All the talk over the last week on the Internets has been focusing on the new iPhone 4 or the fully-enabled iOS 4 on an iPhone 3GS, but not everyone is getting a brand new iPhone 4 or already has a 3GS. This review is for those of you, like myself, who are still saddled with the aging (yet still pretty awesome) iPhone 3G. The following review will let you know what you’ll get in the new OS, what you’ll be missing, and will hopefully help you decide if it is worth upgrading.

The Good
The very first thing I played around with when it was done updating was folders. If, like many users, you have compiled 3+ pages of apps that you use frequently enough that you are unwilling to uninstall them and clean things up, then you are probably sick to death of attempting to organize your apps. Folders are like a dream come true. Although I cannot explain why it took Apple this long to integrate a feature that dates back to the original computer operating system GUIs, this is a feature that is truly welcome. Instead of 4 pages of apps that are loosely organized and a pain to navigate through and reorganize, I have managed to condense everything in to a single page with 4 main folders.

Once I was able to move beyond the excitement of having folders (Sad, right?), I popped open the mail app. The new inbox structure is great and navigating through the app just to get to each account’s inbox has never been easier. I’ve never really been a fan of a unified inbox, but from what I understand it is hugely popular and was a very highly requested feature, so kudos to Apple for adding it in. Also, for you business users out there, you can now access more than a single exchange account, so there’s that.

For those of you that do a lot of mobile web browsing, you’ll also notice that not only is Safari faster to load initially, but there are some nice new changes. For starters, you now have a choice of the default search engine and can switch between Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Along with the option of which search provider you want to use, search recommendations have been added and are powered by whichever search engine you select as your default. Supposedly there’s also better better HTML5 support and HTML compliance is extremely high, as my phone scored a 94/100 on the Acid3 Test (Note: Firefox 3.6.4 on Mac OS X 10.6.4 only scores a 93).

Are there more things that are awesome about upgrading to iOS 4? You bet, but those are the three that really stand out.

The Bad
The bad points about upgrading your iPhone 3G to iOS 4 aren’t so much as what’s wrong with it once you’re done but what you know for a fact you’re missing and won’t ever get until you buy new hardware. Most notably, multitasking, facetime, and desktop wallpapers. I understand that do to hardware liabilities multitasking and desktop wallpapers had to be disable or they would have just about crippled the phone (at least according to Apple) and facetime simply won’t work without the front-facing camera, but it still hurts to know the awesomeness that others are experiencing which your phone shall never enjoy.

The Ugly
Speed. Sure, a few of the built-in Apps such as Safari and Mail are snappier than ever, but I’ve started noticing more and more that it just seems a bit more sluggish than it ever used to. It is by no means unusable, or even anywhere close to it, but Apple has clearly switch gears to optimizing the software for the newest hardware. Even uglier is the crashing. This really can’t be blamed on Apple because it is an issue exclusively with 3rd party apps, so my guess would be this will be less and less of a concern as the app developers update their code for improved compatibility with iOS 4.

Conclusion
Overall, it is a very solid upgrade for the iPhone 3G. The addition of folders and the improvements made in Safari and Mail are enough to make the upgrade more than worthwhile. If, however, you’re concerned about some of the issues I’ve discussed above, then maybe put it off for a month or two until Apple has released the first bug fix (presumably to be called iOS 4.0.1) and more developers have had a chance to ensure that their Apps are up to date and working properly.

When addressing investors at a UBS conference in New York yesterday, AT&T’s head of consumer services, Ralph de la Vega, reiterated AT&T’s focus on improving its network, while simultaneously slamming their line of smartphones, specifically the iPhone 3GS, as being the cause of poorer quality service. This, as anyone familiar with AT&T will already know, is not new news. What was intriguing about what he said, however, is that they will inevitably be charging that high-bandwidth users more for what they use. Wait, what!? Isn’t the whole point of buying an “unlimited data” plan that you get unlimited usage? To be fair, according to de la Vega, 40 percent of AT&T’s network capacity is consumed by a mere 3 percent of smartphone users. Most of which can be attributed to activities such as streaming video and music by apps on the iPhone.

In hopes that someone high up at AT&T is reading this post, here’s a quick definition that you clearly don’t understand, courtesy of Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: un·lim·it·ed
Pronunciation: \-?li-m?-t?d\
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century

1 : lacking any controls : unrestricted (unlimited access)
2 : boundless, infinite (unlimited possibilities)
3 : not bounded by exceptions : undefined (the unlimited and unconditional surrender of the enemy — Sir Winston Churchill)

Admittedly, new media, streaming, and heavy smartphone usage is a huge drag on the network, but for AT&T to continue prospering in to the next decade the correct solution is not to charge the heavy users for what you already market as unlimited. Smartphones are not a fad and are not going to go away. They’re going to keep evolving and the demand for higher data rates is going to continue to grow, so stifling your users will only push them in to someone else’s arms.

The rumors on the Apple vine circulating around the Internet this week come out of Taiwan, where sources in the parts supply chain reportedly say Apple is in development of a combined UMTS/CDMA iPhone which would be due for release in Q3 of 2010. The combination of these two technologies in a single handset would allow Apple to sell only a single model to virtually all carriers around the world, without having to worry about different models in different countries or with different carriers. Most specifically, Apple would be able to sell the iPhone to Verizon customers in the US and end the longer-than-expected exclusivity with AT&T. This may be great news for Verizon and other CDMA carriers around the world, but AT&T likely isn’t thrilled. That said, customers everywhere will likely benefit, as AT&T continues (and hopefully works even harder) to update and improve their 3G coverage and competition with other networks will inevitably lower plan costs across the board.

This is the first of what I can probably guarantee you will be several posts about the Apple iPhone 3G, now that I am lucky enough to have what is easily the best cell phone currently on the market.

3G service has been touted as fast (at least by cell phone standards) for a long time now, but I’ve always been curious as to exactly how fast it is and haven’t really taken the time to actually look it up or test it – until I installed Speedtest from Xtreme Labs. To be honest, I was surprised. I figured it was a few times faster than 56k, but I didn’t think it would actually qualify as broadband. Here are my results: