Apple iPhone 3G S Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Apple's own iTunes program is how data is synchronized between your comptuer and the phone, which does a decent job. There is also support for synchronizing over the cell phone network to Exchange servers.

Synchronization (6.83)
The synchronization experience for the iPhone 3G has not changed significantly since the first model was released. Synchronization of organizer information is still done through iTunes and is dead simple to set up. On the Mac it will sync with your built-in PIM apps, while on the PC you can sync with Outlook. Contacts and calendars are now joined by notes in the information you get to sync, but there's still no support for tasks. Synchronization is also limited to USB, we're starting to wonder if we'll ever get Bluetooth or Wi-Fi sync.

Alerts (4.0)
Support for alerts on the Apple iPhone 3G S is still pretty poor. You can select the sound that goes off, but this is used for every alert type, not just calendar appointments. We would have liked to see the ability to set a unique sound for calendar appointments, or even for individual calendars. Snooze is still limited to a built-in ten minutes, and if you miss an alert you're just plum out of luck as it won't sound again, although the next time you activate your phone you will see it on the display.

Over-the-Air PIM Sync (4.5)
The Apple iPhone 3G S continues to support over the air synchronization of your contacts and calendars with Exchange. You can also use Apple's Mobile Me service, and Google has recently rolled out support for synchronization as well, although this is done using the Exchange interface so you can't sync with both an Exchange server and Google. One nice updated with the 3.0 software, however, is support for Caldav calendars, which Google also supports.

Adding Contacts (6.07)
It took us an average of 16.48 to add a contact name and phone number to the Apple iPhone 3G S. This is not a significant improvement over the iPhone 3G, which is probably due to the interface more than processing speed. It is faster than average for a phone, however. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Looking/Sorting/Search (6.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S includes a couple of nice features for finding the contact you need. In the contacts application you can use the alphabet that lines the right side of the display to quickly jump to a letter. You can also use a search box at the top, although this only searches names and companies. You can also use the new spotlight search to quickly find contacts, with the same limitations.

Fields (15.0)
As with previous iPhone's you basically have an unlimited number of fields available to you, although you can't create custom fields on the phone. If you sync with Address Book on the Mac or Outlook on the PC, however, custom fields from those programs will be synchronized over.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
The speed dial feature on the Apple iPhone 3G S is the same as previous iPhones. You have a page of favorites in the phone app that fulfills this function. Once again we would have liked to see the ability to add a contact to your home screen for even faster dialing as the favorites list is nowhere near as fast as assigning a phone number to a physical button as on other devices.

Thankfully that's not where this section ends as the Apple iPhone 3G S now includes voice dialing as well. This is an upgrade limited to the iPhone 3G S, which means it doesn't come with the 3.0 software for previous iPhones. To activate press and hold the home button, you will be prompted for a voice command. The Apple iPhone 3G S did an excellent job, recognizing all five of our diverse test names.

Adding Calendar Items (8.47)
Adding a calendar event to the iPhone 3G S took us an average of 11.8 seconds, which is about the same as the iPhone 3G. Once again we were most slowed down by the interface rather than any bottleneck in processing speed, another example that a faster phone doesn't necessarily make everything you do on it faster as well. Still, this is a good time for a cell phone, as you can see below only the AT&T Fuze beat it out significantly. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Calendar Views (7.0)
As with previous iPhones the 3G S offers three calendar views, list, day and month. The list view does what it says, gives you a list of all  your appointments in order of occurance. The day view blocks out your time for the selected day, while the month view shows you the current month with dots on days that have appointments. There's also space at the bottom of this view that gives you a list of the appointments on the selected day.

You can filter appointments by calendar by pressing on the calendar button at the top left. There's also new support for searching appointments, which is found either at the top of the list view or can also be accessed via the universal spotlight search to the left of the home page. Overall it's a solid job, especially the new search support. Which isn't to say that we wouldn't have liked to see a weekly view.

Fields (9.0)
Creating appointments in the Apple iPhone 3G S offers you the same selection of fields we saw in previous iPhones. You have title, location, start/end date and time, repetition, alerts, calendar and notes. There's also support for all day events.

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S does not include a task program by default, another oversight of Apple's that hasn't been addressed in two years worth of software upgrades. As such the Apple iPhone 3G S will receive zeroes in this section.

To Do/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
No tasks program.

Fields (0.0)
No tasks program.

Adding Notes (5.49)
We saw a small bit of evidence of the Apple iPhone 3G S's increased speed when creating new notes as we were able to go from 11.2 seconds on the iPhone 3G to 9.1 seconds on the new model. Of course most of our time was spent typing out our test note so we didn't expect to see a dramatic difference here. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Note Interface (6.0)
The Apple iPhone 3G S's notes interface seems not to have changed at first glance, it's still a rather ugly yellow notebook design with a simple list of notes. Scroll up, however, and you'll see the new search feature, which is a welcome addition. You can also now swipe across notes to delete them from the list, you don't have to open them up and then press the trash can button as you had to in previous version of the iPhone. It's not a particularly impressive notes program, but the small upgrades are nice to see.

Note Formatting (0.0)
Unfortunately there have been no upgrades to formatting options in the notes program. You still can't bold, italicize, underline, change fonts or text size. You also can't add media or hand drawn items to notes, the latter of which is really annoying on a touch screen device. Even text copied with formatting from another place, like the browser, loses it's formatting when you paste it into notes. Given that this doesn't happen in email, for example, it just seems like laziness. No points for the Apple iPhone 3G S in this section.

Voice Memo (4.0)
Apple had added a new voice memo application with their 3.0 software upgrade. The application is pretty, but bare bones in terms of functionality. There's a tiny record button at the bottom left, and a button to access your existing voice notes at the bottom right. You can send voice notes via email and MMS. That's about it. If you want more robust support for voice memos there are certainly a lot of choices in the app store.

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