Apple iPhone 3G S Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

Multimedia is an area where the iPhone 3G shines; it does a great job of playing back music and videos on the big, bright screen.

Accessing Music Software (7.41)
It took us an average of 2.7 seconds to get a song playing on the Apple iPhone 3G S, which is an excellent time and significantly better than previous iPhones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Dedicated Music Controls (3.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S's volume controls will control... volume, of course. There's also the ability to assign a double tap of the home button to bring up music playback controls wherever you're at in the interface, a feature we are awarding a point for. We are also awarding a point for being able to control music playback via voice commands. Simply press down and hold the home button and tell the phone what you want to listen to.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (9.5)
The iPod interface on the Apple iPhone 3G S has not changed significantly. You still have customizable tabs that give you access to your music according to various groupings, such as artist, title, album, etc. Playlists are supported, although you can only create a single on-the-go playlist and you can't edit others. Music tags are recognized, music can be played in the background and there is support for ratings as well. There is also an equalizer with various presets available. A nice addition is the ability to search your music, either within the iPod application or using the universal search. Overall an excellent job and still the best music playback interface on any phone.

Online Song Downloading (8.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S includes Apple's iTunes store, with support for downloading music directly to your device either via Wi-Fi or the cellular network. The interface is very easy to use, with full search functionality and the ability to preview songs.

Streaming (2.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S supports streaming Mp3 audio from the web browser, but does not support any other file type.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S continues very good podcast support on Apple's phones. Podcasts have their own tab in the iPod software and can be searched through. You can download podcasts from the iTunes application, with a handy link below each of your existing subscribed podcasts letting you see if there are new episodes. Unfortunately there's still no support for auto-updating over the air, and you can't subscribe to new podcasts on the phone.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S synchronizes music with iTunes, of course, on either the Mac or PC. There's no support for synchronization with any other music software on your computer.

Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S supports Apple's Fairplay DRM, although this only matters for music purchased before Apple went totally DRM free on their store. No other form of DRM is supported. The 3G S is capable of playing back AAC and Mp3 files, but not WMA, Real or Org Vorbis.

Music Interruption (10.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S does an excellent job when your music is interrupted by a phone call. The music fades out nicely and then fades back in when the call is completed.

Video Software Access (5.0)
It took us 4 seconds to get music playing on the Apple iPhone 3G S, which is better than the 3G, but worse than the original iPhone. It's significantly better than average for all cell phones, however, and we were impressed with how video started playing almost instananeously. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Video Controls (7.0)
When viewing video you can tap on the screen to view controls. There's a scrub bar that has been updated so you can not only move your finger left and right, but also move it down to get finer control. Chapter markers are also supported and the basics like play/pause, skip and full screen toggle are also on board.

Video Software & Organization (0.0)
Videos on your iPhone are found on a single tab in your iPod application, with the exception of videos capture on the device which are in the album software. Videos in the iPod are grouped by type and can be searched. Landscape viewing is, of course, supported. Unfortunately there's no support for video playlists. Video podcasts and music videos can be played in the background, but not movies or TV shows.

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
As with music videos are synchronized over from iTunes.

Video Formats (3.0)
You can play Mpeg-4, H264 and Quicktime videos on the Apple iPhone 3G S. There's no support for flash, real, WMV or other formats.

Video DRM (5.0)
The only form of video DRM supported is Apple's Fairplay, which they still used widely on video content purchased from the iTunes store.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S was able to handle all of our video test files encoded at progressively higher bitrates without any problem. In fact we're pretty sure our test files didn't even make it break a sweat.

Online Video Downloading (7.0)
New with the iPhone 3.0 software is the ability to download movies and TV shows from the iTunes store onto your iPhone 3G S. You have been able to, and still can, download video podcasts as well. Be warned, however, that downloading a movie or television show will take quite awhile, even over wi-fi, and will probably do bad things to your battery.

Video Streaming unscored
The Apple iPhone 3G S is capable of streaming Quicktime video from the web. It also support Youtube, although not via Flash. Instead the phone will automatically take you to the Youtube application to view a those videos.

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