Apple claimed that the ‘S’ in the iPhone 3GS stands for speed. The company indicated the speed improvement by launching this smartphone. The phone was announced on June 2008 in United States, and released on June 2009. This is the third generation of the family and it is the successor of iPhone 3G and the predecessor of iPhone 4.
The external design of iPhone 3GS is still identical with its predecessor. As a matter of fact, the phone comes with the same plastic casing, the mute switch, the home button and the power button. There is a small difference in this phone namely the printed text at its curved back cover. The display still uses the 3.5 inches TFT capacitive touch-screen but now it packs a scratch-resistant surface with oleophobic coating feature that provides the fingerprint-resistant and the ease of cleaning smudges. The phone has the same dimension with the previous model, but is a bit heavier with the 135 grams in weight.
The main difference and improvement of iPhone 3GS are the processor and the operating system. The phone is powered by a 600 MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor that two times faster than its predecessor. The memory has been doubled with the 256 MB of RAM. The device uses the iPhone 3.0 OS and it is upgradable to iOS 4.
The device is packed with 3.15 megapixels camera with the maximum resolution of 2048x1536 pixels and can capture video with VGA quality at 30 frames per second. It also provides the autofocus, geo-tagging, video geo-tagging, and touch focus features.
The iPhone 3GS is compatible with 2G networks (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) and 3G networks (HSDPA 850/1900/2100). In accessing the internet, the phone can run faster now with the data speed up to 7.2 Mbps via HSDPA network. It is really good point since the earlier model can only run with the speed up to 3.6 Mbps. In terms of web browsing, the Safari browser has the faster JavaScript performance due to its SquirelFish Extreme engine (rendering HTML and JavaScript with 3.0 OS is up to two times faster than the 2.0 OS). The web browser is also capable of video streaming (HTML 5 video, H.264 and HTTP).
Generally, the iPhone 3GS comes with the advanced technology as the improvement of the previous model. The primary changes are the faster processor, faster data speed, and higher camera resolution. It also supports for voice control that can be used to make a phone call, play music and shuffle music. However, the phone lacks of secondary camera for video calling, there is no FM radio and stereo speakers, no flash and no camera shutter and there are no significant changes for its design. [IS]
