Brian Tong of cnet reviews the Apple iPhone 3G vs the Samsung Instinct in this knock out head-to-head fight of the smart phone giants.

-Ray

[Source: CNet]

How old where you when you got your first cell phone? I was 18 and it was an old school Nokia with an antenna, remember those? Its a sign of the times when kids are doing reviews of their iPhone 2G vs iPhone 3Gs. These kids actually did a pretty thorough review and comparison of the new Apple iPhone. Check it out for yourselves and then shake your fist in the air in jealousy a I did.

-Ray

[Source: YouTube]

So last friday’s iPhone firmware 2.1 was supposed to fix all the problems with the hastily released iPhone 3G. Well according to this review by Gizmodo the firmware DOES fix everything! Or at least most of the major issues

Reception: This is the biggest improvement, at least on the surface. I’m now getting 4-5 bars in my office where I used to get between 1-2 (see photo above). Does displayed reception actually correlate correctly to actual reception? The hardware is the same, and one of the bug fix list has “improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display” as one of its items, so is this just a placebo designed only to make you think that your reception is improved? No, it’s actually improved.

Calls from my office used to get periodic drop-outs and injected silence, but I have not heard this once since I made the upgrade to 2.1. Brian, with his black hole of cellphone coverage that he calls his apartment, actually made a 12 minute conversation without disconnecting. What’s the deal? How is the new software improving reception so much when the hardware is the same? Is it a new stack to handle transmission between the phone and the tower better? We have no idea, although recent reports have said that problems with the phone are caused by an immature chipset, and could be fixed via software, so this is somewehat likely.

It’s too bad that Apple disabled the “Cell Information” screen in the iPhone Field Test Mode, which we used to test this ClearBoost case from Griffin, or else we could have used actual power readings from nearby towers to determine whether or not the signal has really been improved. What we can see in the Field Test Mode is that the dBm reading in the top left (where the reception bars were) show very similar numbers, flutuating on both phones between -97 and -103 from in the office. Sometimes one is higher than the other, but there’s no consistency.

Verdict: Win.

Battery Life: Improved, but not dramatically. We did see an improvement in battery life this weekend when our phones lasted about 2 days on regular use. It previously only made it to somewhere around 1.5 to 1.75 days. Nothing dramatic, but noticeable.

Verdict: Slight win.

Reduced Backup Time: We definitely saw no more 20-40 minute backups with the 2.1 firmware, but the best indicator for this quirk being fixed would be the guy with an 8-hour iPhone sync. He reported back and told us that the same set of apps now give him a 14 minute sync time. Check this fix off as a winner.

Verdict: Win

3G Browsing Speed: This is an awkward one. The browsing speed wasn’t actually noted as being one of the things fixed, but we decided to test it anyway because of the supposedly improved reception. For browsing, the same page loaded about 1.5 seconds faster on the OLD firmware (2.0.2) compared to the new one. On other sites, like Apple.com, the old firmware actually loaded the page a whole 5 seconds faster than the new firmware. Strange.

We then used the Speedtest app in the iPhone App store to see if it was data transfer that was holding up page loads. On the 2.0.2 firmware we had download speed of 913Kb/sec, 581 Kb/s and 1048Kb/s. On the 2.1 firmware we had a 420Kb/s, 518Kb/s and a 718Kb/s. On the whole the new firmware seems to be slower in terms of data transfer, which leads to slightly slower page loads.

Verdict: Lose

Application Install: The same app (Speedtest) installed 15 seconds faster on the new firmware than on the old one. We downloaded this on the phone itself using the same Wi-Fi router for both. The downloading was just about simultaneous, but the install portion was much faster.

Verdict: Win

Crashing and hanging: It’s only been about three days since we updated, but we haven’t run into any crashes or hangs yet. 77% of you agreed with us on Friday.

Verdict: Probably win

Text messaging: Didn’t see any keyboard lag here. Adam Frucci, the king of iPhone keyboard lag, claims that everything is fixed on this front.

Verdict: I guess a win?

Overall: Apple’s really fixed the glaring reception, crashing and backup problems everyone’s been seeing. Not only is everyone getting more bars than they were before, they’re getting actual results. Brian’s notoriously horrible AT&T reception at his apartment in SF is just bearably horrible now, kicking him down to EDGE from 3G where he can actually make phone calls that don’t cut off after a few seconds. If you own an iPhone, you need to upgrade to 2.1—slower browsing be damned. Apple has finally put most of the iPhone 3G launch problems behind it, allowing the phone part of the device to be brought back up to par with the original 2G iPhone.

-Derek

[source:gizmodo]

With all the reviews and tests of the new iPhone 3G’s network speed many reviewers forget to mention the improved sound quality of the iPhone 3Gs speaker compared to the iPhone 2G. This video test shows a side-by-side comparison of the iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G’s speakers. All the settings and volume is the same, unfortunately a Madonna song was used for the test.

-Ray

[Source: justamp]

The hot new BlackBerry Bold is said to be the answer to the wildly popular Apple iPhone. This video shows a side by side review of the Apple iPhone vs the new BlackBerry Bold.

-Ray

I don’t know if there is any scientific explanation or if it is a software glitch that Apple is working on, but I have known two people who bought the iPhone, and it fell in the toilet two days later.

I have a good amount of respect for Apple, and so I would like to think that this attraction between toilets and iPhones is a built in feature and completely planned, possibly a cleaning mechanism, but both of my friends’ iPhones died shortly after. One of their iPhones even said, “The iPhone is not compatible with this device.”

Continue reading »

iClone wars have been going on for some time now. One product does stand out though as a decent, okay, alright iPhone clone. Meizu M8, no release date yet but you can check out this demo released by Meizu today. The clone does carry a smoother 2.0 Megapixel and a decent OS. Just demo some english and maybe we can consider playing with this toy.

- Joe

Looking back it may be that Apple got it right the first time with the iPhone 1.0 software in terms of overall stability. The iPhone 2.0 update is a great one over 1.0 by far, but there is still dirt on the underside of such a bright and shiny update. Continue reading »

Batman iPhone

Sure in The Dark Knight, our masked hero never whipped out a classy 3g iPhone and used the multitude of helpful apps in tracking his enemies. But if he did, I think I would see him using this iPhone 3G case as a perfect match to his look. Continue reading »

About a year ago the world was graced with the Apple Iphone. People flocked to At&t stores and waited hours to get one. I havent had a chance to buy one and I probably wont because the prices for the plans I think are ridiculous; however, it is a great piece of technology that all tech geeks will love to play with. I very much enjoyed playing around with my friends Iphone, I thought it was pretty damn cool and I didnt put it down for quite a bit. There in lies the problem, people can’t seem to put it down. I heard that people have been getting hurt because they keep texting and looking at their phones. I was with a few of my friends and one of them was playing with his while I was talking to him. I just found it rude. People get so absorbed into the gadget they forgetother people are there. I just wish people would be more aware and careful when using their phones.

-Tek1v