On Friday, Apple introduced a second-generation iPhone, called the iPhone 3G, which addresses both of those problems, while retaining the look and feel of the first model's hardware and software.
The base version of the new iPhone costs $199 -- half the $399 price of its predecessor; the higher-capacity version is now $299, down from $499. Yet, this new iPhone is much, much faster at fetching data over cell phone networks because it uses a speedy cellular technology called 3G. And it now sports a GPS chip for better location sensing.
The company is rolling out the second generation of its iPhone operating system, with some nice new features, including wireless synchronization with corporate e-mail, calendars and address books. And there's a new online store for third-party iPhone programs that Apple hopes will make the device usable for a wider variety of tasks, including gaming and productivity applications. This new software and store will be available on older iPhones, through a free upgrade.
I've been testing the iPhone 3G for a couple of weeks, and have found that it mostly keeps its promises. In particular, I found that doing e-mail and surfing the Internet typically was between three and five times as fast using AT&T's 3G network as it was with the older AT&T network to which the first iPhone was limited.
The iPhone 3G is hardly the first phone to run on 3G networks, and it still costs more than some of its competitors. But overall, I found it to be a more capable version of an already excellent device. And now that it's open to third-party programs, the iPhone has a chance to become a true computing platform with wide versatility.
But there are two big hidden costs to the new iPhone's faster speed and lower price tag. First, in my tests, the iPhone 3G's battery was drained much more quickly in a typical day of use than the battery on the original iPhone, because of the higher power demands of 3G networks. This is an especially significant problem because, unlike most other smart phones, the iPhone has a sealed battery that can't be replaced with a spare.
Second, Apple's exclusive carrier in the U.S., AT&T Inc., has effectively negated the iPhone's up-front price cut by jacking up its monthly fee for unlimited data use by $10. Over the course of the two-year contract you must sign to get the lower hardware prices, that adds $240, overwhelming the $200 savings on the phone itself. If you want text messaging, the cost rises further. With the first iPhone, 200 text messages a month came free. Now, 200 messages will cost $5 a month, or another $120 over the two-year contract.
Here is a rundown of the changes in the new model.
Design: The new iPhone looks almost exactly like the old one. It is the same length and width, has the same big, vivid screen, and has the same number and layout of buttons. The main difference is the back, which is now plastic instead of mostly metal and curved instead of flat. It's very slightly thicker in the middle, with tapered edges, and weighs a tiny bit less.
Apple has greatly improved the audio on the new iPhone. I found the speaker was much louder, for music and for the speaker phone. But the new phone produced an echo when used with the built-in Bluetooth system in my car.
Software: The basic software is similar. The biggest addition for some users will be full compatibility with Microsoft's widely used Exchange ActiveSync service, which many corporations use. In my tests, I was able to connect the iPhone 3G to my company's Exchange servers in a few minutes, and my corporate e-mail, calendar and contacts were replicated on the phone. Any changes I made on the iPhone were reflected almost instantly in Microsoft Outlook on my company PC, and vice versa. E-mail was pushed to the phone as soon as it was received on the company's servers.
One drawback: While you can have both personal and Exchange email accounts on the new iPhone, if you synchronize with Exchange calendars and contacts, your personal calendar and contacts are erased.
The new iPhone and upgraded older iPhones will be able to use a new Apple consumer service, MobileMe, which offers synchronized push e-mail, calendars, photos and contacts.
Network: Like the old iPhone, the new one can perform Internet tasks using either Wi-Fi wireless networking or the cell phone networks. But the addition of 3G cellular capability makes the new model more useful for Web surfing, e-mail and other data tasks when you're not in Wi-Fi range. In my tests, in Washington and New York, I got data speeds mostly ranging between 200 and 500 kilobits per second. By comparison, the original iPhone, tested in the same spots at the same time, mostly got cellular data speeds between 70 and 150 kbps on AT&T's old EDGE network. The new iPhone typically was between three and five times as fast as the old one.
Battery life: Apple claims that over 3G, the new iPhone can get up to five hours of talk time, or five hours of Internet use. Talk time is twice as long on the older EDGE network, and Internet time is an hour better with Wi-Fi.
I ran my own battery tests using the phone's 3G capability. Although I left the Wi-Fi function on, I didn't connect it to a network, so the phone had to rely on 3G. In my test of voice calling, I got 4 hours and 27 minutes, short of Apple's maximum claim and nearly three hours less than what I recorded in the same test last year on the original iPhone. In my test of Internet use over 3G, I got 5 hours and 49 minutes, better than Apple's claim, but far short of the nine hours I got using Wi-Fi in last year's tests.
More important, in daily use, I found the battery indicator on the new 3G model slipping below 20 percent by early afternoon or midafternoon on some days, and it entirely ran out of juice on one day. I overcame this problem by learning to use Wi-Fi instead of 3G whenever possible, turning down the screen brightness and even turning off 3G at times, which the phone permits.
The iPhone 3G's battery life is comparable to, or better than, that of some other 3G competitors. But they have replaceable batteries. The iPhone doesn't.
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