Anand Reviews the Apple iPhone 3G
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 16, 2008 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Shazam
One of the most useful applications I’ve downloaded from the App store is something called Shazam. The iPhone 3G continues to be a fundamentally consumer-focused phone, making Shazam exactly the type of application Apple needed to have in the App store at launch.
Shazam is a music recognition utility. It’ll sample whatever is playing wherever you are through the iPhone’s mic, send the data to Shazam’s servers, and within a matter of seconds send back the name of the song, the artist, what album it’s from and even links to the song on iTunes and YouTube.
Shazam listens, then tells you the name of the song
The iTunes links don’t always work, but the links to YouTube videos are particularly useful. The best part of it all is that Shazam is completely free, and easily one of the best apps for casual use in the store.
Shazam unfortunately won’t work if you’re singing, it needs the actual song to sample and compare to entries in its database. But it’s great to have around if you want to know the name or artist of a song that just happens to be playing wherever you are.
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cocoviper - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
Well I think it depends on how we define free. Since you're paying so much for the iPhone's plan one would think they could (or should) include it at some point.The Instinct does turn-by-turn voice GPS and it's included in the phone's plan.
jcal710 - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
Anand,You talked about the problems with contact syncing on Exchange. How configurable is it? Does it automatically default to your top level 'Contacts' folder in your Exchange mailbox, or can your point it somewhere else? Do you have the option of choosing whether or not to sync subfolders?
Griswold - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
I'm glad I didnt go for the first iphone, that way I can appreciate my 3G more(besides the fact that it wasnt sold until the 11th of july in this country and I would have been forced to import one and jailbreak it).Anand, your friend with the huge lips doesnt listen to the name of S.Tyler by chance? :P
ViRGE - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
Anand, do you know if Apple's A-GPS implementation requires cellular network access? Some do, others can revert to traditional GPS operation if there's no cellular network to offer location assistance. I'm curious which of this it isObrut - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
So how is it even remotely possible that there hasn’t been a real iPhone competitor in the year since the original’s release?Nokia N95 8GB is far superior to iPhone and it was released even before the first iPhone.
It's right to say there's no competition here. Apple need at least 3-4 more years to be truly competitive to Nokia. I think iPhone is better solution for americans. In Europe you need 3.5G or 4G phone to be truly connected.
michael2k - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
You're serious aren't you?Let us count the ways then:
iPhone screen resolution is 2x the Nokia screen resolution
iPhone is nearly half as thick as the Nokia
CPU of nearly twice the speed
The Nokia's one physical advantage is the 5MP cammera (which is only possible because the Nokia is twice as thick).
Obrut - Friday, July 18, 2008 - link
OK, let's count, Michael...1. Screen resolution is bigger and it should be simply because the display is much bigger. The display is much bigger because it's a touchscreen, though not big enough for my fingers.
2. iPhone is thin and that's because it has merely 4 buttons and a low profile, low-end camera. By the way how do you play games without buttons?
3. Speaking of games how do you play OpenGL games? I play Quake 2 with full lighting effects and FSAA at 40 FPS. What about the JAVA games?
4. N95 8GB is a dual CPU solution (2 x ARM 11 @ 332MHz) hence no lower performance here.
5. The 5MP camera of N95 8GB is more that just megapixels - it has Carl Zeiss optics, decent flashlight and can capture movies at 640x480@30FPS. In addition - correct me if I'm wrong but I don't see the front camera which every decent 3G phone has. How can I make a video call with iPhone? After all this is one of the best 3G features.
I can continue counting the battery, office productivity and so on, but this is not the place. I don't want to engage in a Nokia vs. Apple or N9x vs. iPhone battle here. I just don't like statements like "there's no competition", "best phone ever" etc. The most accurate thing to say is that iPhone is the best touchphone to date.
Griswold - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
Why talk if you dont know what you're talking about? 3.5G is called HSDPA (an extension to UMTS) in europe, which is supported by the iphone 3G. 4G isnt even available yet, think 2010 for commercial use, so why mention it?Why is there no competition? Because none of the competition has a smartphone that comes with this usability. All the other phones can do the same or more, yes. But all of them feel clumsy like a brick when using them. That is why there is no competition. And this comes from somebody who truly doesnt like apple and its godfather jobs...
cocoviper - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
Speaking of not knowing what you're talking about...HSDPA isn't 3.5G, it's definitely AT&T's 3G and that is what the iPhone 3G supports. That's the 3G that Anand complained is not really that much faster.
If there were a "3.5G" in AT&T's portfolio it would be HUPSA (the one that they just upped the offered speeds on.) However AT&T currently doesn't offer any phones that are HUPSA capable. They only have a couple of Aircards for laptops.
And yes, 4G is available in many parts of the world besides the US my friend. WiMax alone is deployed 119 countries currently. LTE is the only 4G that's "not even available yet," and that's because it's yet to be developed. (LTE isn't even into the whitepaper stage yet.)
So don't slam other people especially since there's always someone that will know more than you.
sources -> http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/93...">http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Te...A0BF6-62...
http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/wow/index.cfm/20...">http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/wow/index.cfm/20...
cocoviper - Thursday, July 17, 2008 - link
*HSUPA not HUPSA :-P