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New iPhone Is Better Model–Or Just Get OS 3.0

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:00:38 +0000

Apple Inc.’s iPhone has been a smashing success, redefining the smart-phone market and creating a new hand-held computing platform that has attracted over 50,000 third-party apps, or software programs, in less than a year. With its nearly identical sibling, the iPod Touch, it has sold a combined 40 million units since June 2007, when the computer maker plunged into the phone business.

But the iPhone is drawing increasing competition from entrenched smart-phone makers anxious to emulate the upstart. The most significant of these is Palm’s (PALM) impressive new Pre, which is off to a good start with an estimated 100,000 or so units sold since it launched on June 6.

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So, like a shark, Apple (AAPL) must keep moving. This week, it is introducing two new products designed to consolidate and increase its position as the leader in this new generation of hand-held computers. I’ve been testing both and I like them a lot, with some minor caveats.

One of the new products is a refreshed model of the iPhone itself, called the iPhone 3G S. It looks the same, but offers more speed, more memory, more battery life, and a few new features, including video recording and a better camera for still photos.

The second is OS 3.0, the third version of the iPhone’s operating system, which comes on the 3G S and also can be installed on all prior iPhones and Touches. It includes a much longer list of added features, some innovative and some long overdue catch-ups to other phones. These include such widely requested capabilities as cut, copy and paste; systemwide searching; a wider virtual keyboard; and a feature called MMS that allows users to send photos and videos directly to other phones without using email.

Apple last week also made a bold business move to complement these new products. It decided to keep making the current model, the iPhone 3G, and to slash its price by 50%, to $99. That’s an unheard-of price tag for a pocket computer of this power and versatility, and gives millions of additional consumers a reason to choose the iPhone instead of a competitor.

In my tests, both the new phone and the new operating system performed well, with a few small exceptions. I believe the two strengthen the iPhone platform, make it likely the iPhone will continue to attract scads of apps, and are good for consumers.

But I also regard these changes as more evolutionary than revolutionary, and I don’t think this latest iPhone is as compelling an upgrade for the average user as the 3G model was last year for owners of the original 2007 iPhone.

Current iPhone owners can get an improved product by merely sticking with their existing phones and upgrading to the feature-laden new operating system, which is free (it costs $10 for iPod Touch owners), rather than shelling out at least $199 for the new iPhone 3G S. And many new iPhone buyers can opt for the $99 3G model, which is not only cheaper, but also greatly improved by the new OS 3.0.

On the other hand, power users will crave the new model’s much-better performance, battery life, storage and other features. And some will want the new model because, unlike the current model, it’s capable of handling a new cellular network feature that, in the next few years, will offer double the current data speeds.

The new, free operating system is available for download starting June 17. The iPhone 3G S will go on sale June 19 for $199 for a version with 16 gigabytes of memory, and $299 for 32 gigabytes of memory. Those memory capacities are double the amounts offered on the previous model last year at the same prices, and far exceed the built-in memory on most competing smart phones.

These prices are for new U.S. customers on the AT&T network, plus current owners who are eligible for what AT&T (T) calls a “standard” upgrade. If you already own an older iPhone, you could pay $200 more to upgrade, depending on how far along you are in your two-year service contract and how much you spend monthly. But AT&T, stung by criticism in recent days, has just decided to offer the lower, new-customer prices at launch to iPhone 3G owners eligible for upgrades at any time up to Sept. 30 of this year, even if they were originally told they’d have to pay the $200 premium.

Before I detail the new features and how they worked in my tests, let me state up-front what the new iPhone and its new operating system don’t deliver. The iPhone still lacks a physical keyboard. It still can’t run more than one third-party app at a time, as the Pre does. Its otherwise excellent Web browser still can’t play videos created in Adobe’s Flash software, which is widely used on the Web. And it still isn’t available on any U.S. carrier besides AT&T.

Also, AT&T won’t enable MMS until late this summer, even though dozens of other iPhone carriers in other countries are doing so immediately. And AT&T hasn’t set a date by which it will offer tethering, a new iPhone feature that allows the device to be used as a modem for a laptop. Other carriers in other countries are allowing this right away.

Here’s a rundown of the most important new features of both the new hardware and software, and how they performed in my tests.

The iPhone 3G S

Speed: To me, this is the most important feature of the new iPhone 3G S. In fact, the “S” in the name stands for speed. During my week of testing, the new model proved dramatically snappier in every way than my iPhone 3G. Its processor is 50% faster than in the prior model, and it sports a new graphics chip.

Applications opened much more quickly. Web pages loaded far faster. The camera was ready to use almost instantly. And I never once saw the occasional, annoying iPhone behavior where you strike a key while typing and it sits there, seemingly stuck, before you can continue.

Cellular-data speeds were about the same, but in repeated testing on different Wi-Fi networks, the 3G S racked up speeds 30% to 50% faster than on the 3G running at the same time on the same networks.

Battery Life: On my 3G iPhone, I usually could make it through the day, but it was often a close call, with the battery indicator winding up in the red. By contrast, the new model did much better, never hitting the red zone and rarely requiring interim charging at the office or in the car, even though, because I was testing it, I was pounding it much harder than usual, making more voice calls, playing lots of videos and music, trying numerous apps, constantly downloading email from two accounts, and syncing two calendars over the air.

Apple claims about the same talk time for the new model as on the old, and about the same Web-surfing time over the cellular network. But it says the 3G S gets about 50% more battery life when playing videos or surfing the Internet over Wi-Fi and 25% more time — an astounding 30 hours — for continuous music playback.

Memory: With the new 32-gigabyte model, I was able to store over 3,000 songs, more than 1,600 photos, 74 videos, 67 applications, 400 emails, nearly 1,000 contacts, months of calendar data, and dozens of documents, and still have 5 gigabytes left over—more than most phones offer out of the box.

Camera: The new model’s camera has a 3 megapixel resolution, up from 2 megapixels, and has autofocus and a feature that lets you tap the screen to change the focus to an object or person in the background of a shot. It still lacks zoom or a flash, though it does better in low light. It also has a macro feature for close-up shots. In my tests, all of this worked, but I didn’t think the pictures it took were dramatically better than those on the old model, and it can’t compete with phones like Nokia’s (NOK) new $700 N97, which has a 5-megapixel camera with zoom.

Video: The new video recorder worked well, even in low light, and lets you post videos directly to YouTube, among other places. You can also trim your videos right on the phone. This all worked well, but the videos aren’t high definition, and pale in comparison to those on the latest HD model of the popular $229 Flip pocket camcorder.

Voice Control: By simply holding down the new iPhone’s home button, you can dial contacts and control music playback by uttering voice commands. The phone will even tell you which song is playing. Like most voice-recognition systems, this one isn’t perfect. But it worked most of the time.

Compass: I don’t consider this important for most users, but it did work when I was walking or driving. It can orient maps in the direction you’re heading.

Small Touches: You can optionally turn on a new battery indicator that shows a precise percentage of battery life left. The screen has a new coating that resists oil and grease from fingerprints.

Downsides: The new phone crashed on me twice during my tests. Once, the voice-control feature killed the sound on the built-in iPod, requiring a reboot. But I couldn’t replicate this problem. Another time, the phone froze while downloading a TV show. Apple blamed this on a prerelease server issue, and it didn’t happen again.

iPhone Operating System 3.0

Copy, Cut and Paste: Apple is late with this common feature, but it’s the best implementation I’ve seen on a phone. In a text page, you just double tap on a word, and it is selected with little handles around it that let you expand or contract the selected area. Then, you just click on a copy icon that pops up over the selection. To paste, you tap elsewhere in the page, or even in another app, and a paste icon pops up. Click that icon, and the selected text is pasted in. It worked well in all my tests.

The feature works a bit differently for some Web pages, where you hold down your finger over an area and it selects a whole block of text, like a paragraph, but still has the handles that allow adjusting the selection. It also allows copying and pasting photos. You can also just select a word or a section or a whole page of text and delete it. And if you want to undo a paste, just shake the phone.

Some Web pages and third-party apps don’t yet support this feature, but most do.

Search: Before, you could search only in the Contacts app. Now, there are search features in Mail, Calendar, the built-in iPod and Notes. And there is a way to search the whole phone at once. You just hit the home button, slowly, twice, and a special search screen appears. Type in any phrase, and it brings up every instance in multiple apps.

This is another catch-up feature, but it works well. For instance, when I searched for the word “Phil,” it brought up songs by Phil Collins, a note about Philadelphia, calendar items mentioning people named Phil or Phillips, emails to or from people with those names, and contacts for people named Phil or Phillips.

In email, the search function will even find messages that aren’t on your phone but that are stored on the servers of certain email services. For instance, I was able to almost instantly find emails from two years ago stored on Google’s (GOOG) Gmail.

One downside — in email, search looks for words only in email headers, not in the body of the messages.

Landscape Keyboard: In older iPods, the only built-in program that supported a wider, landscape keyboard, which is better for thumb typing, was the Web browser. Now, you can turn the phone horizontally and use a landscape keyboard in the Mail, Messages and Notes programs as well.

Find My iPhone: If you belong to Apple’s $99 a year MobileMe service, you can now locate a lost iPhone on a map on any computer, send the iPhone a message saying how to return it to you, and cause it to emit a beep, even if the sound is turned off. I tested this and it worked well. You can even remotely wipe all your data off the phone.

Voice Memos: The OS includes a Voice Memo app that lets you dictate reminders or other messages, and then edit and email them. I found it worked well.

Navigation: Another catch-up feature, turn-by-turn navigation with voice prompts, is also now supported. I tested this with a third-party app called Gokivo, and it did OK, though the developer admits to a prerelease bug I encountered.

Auto-Authentication: In the new OS, the iPhone can remember your log-in credentials for commercial Wi-Fi hotspot services, so you don’t have to enter them again and again. Unfortunately, in my tests with the AT&T Wi-Fi service, this failed repeatedly in several Starbucks (SBUX) shops. Apple blames a glitch in my prerelease phone’s SIM card.

Push Notification: To make up for its lack of multitasking, the new iPhone OS has a feature where third-party apps can notify you of new events, like a sports score, or a new invitation to an online game. I tried this with a game called TapTap Revenge, and it worked fine.

Stocks: The built-in stock application now has much more detailed data, including market cap, news headlines and price/earnings ratio for each stock.

MMS and Tethering: I couldn’t test these useful features because my tests were all done on AT&T, which hasn’t rolled them out.

Minor Touches: You can now move an icon among screens with one continuous motion, instead of stopping at each screen. And there are two more screens to house icons. You can finally synchronize Notes with your PC or Mac. You also can now maintain both calendars and contacts synced wirelessly with online services and those synced via cable with your computer. And you can play games and transfer files wirelessly over Bluetooth with other iPods or Touches that are nearby.

Bottom Line: Both the new iPhone and iPhone OS are packed with features that make a great product even better. But, for many users, the software may be enough of a boost to keep them from buying the new model.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Some Favorite Apps That Make iPhone Worth the Price

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:02:03 +0000

Despite all the economic misery, the past nine months have been a little like the heady days of the early 1980s when the personal computer was just getting rolling and new software programs were popping up like weeds.

That’s because we have a new computing platform, the modern hand-held computer, which is also attracting new software and new functions in droves.

[ See post to watch video ]

The leader in this phenomenon has been Apple’s iPhone, though I expect that this year a few competitors will also begin to attract loads of apps, or widgets. These are small software programs, easily downloaded and purchased, that often connect to the Internet to perform a specific function.

We’ve seen this before, on a smaller scale, with third-party software for the original Palm (PALM) platform, for Windows Mobile, and, to a limited extent, for the BlackBerry. But these new apps can be far more sophisticated, and they are appearing at a much faster rate.

iPhone’s App Store logo

To give you an idea of the scale of this phenomenon, in just the nine months since Apple (AAPL) opened the iPhone App Store, around 25,000 apps have been published for the iPhone and its close cousin, the iPod Touch. And there have been 800 million downloads of these apps, according to Apple. That’s impressive.

So, this week, I thought I’d present minireviews of some of the apps I find myself using most often, in no particular order. You may have an entirely different list of favorites. I am not saying these are the best apps on the iPhone, only that they do their jobs and make the device much more useful for me. All can be found in the app store, by searching on their names.

Tweetie ($2.99): There are many apps for using Twitter, but I use this one. It not only does a great job of showing me the social network’s short, but numerous, postings, but also makes it easy to track topic trends, to post my own entries, and to conduct and save searches.

Facebook (free): This official iPhone app from Facebook covers the core functions of the full Web site. It allows you to view and upload status messages and photos, to check in on your friends, to manage friend requests, and to handle the service’s internal email and chats.

Kindle (free): This is Amazon’s iPhone software version of its $359 Kindle e-book reader. It lacks some of the fancier features of its hardware counterpart, like the ability to create notes or to look up words. But it gives you rapid access to any Kindle e-books you’ve bought, helps you buy new ones and makes the e-books easy to read on the iPhone. It can be used without a hardware Kindle, but if you have both, Amazon (AMZN) will synchronize the two devices so each knows the exact spot where you left off reading on the other.

ICE (99 cents): This app, whose name stands for In Case of Emergency, puts a big Red Cross-style icon on your iPhone’s screen. When the icon is tapped, the app displays your name and contact information; the names and info for your doctors or other emergency contacts; and lists of your medical conditions, allergies and the medications you take. I keep it on my iPhone’s home screen.

Easy Wi-Fi ($2.99): If you hate typing in all the log-in information for the commercial Wi-Fi hot spots to which you subscribe, this app is for you. It automates the process so you have to press only one button. For each of the networks you use, you have to type in your log-in info only once. After that, Easy Wi-Fi will do it for you.

ReaddleDocs ($9.99): A number of iPhone apps allow you to synchronize files with a PC or Mac, but ReaddleDocs stands out. It has too many features to list here, but my favorite is that you can simply send an email with an attached file to a special email address Readdle provides and, very shortly, that file will appear on your iPhone. There, it can be stored and read (though not edited). You can organize your files in folders, and even send them to others. The app works with Microsoft Office files, PDF files and more.

Quordy ($2.99): There are thousands of games for the iPhone and Touch, but Quordy is the one I turn to most often. Much as in Boggle, it requires you to form as many words as possible from a random screen of letters in a set time period. You can challenge others, either nearby or over the Internet, to play the same game board you did and compare results. Or you can just play solo.

Google Mobile (free): Sure, the iPhone has a fine Web browser with a built-in Google search box, but this app makes searching in Google (GOOG) even easier, with instant search suggestions, searches based on your location, and even the ability to enter search terms by speaking them rather than typing them, though I find the voice feature unreliable.

If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, the App Store is what makes your device worth its price. It’s the software, not the hardware, that makes these gadgets compelling.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Wi-Fi on Wheels Is Steady, but Has a Speed Bump

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:04:05 +0000

Wi-Fi wireless Internet connectivity has become nearly ubiquitous. Whether you’re at home, in a coffee shop, or even on some commercial airliners, you can get online with a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop, smart phone or portable game machine.

Now, Wi-Fi is making its way into your car. A small California company, Autonet Mobile, has teamed up with Chrysler and others to sell a service that floods any brand or model of car or truck with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity that can be used by multiple passengers and devices simultaneously. It’s a dealer-installed option on Chrysler vehicles, but Chrysler dealers, and some independent auto electronic shops, will install it on any brand of car for a fee.

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The system works via a special wireless router, mounted in the trunk or rear cargo area, that draws Internet connectivity from cellphone towers and then converts it into an in-car Wi-Fi signal with a range of 100 feet. This router looks like a military device, because it is ruggedized to survive jolts and vibrations, and is shielded to avoid interference with the car’s electronics or with cellphone calls.

As long as they have built-in Wi-Fi, the laptops and smart phones used in the car don’t need any add-on hardware or software to use Autonet. To them, it looks like any other Wi-Fi signal. And no special car antenna is needed; the router uses its own large antennas.

I’ve been testing Autonet Mobile in a rented Saturn Vue SUV in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs, and found it worked well for most basic Internet tasks like email and Web surfing. The router turns on when the car does, and the Wi-Fi signal shows up about 30 seconds later. However, Autonet is relatively pokey. It’s too slow to be reliable for streaming video longer than brief YouTube clips, or for smooth video chatting.

Perhaps the biggest downside of in-car Wi-Fi is that it provides one more potential distraction for drivers. The company says the service is only for passengers, not drivers, but there’s no technical barrier to a driver using it.

The Autonet Mobile router

Of course, drivers already can court danger this way by using cellphone wireless connectivity on a laptop, iPhone, BlackBerry or other connected device. And that raises another question: Since you can already connect to the Internet from a car with a smart phone or a cellular data card for a laptop, why would you want Autonet?

There are three reasons. First, cellular Internet access is typically tied to a single device at a time. But Autonet’s Wi-Fi service works just like Wi-Fi in your house: Multiple people with multiple devices can use it at the same time. In fact, the company envisions that the service’s primary use will be to allow children in the back seat to use laptops for social networking, online games or homework; and multiple adult passengers to conduct online business or research routes and destinations.

Second, the monthly fees can be lower, at least for laptops. A typical cellular data card for a single laptop costs $60 a month. But Autonet’s service starts at $29 a month for the entire car, regardless of how many devices are being used. A premium plan costs $59. The plans differ by how much data you are allowed to consume monthly. And Autonet requires no special laptop cards or software.

Lastly, the company claims that it has invented a technology that keeps the connection steadier while moving than the typical direct cellular connection. Although some videos froze on me, I never lost Autonet’s Internet connection, whether moving slowly through downtown D.C. or moving faster on suburban highways and streets.

In my tests, with a laptop and an iPhone, Autonet’s speeds ranged from around 100 kilobits per second to around 500 kbps — far slower than a typical cable Internet service in a home. My average speed was between 400 kbps and 450 kbps.

There are some other drawbacks. First, the router costs $499, though that will soon drop to $399 in a holiday price promotion. Second, you have to sign at least a one-year contract, even if you pay monthly. Third, your Internet usage is limited. The $29 plan gets you just 1 gigabyte of data a month, while the $59 plan gets you 5 gigabytes. That should be plenty for most typical users, but not for those with large appetites for data.

These service fees are all-inclusive. You don’t have to pay anything to any cellphone carrier. But there is also a $35 “activation fee,” whose justification is murky, and installation costs are estimated at $50 to $75.

For security, you can set Autonet up with a password, but it doesn’t yet use the most advanced version of Wi-Fi security. The company says that, while it can track and manage your Internet connection, it cannot determine the content of what you are doing online.

Finally, because the router is hard-mounted, you can’t remove it for use in, say, a hotel room or second car.

If you’re willing to invest in the router and can tolerate the slow speeds, Autonet might be what you want — as long as you can resist using it while driving.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Symantec Rewrites Its Security Suite To Curb Nuisances

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:08:02 +0000

It can be awful to have your Windows computer infected with malicious software, but it is almost as bad suffering the daily burdens imposed by the security software designed to protect you.

Too often, security programs significantly slow down the computer, causing lags in booting up the machine, launching programs and receiving email. Not only that, they can be incredibly annoying, popping up frequent messages or asking questions in techie lingo.

The main screen of the 2009 version of Norton Internet Security is streamlined and even includes a gauge to show much drain the security program is placing on the computer.

Now, Symantec (SYMC) has decided to radically rewrite its main security suite for Windows to directly address these problems. And in my tests, this new product, Norton Internet Security 2009, largely succeeded. It isn’t perfect, but it is the fastest, simplest and least obtrusive security suite I have ever used.

Being quick and quiet is great, but, of course, a security product also has to be effective against the vast number of viruses, spyware programs and other malicious attacks aimed at Windows. I don’t have a security lab in which to test such effectiveness. But PC Magazine does, and the magazine called the new Norton suite’s spyware and virus protection “extremely effective.” The magazine’s tests are described at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2330024,00.asp.

However, I wasn’t impressed with Norton’s optional antispam feature, which caused the only significant problem I ran into in my testing.

The new suite costs $70, and can be purchased at symantec.com and elsewhere. For that price, you get to install it on three PCs and you get a one-year subscription to its updates, which cost $60 thereafter.

Symantec is now including free support, even over the phone, though in my tests this support proved lousy. Norton Internet Security 2009 works only on Windows XP and Windows Vista.

I tested the new security suite on a Dell (DELL) desktop running Vista and on a Macintosh laptop running Windows XP as a “virtual machine,” meaning Windows and Windows programs ran simultaneously with the Mac operating system. Symantec assured me the program would run properly in this latter setup, and I had run the previous version of Norton successfully in the same environment.

The first thing you notice about NIS 2009 is the fast and simple installation. The process took under two minutes on each of my test machines.

File scanning is also much faster, partly because the new suite has a feature called Insight that allows it to skip the scanning and rescanning of many of your files. Insight gathers information about your installed programs and compares them against a list of programs Symantec knows are “trusted,” through either its own research or through scanning results voluntarily submitted by other users. These trusted programs are then exempted from future scans, saving a ton of time.

The new Norton suite has a feature called Insight which calculates how many of your programs it knows are trusted, and therefore needn’t be scanned repeatedly, saving time.

For instance, on my Dell running Vista, an immediate complete scan done before Insight analyzed the computer took more than an hour. But after Insight determined that over 70% of my programs were trusted, complete scans took 10 minutes or less. Of course, your data files, like Word documents and emails, still must be scanned, because they are typically unique.

To minimize the impact on users, the new Norton does scanning and other tasks only when it detects that the computer has been idle for at least 10 minutes. And new virus definitions trickle into your computer invisibly, in the background, rather than all at once in a major process.

Symantec is so certain that its product has a low impact on PC performance that it built a gauge into its new streamlined main screen that shows its drain on the main processor, or CPU.

NIS 2009 is also far less annoying than other suites I’ve used. In normal operation, it notifies you only when it has completed a background task or if there’s a threat or a repair that requires a user action, such as a reboot. And there’s an even quieter optional “silent mode” that can turn off nearly every nonurgent activity of Norton for up to six hours. Silent Mode is automatically activated during full-screen activities, such as playing games or watching movies.

The new suite has a bunch of other features, including a browser toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox that warns against fake and malicious Web pages, and that can securely enter your passwords and other information on Web sites. It also has an antispam feature for Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook and Outlook Express.

This antispam feature, which is off by default, was rated as weak by PC Magazine and, in my tests, it caused both Norton and Outlook Express to crash repeatedly in Windows XP running on my Mac. Symantec suspects this is a problem particular to running Windows the way I was on the Mac. After I reinstalled Norton and turned off the feature, all was well again.

But Symantec’s free tech-support service was not only unable to diagnose the problem, it didn’t even know the difference between Outlook and Outlook Express.

Despite this one glitch, I can recommend Norton Internet Security 2009 as a good way to protect your Windows computer with minimal impact on your time and attention.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.