Understanding the iPhone 3GS
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 7, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
The Inevitable Comparison: 3GS vs. Palm Pre
In response to my Pre review, many of you posted that the article read more like a comparison to the iPhone or a list of things for Apple to improve. I wrote it as such because I felt that while Palm out-innovated Apple in many ways, it fell short in just as many. At the same time I felt that Apple had much room to improve given the impact of the Pre, while also holding its advantages over the Pre. In short, neither device is perfect and both companies have much to learn from the other. It wouldn’t be fair for me to exclude the Pre from this article, as the iPhone 3GS delivers speed but lacks the functionality of what Palm has done with the Pre.
It’s a wonder what a year makes. Apple originally shied away from enabling background tasks on the iPhone because it didn’t want to compromise performance or battery life. The latter made sense, but the former didn’t really jive - the more we asked of the iPhone, the slower it got. In particular, its performance took a dive once the official App store launched along with the 2.0 firmware. Since then, the iPhone hasn’t exactly been fast - especially compared to some newer smartphones.
Apple’s solution to the background tasks problem was server-side push notifications. Take the most popular example: AIM. Since Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party applications to run in the background on the iPhone, if you’re in the middle of an AIM conversation and lock your phone, go to the home screen or launch another app, your connection to AIM is lost and your screen name logs off. You won’t get any new messages until you log back on.
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I love sushi
With the iPhone OS 3.0 the AIM app can use Apple’s push notification servers to keep the connection active. The minute you close the AIM app on the iPhone, the connection between your phone and AIM is severed but kept alive by one of Apple’s push servers. Any new messages that are to be delivered to your phone go to Apple’s servers, which know your phone’s IP and whereabouts. The servers then push the message to your phone and you see it like a SMS notification on the iPhone:
Sweet, right? It’s great for receiving a single message, but it’s horrible for actually maintaining a conversation. To respond to the message I have to click view message, then wait for the AIM app to launch and log me in and only then can I begin typing. Now let’s assume that I quit out of AIM because I had to do something else, or even worse, let’s assume that I left AIM because I had to send a text message. I’m now switching between two messaging apps to carry on two different conversations. It’s cumbersome.
As AIM messages pile up, the counter on my AIM app icon increments to let me know what I’ve got waiting for me.
Switching between apps is made much faster on the 3GS, this whole process is far more annoying on the 3G or original iPhone because actually launching the AIM app takes far longer. It’s a better overall experience but still no where near the seamless setup that Palm offers. If you mostly text/IM people on your phone, then honestly, forget the iPhone and get a Pre - Apple simply doesn’t do the best job here any longer.
Sending IMs and switching between apps on the Pre, the way it should be done
The iPhone OS needs a drastic revamp. The OS was designed very well for what the first iteration of the iPhone was created for: single tasking with SMS, email, web browsing, phone calls, music playback and browsing through photos. Add several pages of apps to the OS and try to multitask between them and the OS quickly shows its limits. Although Apple has added a very sweet Copy/Paste interface to the iPhone, that’s about the extent of how well you can work between apps thanks to Apple’s no background tasks limitation.
Palm got the implementation of a multitasking OS down right with the Pre, but the performance levels just aren’t up to snuff. Take using the dialer app for example. Animations are choppy and there’s a noticeable lag between when you tap a button and when the app responds. That just isn’t true of the iPhone and definitely not true of the 3GS; responsive is the key word here and Palm lacks it.
Unfortunately, what the 3GS has in responsiveness it lacks in productivity. The more I use the 3GS the more I wish I was able to run more than one application at a time. What I want is a phone that multitasks like webOS but with the speed of the 3GS. I believe that both Apple and Palm are capable of delivering such a device, I’m just unsure which company will do it first.
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lightzout - Saturday, July 11, 2009 - link
My wife actually offered to give me her 3g if she got the the 3gs but I didnt think it was worth it. She asked me this morning how it was better and I didnt know (didnt admit it of course)Now I want her 3G "free" and she really does need the 3gs since since is always multitasking/social/mail..me, including aim.
I thought the 3gs would have some radical new gps stuff but the compass is not impressive. Nothing to get me geeked on to the tune of $200. For my purposes having the older iphone would make travel and remodeling job estimating easier over my tattered razr.
My media mogul mamacita however needs that sleek new 3gs like yesterday as every gripe she has about the 3g phone seems to have been addressed somehow.
Great write-up!
Only regret is when I saw the new screen and sleek size of the 3gs at the apple store a couple days ago it does screem "arent I beautiful?" but that is what apple does so well right?
MrBowmore - Saturday, July 11, 2009 - link
Give the magic, or hero another chance!Your numbers for those phones are whacked, its faster than the 3G at alot of things. Try to kill all the backgroundapps. (yes, it multitasks)
RadnorHarkonnen - Friday, July 10, 2009 - link
Very good analisys.I was just surprised ARM CPUs still made on 90nm and 65nm. With the performance and power saving 55nm and 45 nm processes i would imagine they would jump the bandwagon fast.
nubie - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
Some people can't drop $600 in a lump or $2600 over 3 years on something as stupid as a cellphone. No matter what it can do.Besides the fact that Apple is killing all support for proper hardware acceleration and access to OpenGL 2.0, whatever.
Can we get more Android and G1 coverage? Please?
psonice - Friday, July 10, 2009 - link
Like the guy above said, you buy a phone, you either pay a lot upfront, or you get it with a contract. Either way you'll still need to pay a ton of money each month to for your voice and data. You could get a cheap phone that only makes calls and costs almost nothing, but that's not the same is it?And what's this about apple not supporting hardware acceleration / opengl es 2.0??? Almost everything in the gui is hardware accelerated. And there's very good opengl es 1.1/2.0 support in the sdk, hence the ton of hardware accelerated games. There may not be much supporting es2.0 yet, but that's because the first 2.0 capable device has only just been released.
Affectionate-Bed-980 - Friday, July 10, 2009 - link
You know what? The cost is:$199 up front
$70 / year * 24 months
= $1680 + $199
But let's face it, most of you already have cell phones. A quick look at a WinMo phone like the HTC Touch Pro is $70 / month too at minimum ($39.99 voice + $30 data. Same with a Blackberry.
SO WHY THE HELL ARE YOU COMPLAINING?
So if $1880 is too much for you, don't get a cell phone period.
Stop complaining. The iPhone is actually pretty damn cheap. You're locked in a contract, but even if you had another phone WHY WOULD YOU GO DATALESS?
araczynski - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
i'll care about the iphone/ipod when they start sporting VGA screens. if my digital camera can have a 3" 640x480 display, so should these overpriced toys.psonice - Friday, July 10, 2009 - link
Higher res screens look pretty, but 640x480 needs 2x more power to fill than 480x320. The screen is more than acceptable already, so I'd take faster running apps/games and longer battery life over more pixels any day.Kougar - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
Thanks for the informative crash course in CPU instructions, that filled in some gaps I didn't understand. It's nice to now understand how some aspects of the design fit into or affect the rest of the design.Unfortunately, you've only drummed up the excitement factor for Intel's Sandy Bridge... from some general info that's been around and based on what you've given it sound like the potential is very much there for some very significant performance jumps. So much for Gulftown's allure!
christinme7890 - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
I love the attention to detail when describing the CPUs and the graphics processor and stuff. Very cool. I hate that other people are dissing the iphone hardware. If you don't like Macs rules get a pre. Plain and simple. I for one support these people that want to sell their apps for a good price and are trying to make it big in the dev world. Kudos and I will buy your apps.I will be honest, I am sick of the multitasking argument. You do hit on a point that needs to be addressed imho by Apple and that is that there is no good app for chatting. I really think that Apple needs to include their own IM App that stays on in the background (if you want it to) and collects all your SMS, MMS, IM, facebook, Twitter, etc messages. This would be great. While it would be great I recognize that this would totally sap the power on the iphone. If you had all this info push to your phone, the servers would be constantly sending you messages every second. As for multitasking, I don't really care to have it. There are areas where I wish I had it but it is not necessary. Not to mention that the palm pre has a horrible battery life...plain horrible. I hear people talk like they need 3 backup batteries just to get through the day.
I have noticed myself that the compass is a little sketchy. There was a time on 07/04 that a friend and I were lost in the city walking around and we used my maps app to find where we are and I tried to get the compass to work to make reading the map easy and it wouldn't work. The map wouldn't rotate and it was frustrating. Oh well.
Your review of the camera was spot on. It will never replace my uber camera but when I am out and about doing whatever it does great for quick and easy pics. And the movie functions are awesome as well. Now if only you could cut out middle pieces of a movie. Hopefully soon.
I love the speed of the 3gs. I notice, not tested but notice, a large speed increase and I absolutely love it.
The one major place the 3GS has over the pre is the App store. No company has been able to implement an app store like Apple. I get all my multimedia from one source (itunes) which is great....Movies, podcasts, video, audio, apps, etc...all in one place is the best thing that apple has done in forever. I will not argue prices or app submission ethics because I truly believe that apple keeps the People as their top priority.
Great article.