Cheap Apple iPhone 3GS – Find cheap cell phone deals

This Phone At A Glance:

3G • Acts as Modem • Apple • Apple iPhones • Bluetooth • Camera • Digital TV • EVDO • Email • Instant Messaging • MMS Messaging • MP3 Player • Motion Sensor • Organiser • PC Sync • RSS • SMS Text Messaging • Speakerphone • Touch Screen • VGA • Video • Video Recording • Web Enabled • WiFi

This is an exciting time for iPhone enthusiasts! On June 8, 2009, Apple announced the long-awaited upgrade to the wildly popular iPhone. Named the "iPhone 3G S", this phone notably brings an updated iPhone core hardware, which brings a much appreciated speed increase, and is where the phone gets the "S" part of its name.

So that's the software update, but what about the new iPhone hardware? Is it worth upgrading? Well, the new phone is faster - the updated processor is 45% faster than the previous 3G model. In practice, this is resulting in applications loading around 50% faster. The system memory has been doubled to 256MB, which means you can run more apps at once, and will experience less crashes. Lastly, the graphics chip has been updated to allow m0re advanced games to run.

In fact, the iPhone 3G S hardware rivals that of the brand new Palm Pre, which allows multiple applications to be run at the same time (multi-tasking.) There was talk of the 3.0 OS allowing multi-tasking but Apple decided against it. The hardware is definitely capable of it, so perhaps Apple will change its mind in the future.

The iPhone 3.0 Operating System

As well as updated hardware, the 3G S ships with the the new 3.0 iPhone Operating System loaded. Most importantly, the 3.0 OS delivers a 2x speed increase to web browsing, MMS messaging, video recording (and editing!) and quite a few more great feature improvements.

The 3.0 OS is not just for the 3G S, however. It is now available for existing iPhones, as well as the iPod Touch (both via iTunes from June 17.)

This update will upgrade your iPod Touch or iPhone to have quite a few new features. Alas, some of the best features are 2G only, so might be time to upgrade soon, 1st Gen people! For some reason Apple seems to think a landscape keyboard is a top feature, so to help you out, I've tried to list them below in order of excitingness!

Stereo Bluetooth - 2G only - use headphones like these to listen to your music wirelessly
Faster Safari and all-round navigation - snappy!
Peer-to-Peer Gaming - 2G only - play games with other people over your local network or the Internet
Spotlight Search - search through your email, calendar, notes, contacts and any media on your iPod or iPhone!
iTunes purchasing from your portable device - get new TV shows, movies, and music directly over Wi-Fi
Landscape Keyboard - more room to type! This is quite good as typing can get annoying sometimes.
Cut, Copy & Paste - copy text between any application (I've never really needed this, except when a link in twitterfon was malformed and I wanted to paste it into Safari)
Notes synced to PC or Mac - this is cool - use your device as a notepad and never forget anything!
Background application updates - (push notification) - your apps can receive updated when they're not running. Think Twitter and Gmail, comrades.
Auto Wi-Fi login - it will remember your details for any network you've previously used. Great if you move around a lot. Actually, I thought it already did this in 2.2.
Shake to Shuffle - questionable usefulness when travelling but might be fun.
As well as:
- 34 new languages
- Parental controls - bye bye mobile porn!
- Third party game accessories connected by the 30-pin bottom connector or Bluetooth
- ... and a couple of other pretty boring things.

And, in addition, 3.0 brings the following features for iPhones only, again in order of greatness:

Tethering - use your iPhone as a 3G modem - one less device for the road warrior to haul around
MMS Messaging - send pictures, audio and video in text messages. This should have been there before so it's a big win!
Voice Memos - use the built in mic to record voice memos, "Note to self: the boy knows too much."
Improved Calendar - what's better about it? You can create Exchange meetings and subscribe to calendars. Hmm.. get a life!

The iPhone 3.0 OS upgrade is 100% free, while, unfortunately, the iPod version is USD$9.95 (or AUD$12.95 for Australian users.) Check iTunes for your localised fee. Find full details of the iPhone 3.0 update here and the iPod Touch 3.0 update here.

One thing to keep in mind is that the iPhone 3G S is a lot faster than its predecessors, which means newer apps will be tunes to run well on the 3G S but not so well on the iPhone 2G/3G models. This is one big reason to upgrade to the 3G S.