. The second reason has to do with software: neither the Instinct nor the Dare have the iPhone 3G's word completion feature. If you make a typo, just keep rolling along and it'll automatically fix the word for you. This means you can throw caution to the wind and type faster than the typical, typo-fearing phone user. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Words Per Minute

T9 and Auto Complete (5.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G does not have a keypad so it does not support T9. It does support a nice form of auto-completion, although it may be more accurately termed auto-correct. While typing the phone will guess at the word you wanted to spell and automatically insert it unless you intercede. This is a critical feature that allow you to type quickly on the virtual keyboard without too many errors. It's a feature that is missing from phones like the Samsung Instinct and LG Dare, and contributed to the terrible performance of their virtual QWERTY keyboards.

One-Handed Typing (7.71)
Using only one hand -- and when we say one hand, we mean it: no using the second hand to hold, stabilze, or otherwise touch the phone in any way -- we were able to get 38.55 words per minute from the iPhone 3G's onscreen keyboard. This is above average, but nothing too special; the LG Dare was capable of 35.30 words per minute. This score is, however, better than we traditionally do with physical QWERTY keyboards. The reason for this has to do with the amount of pressure needed to hit each button. With a physical key, you actually need to press, which causes the device to rock around in your hand, making subsequent presses more awkward. With a touchscreen as sensitive as the one on the iPhone 3G, we were able to type with much more control. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Words Per Minute

Keypad Backlighting (0.0)
As the keyboard on the iPhone 3G is virtual it is always backlit. We won't be awarding points here, however, as this section specifically refers to the backlight on physical keyboards/keypads.

D-Pad/Joystick (0.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G does not use a traditional D-Pad or Joystick, instead you use the touch screen to interact with almost all aspects of the interface.

Touch Screen (8.75)
As with the old iPhone, the iPhone 3G depends on its touchscreen for virtually every function. Like the old iPhone, the new one has a fantastic touch screen. The screen is the perfect amount of sensitivity, and button presses and scrolls register immediately. Unfortunately, while the iPhone 3G's touchscreen is great compared to all phones, it seems slightly inferior to the original iPhone's screen. We noticed that, while the controls seem responsive, they weren't quite as immediate as they were on the original iPhone. We're hoping this is just a software issue that can be fixed with a later patch. If it isn't, then only original iPhone users will notice the difference -- but it'll certainly annoy them.

Jog Dial (1.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G does not have a jog dial, however it does have an alphabetical tool that allows you to quickly jump through long lists like a jog dial would, so we are awarding  single point here for that functionality.

Soft Buttons (0.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G does not use soft buttons as most traditional phones do.

Volume Control (7.0)
The iPhone's volume keys are located on the left side, right where they were on the old device. The one difference? This time the keys are metal. This means the edges are slightly easier to feel by touch and they're more likely to maintain their edges over time. You can find them very easily by touch: they're the only set of buttons on the left side, and located under the lock switch. Otherwise, they behave the same way: they have good tactile feedback and feel slightly stiff.

Power and Standby (7.0)
The power and standby button, like the volume controls, is just like the old one except for its composition: instead of plastic they're made of metal. This gives it a slightly more noticeable edge when you're navigating by touch. Otherwise, it feels slightly stiff, just like the button on the original iPhone. The button also behaves in the same way: a single press initializes standby mode, and a long hold will bring up the shutdown prompt.

Other Buttons (3.0)
In addition to those mentioned above the Apple iPhone 3G has a couple of additional buttons that come in useful. The first is the home button, one tap on this button will take you back to the home screen. Apple has added additional functionality to this button since our review of the original iPhone. A double tap will either take you to an iPod control interface, if music is playing, or to your contact favorites. This behavior can be managed in the settings. The second button on the iPhone 3G is the vibrate/ringer switch located on the left side near the top.

Primary Screen Gross Resolution (9.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G has the same 480 x 320 pixel resolution found on the original iPhone. You can see below that this is amongst the best resolution of any current device, higher than all of our non-iPhone comparison phones. It's half the resolution of a phone with a full VGA display (640 x 480), which we are starting to see more of. The iPhone 3G's resolution is quite high enough that images and the interface look quite sharp, this should not be an area of concern for buyers.

Primary Screen Pixels per Inch (8.24)
Pixels per inch (PPI) is a measure of pixel density. Higher pixel density means you get rich colors and sharp images. Lower pixel density can lead to a washed out display and pixelation. The Apple iPhone 3G's pixel density is 164.8 PPI. You can see below that this is just about average for a cell phone. The large display on the iPhone 3G leads to this merely average pixel density despite a high resolution screen. Still, average is pretty good, we don't start to worry about pixel density until it drops into the 130 range, so you shouldn't have any problems with how pixel density effects the iPhone 3G's display.

Pixels Per Inch

Screen Physical Size (8.75)
The Apple iPhone 3G's 3.5 inch display is amongst the largest that we've seen on a mobile device. You can see below that it's larger than any of our comparison phones, even those that also depend on a touch screen interface like the Samsung Instinct and LG Dare. The screen size is important not only for navigating the touch interface, but also makes a great, large display for viewing videos or playing games. We're very happy with the iPhone 3G's screen size.

Screen Size Diagonal (inches)

Screen Brightness (17.35)
We measure screen brightness by browsing to a blank white web site, make it as big as we can, and then measure the lux output. The iPhone 3G was capable of a whopping 207 lux, which is a great deal brighter than the original iPhone (which was bright to begin with).

Of course, when we mesure total lux output, we also make sure the phone's brightness settings are turned up the whole way. In this case, the brightness setting is handled in the form of a slider, giving the user an incredible amount of control over how bright their screen is. Additionally, the iPhone 3G has a light sensor you can turn on and off. While on, the screen's brightness will automatically adjust to ensure optimal readability.

Screen Brightness (lux)

Screen Bright Light Performance (9.0)
For this test, we shine 3000 lux directly onto the phone's screen, which is approximately equivalent to the lighting conditions of a sunny day. We then see if we can see anything on the screen other than glare. We left the automatic brightness adjustment on for this test and had absolutely no problems reading the screen. The previous score certainly made it obvious the screen was bright, but this score shows it's bright enough to beat the sun. That's bright. We had absolutely no problems reading the small test underneath the icons, or making out the icons themselves.

Color Depth (0.0)
Apple does not release information about how many colors the iPhone 3G's screen can display. If we were forced to guess we'd say at least 260,000 colors and perhaps as much as sixteen million. Last year we awarded the original iPhone a score of 6, which is what we award screens capable of displaying 65,000 colors. We've since come to believe that this was a mistake, color depth is an important piece of information and until Apple releases that information we will be awarding zero points in this section.

Power & Data Ports (3.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G uses the same propietary iPod docking port for both power and data. We are not fans of proprietary ports, we understand that Apple is unlikely to ever switch to a standard port like Mini USB, so they'll just have to live with the poor score here. On the plus side you can charge the iPhone 3G via USB.

Headphone Compatibility (4.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the phone. In a major upgrade over the previous year's model the iPhone 3G's headphone jack is flush with the edge of the phone. The recessed port on last year's iPhone meant you had to use an adaptor for many sets of headphones, and we docked them a point for it. We're very happy to see Apple address this issue with the new iPhone 3G. Unfortunately the iPhone 3G still doesn't support wireless Bluetooth Stereo headphones, an omission that does not cause us joy.

Internal Storage (8.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G comes in two flavors with sixteen and eight gigabytes of storage respectively. This is double the storage that the original iPhone launched with last year and is as much or more than you can get with expansion cards on just about any other phone. It should be more than sufficient for anyone who's used to using their cell phone to store media, although iPod users who are accustomed to dozens of gigabytes of storage may find it much less spacious. We will be awarding points for the higher of the two storage amounts as the experience of the last year indicates that those phones are inevitably more popular and Apple will likely move to increase storage even more in short order. Note that our score for internal storage flattens out at the higher ends so the iPhone 3G won't be receiving twice the score of the previous year's model.

Expansion Slot & Format (0.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G does not support any form of expansion card. We don't believe that this will be an issue for most users, but we do understand that some people would like the flexibility of adding additional storage if necessary. Especially since we expect Micro SDHC cards to get up to 16 or even 32 gigabytes in short order an expansion slot would have been a nice bonus on the iPhone 3G.

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