Apple iPhone 3G Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

The Apple iPhone 3G is still a multimedia powerhouse, but we did notice that it took longer to get music and video playing than on the original iPhone. It's still fairly speedy, however, and the software interface is beautiful and easy to use.

Accessing Music Software (5.0)
It took us four seconds to get music playing on the Apple iPhone 3G, this is with the music application shut down and starting at the home screen. You can see that this is slightly slower than what we saw from the original iPhone last year, although still pretty fast compared to some of our other comparison phones. It gets much faster if you leave the music program running in the background, usually just a couple of seconds in that case, and it is still better than average.
For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Play Music (sec)

Dedicated Music Controls (2.0)
The original iPhone's only dedicated music controls were the volume keys. An update that has come since then has added the ability to access music controls by double tapping on the home button. We thought this was worth an extra point so the iPhone 3G gets twice the points of last year's iPhone. Of course it gets nowhere near the number of points as a phone like the Nokia N95, which has four dedicated music playback keys in addition to volume keys.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (9.0)
Steve Jobs has described the iPhone as the best iPod Apple has ever made. We'll leave that determination to the Apple fanboys, but we can say that the iPhone 3G is certainly an impressive music device for a cell phone. Tap on the iPod application to launch the music software. At the bottom of the screen are five tabs, by default these are Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos and More.

The More tab gives you additional sorting options including Albums, Audiobooks, Compliations, Genres and Podcasts. You can move any of these to replace one of the four first tabs by tapping on the edit button in the top left of the More tab. Tapping on any tab will give you a list of your media according to that sort type. As with the original iPhone there's an alphabet on the right side of the screen for quick scrolling, which is nice to have. Unfortunately we still don't have support for searching through your music.

Playlists are supported, of course, but just like other iPods you can't edit playlists that are added to the device and the only playlist you can create is the On The Go list. Tags were recognized for our AAC and Mp3 files without a problem. Album art is supported, along with background play and rating music, but there are no visualizations. There are a variety of equalizer presets, but you can't create your own or adjust the equalizer manually.

You also have the option to view your music in coverflow mode, just rotate your phone to landscape orientation to enter coverflow mode and you can flip through your albums. When a song is playing in standard portrait mode the album art takes up the center of the display. Above that is the title and artist of the music, with a back button to the left of it and a button to flip the album art to see all the songs on the album and set ratings. Below the album art are the play/pause button, next, previous and a volume control. Tapping once on the album art will bring up a scrubber that allows you to jump to any point in the song with shuffle and loop controls to the left and right respectively. Overall we have to say that the iPhone 3G's music software is some of the most impressive and beautiful we've seen on any mobile device.

Online Song Downloading (3.5)
When the original iPhone launched last year one of the big requests was for the ability to purchase music directly from iTunes on the phone. Apple came through with the iPhone iTunes store in a software update and this is available on the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately the store will only function via Wi-Fi as Apple has not yet set up the agreements necessary to allow purchases over the cellular network. As such we are awarding half the points we normally would for a music store on a mobile device.

Streaming (0.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G does not support streaming Mp3, Real or Windows Media audio from the internet, no change from one year ago.

Podcast Support (6.0)
As you would expect from an Apple product the Apple iPhone 3G has pretty good podcast support. In the music software you can view all your podcasts in one location, and in the video section your podcasts are also separated out. Unfortunately there's still no support for subscribing to, downloading and updating podcasts directly on the device. This is functionality that Nokia provides on their devices like the N95, and we wish the iPhone did the same.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The iPhone 3G can synchronize music with your Windows or Mac computer via iTunes software. You can't use any other software to synchronize music, and you can't drag and drop music onto the iPhone 3G as you can with older iPods.

Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G supports AAC and Mp3 music files. It also supports Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV, but we don't award points for these file types. The only form of DRM supported is Apple's FairPlay DRM.

Music Interruption (10.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G does a very good job of handling an interruption to music playback by a phone call. Music fades out nicely so you can take the call and then fades back in at the exact same spot at the end of call.

Video Software Access (3.70)
It took us 5.4 seconds to get a video playing on the Apple iPhone 3G. This is a bit slower than we saw from the original iPhone, a trend we're noticing throughout the interface. You can see below that it's still faster than average, however, and it beats most of our comparison phones, although not the ultra-speedy LG Dare. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to Play Video (sec)

Video Controls (7.0)
When a video is playing on the Apple iPhone 3G there are initially no controls available, just tap on the screen to bring them up. At the bottom of the screen you get Play/Pause, Next, Previous and volume control (the volume keys will also control playback volume). At the top of the screen is a scrubber so you can quickly jump to the location in the video you want. To the left of the scrubber is a Done button and to the right is a button that will take the video full screen. You can also take a video full screen by simply double tapping on it. The iPhone 3G's video controls are identical to the original iPhone and provide you with just about all the controls you might need for video playback.

Video Software & Organization (7.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G's video software is built into the iPod application. Simply tap on the Video tab to get a list of all the videos on the device sorted by type. Video playlists are also supported, you can find those under the Playlist tab. You can't edit or create your own video playlists on the device. Unlike music you can't rate videos on the Apple iPhone 3G, but there is support for landscape full screen viewing. Like the music software there is no search functionality for finding a video and unlike music you can't leave a video playing in the background while you go off to do something else on the phone. Nothing has changed on the new iPhone 3G compared to its predecessor. We do find the video software to be amongst the best we've seen on a mobile device, certainly much better than the combination of Gallery and Real Player found on the Nokia N95.

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
As with music you can synchronize your videos with a desktop computer, either Mac or PC, using iTunes software.

Video Formats (3.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G is capable of playing back Mpeg-4, H264, and Quicktime video. It does not support 3GP, Flash, Real or Windows Media video.

Video DRM (5.0)
The iPhone 3G is capable of playing back videos purchased from the iTunes store and protected by Apple's Fairplay DRM. It does not support any other forms of DRM protected video such as that purchased from Amazon's Unboxed store.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G was able to play back all five of our H264 encoded test files without a single hiccup. This means it is capable of playing high quality video, as you would expect.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G cannot directly download videos for playback or storage on the iPhone 3G, although it can cache and play back Quicktime video found on the web. We don't award points for caching however, only if you are able to download and store on the device. We hope that in the future Apple will add video content to the iTunes store on the iPhone 3G.

Video Streaming unscored
As we mentioned above the Apple iPhone 3G is capable of caching and playing back Quicktime video you find on the web. The built in  Youtube application also allows you to stream Youtube videos. No other form of streaming video is supported out of the box. We don't score this section because standards for mobile streaming video are all over the place.

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