There are tons of reviews of the iPhone 3G, but after owning the original iPhone for over a year I thought I could bring a unique perspective - especially for those who have the original iPhone and were considering making the upgrade. But before I get into my iPhone 3G review, here’s a little history…

I was super excited when the original iPhone came out on June 29th, 2007. After having a series of crappy / no-where-near-cutting-edge phones I was finally going to get the latest / coolest thing. Sure it was gonna cost me over $600, but I thought it was reasonable considering other phones that I looked at were in the same price range (despite all kinds of complaints about being over-priced). So, after a failed attempt at making the purchase at an AT&T store I finally got mine from an Apple store on June 30th.

After over a year of ownership my iPhone I decided to upgrade to the new iPhone 3G. Learning from my first iPhone purchasing experience, I went straight to an Apple store. I also didn’t try to go on the release date, nor the next date. I actually waited 4 days after the original July 11th release (a Tuesday) so that I wouldn’t have to wait in line long. As it turned out, the line was still over an hour long.

Now, after over two weeks of ownership, I’ve got some thoughts on how these two phones compare.

UNRELIABLE 3G

There are countless posts about how much faster 3G is compared to EDGE. Yep, 3G is faster. But even living in Los Angeles, I don’t get 3G everywhere. Actually, I get EDGE a lot less now too - so I get the “cannot connect to cellular network” error a lot more. For some reason, 3G AND EDGE are a lot less reliable now.

I’m hoping this is just a firmware issue and not a network issue, because if 3G is unreliable in Los Angeles then I can’t imagine where it would be reliable (Iowa?).

GPS

I’ll have to admit, the GPS is SWEET. Mixing GPS w/ Google Maps makes for good fun, although satellite view is a little freaky when I see the blue beacon dot over where I’m standing. I always thought the handheld / car navs used ugly looking maps. Google Maps looks / works well.

The only downside is that Google Maps relies on data. This means that, thank to unreliable 3G and EDGE,  Google Maps is equally as unreliable. It also means that I can’t use it outside of the U.S., because I’ll be roaming and using the GPS/Maps once will probably cost me as much as buying a Garmen Nav unit.

And, like everything else on the iPhone, it crashes A LOT.

CONSTANT CRASHES

The new iPhone 3G crashes / freezes / becomes unresponsive about HALF THE TIME I use it. I’m not exaggerating. It seriously sucks and I’m not the only one to notice. Maybe people who’ve never used an iPhone think this is normal - judging from the quality of many other phones I suppose it kind of is. But coming from my original iPhone it is like going from Windows XP to Vista. If you’ve ever done that, you know what I’m talking about. (For the record, the Windows XP to Vista deal is what caused me to switch to Mac OS X earlier this year).

Before I sold my original iPhone I updated it to the new 2.0 firmware and had similar problems. This means it is likely just a firmware / software issue, and hopefully it can be resolved with the next update.

CRAPPY APPS

The App Store is simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen to the iPhone. While many of the apps sound cool in their descriptions, they aren’t very good. The sad thing is that it’s not just independant developers making crappy apps, but big publishers as well.

Not only are there crappy apps, but there are too many similar crappy apps. I don’t think there really needs to be more than one “light” app, and definitely not one you should have to pay for.

To be fair, not all of the apps are bad. Some are really good, actually (like Remote). If the whole phone didn’t crash all the time, I might use / buy even more.

SCREEN BRIGHTNESS / AMBIENT SENSOR

I don’t know if I’m the only one with this problem, but my screen goes suddenly dim / suddenly bright out of no where. I think this is because the data from my ambient light sensor is being processed really slowly, which is probably linked to my entire phone processing everything slowly / freezing / crashing.

WAS IT WORTH UPGRADING?

I sold my original iPhone (8GB) for $215 and could’ve gotten the iPhone 3G (8GB) for less (even after tax), making my upgrade essentially free (I ended up going for a 16GB, so I paid about $117 out of pocket). My plan did go up $15/mo, but 3G is totally worth it if you use data features as often as I do - so I’m not complaining about that. I could use the slowest cable broadband speed at home, but I chose a slightly faster speed for roughly $10 more, so it’s the same type of situation (I don’t know why so many people complain about this with the iPhone).

But, even though “upgrading” doesn’t really cost you much, I still wouldn’t upgrade. If you have an original iPhone, I’d stick with that until they fix the firmware. Actually, I’d stick with v1.4 of the firmware on the original iPhone, because if you use the v2.0 firmware you’re in the same world of suck that I’m currently in with my iPhone 3G.