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Phones · Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone 3G

35owners with an opinion
63%of verdicts positive
14/5positive/negative since 2024
16 yrslongest happy owner
4happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and ease of use; criticized for reliability and software.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 16 yearsStill going
I still have an old iPhone 8 that I test with that runs well I have an iPhone 3G from 2008 that is currently playing music as I work. After 16 years, it still syncs perfectly with Apple Music on the current version of macOS. Unfortunately, since it can't handle modern encryption, I can't get it to connect to any wifi access point.
Likes itOwned 8 years
There's some mis-information here: Yep on battery - I rarely use mine while traveling (and rarely travel) and set max charge to 60% so it should last a good long time, but it can be replaced when I need too. I replaced 2 in my black Macbook and once in my iPhone 3G (but I got 8 years out of the phone). When my work MB Pro had a battery bulge, the whole machine was replaced and presumably recycled since it was not repairable. Internal, yep, but nvme > SATA any day. They are usb-c yes, but the ports are adjustable (can mix usb-c, usb-a, display-port, hdmi, network, storage, etc) so it's not as restrictive as you seem to be implying. On video, I am not sure if you think it's some kind of DisplayLink thing but it's alt-dp over usb, directly connected to the GPU. My 13" has a headphone jack (and passable speakers) and a built in Mic (and both the camera and mic have switches to disable them). 2.5GB Ethernet is available as an expansion module. I find the keyboard and touch pad okay! I don't really need a touchscreen. On ports: I don't use the finger print reader (but it has one). I don't need SD card slot all that often (but is available). I don't have any FW devices (and 400Mbs vs 5-10Gbps). Don't need a modem or an IR Port I don't use a dock (I do at work for my MB Pro - but it's mostly a permanent desktop configuration so I don't mind that it's connected via usb-c). The one I got IS compatible with my Framework 13 though. I had a t61 for work and I loved it... in 2009…
Likes itOwned 3 years
No, but with the iPhone for example is that I with an 3G still was able to get the latest version 4.2.1 for my phone, it is not until 4.3 comes out in the near future that I will no longer be running the latest iOS. The iPhone 3G was released in July of 2008, I will have gotten software updates with new features, bug fixes and other stuff for almost 3 years. Owners of Samsung Android phones are not getting the latest and greatest (not yet at least). Also, Microsoft has shot themselves in the foot multiple times. Plays-for-Sure and some of their other music initiatives have not been compatible with each other, especially the Zune. Why would I go with Microsoft if within the next couple of years that I own the device they could suddenly close down a music store or deprecate a certain music format thereby making my device instantly unusable. Apple has proven since the first iPod came out that if I purchase music on the iTunes store that I will be able to listen to it on any Apple device I own for years to come. That stability is important to a consumer.
NeutralOwned 2 years
For the past year I've been using an LG Optimus V on Virgin Mobile. The phone cost $150 and was bought contract free. The service for me is $25 a month. That includes 300 minutes of talk time and unlimited data (which has really been unlimited for me. They did recently institute a 2.5 gigabyte limit beyond which you get throttled down to 256Kbps, but for the price I'm paying that seems more than fair). The unlimited data is effectively unlimited talk time since I have my phone set up to use my Google Voice number via SIP to handle inbound and outbound calls and I'm not that big on talking on the phone all the time in any case. The Optimus V is hardly the top of the line when it comes to Android phones but it gives me everything I want out of an Android smartphone -- the full Google Nav turn by turn GPS functionality (killer feature #1 for a smartphone for me, and the reason I wouldn't trade Android for an iPhone even if the prices were identical -- and I used to be an iPhone user, I used the iPhone 3G for 2 years), tethering of my laptop and/or ASUS Transformer tablet/netbook (killer feature #2) and Google Voice (killer feature #3). Everything else the phone does is gravy after that. YMMV and your prices may vary since the $25 rate is grandfathered in (even though, as I mentioned, I wasn't under any contract -- which is pretty cool), I think the rate for new users is $35. But I've been very happy with Virgin Mobile and the Optimus V.
NeutralOwned 2 years
I'll honour your long, proper reply with what I hope is an equally proper one. I'll just quote your first question, but hopefully that touches within enough of the subjects you mentioned. I wonder if you ever even touched an iPhone or iOS device? You certainly never used one. I was stuck with one for over two years. An iPhone 3G. It was my replacement phone for my old Windows Mobile phone (some HTC S730 or something) and the level of polish on that iPhone was amazing . It blew me away. For a while it made me accept its locked down nature, all the things my old phone could do, but this one could not. I even accepted fucking iTunes . The polish made it all OK. But as I used it more and more, added more apps, I saw how none of them played together. I noticed every single time that how no matter what you wanted to do, the only way to do that was go back to the homescreen, locate another app, then re-locate your data, then continue working on what you wanted to do. Want to shoot a picture, modify the colours and then upload that modified picture to facebook? Well start the camera app. Close. Go back to home, and find and open your picture editor app. Then navigate and relocate your picture. Edit. Save. Then go back to the homescreen, open the facebook app and the click post and then try to relocate your now modified image and I'm sure you get my idea. This OS has absolutely no flow . There is polish, but there is no true elegance to anything on that platform. Every minor li
Doesn’t like itOwned 2 years
I can confirm the iPhone 3G jumped the gun by a long way. I got one of the early versions that had next to no reception. In the USA some people went into stores and got replacements. Outside the USA I got fobbed off on the support line and got to pay for an expensive data plan I couldn't use for two years. That's over 1000 euros for what amounted to an ipod touch: and I don't use iTunes. As you can imagine I researched this quite a lot and I'm quite aware of Apple's other iPhone problems, and the problems they've had with various laptop models. They are well behind a number of phone and PC manufacturers in terms of hardware quality.
Likes itOwned 1 year
For me personally, it's worked out a lot cheaper. I got an unlocked iPhone 3G for ~€510 (inc VAT) and have been using it with a prepaid data SIM. Total cost of data over a year has been about €20-25. I happen to use another phone for voice, and I pay ~€2/month on average for that. Extrapolated over 2 years: ~€610. (+ €60 for the second phone if you must include it) The best iPhone tariff at the time was €35/month for 2 years - €840. Added bonuses: - I don't have to pay exorbitant data roaming charges when abroad, as I can just swap in a local SIM and have done so in South Africa, UK and Spain. (this is the reason I use a separate SIM+phone for voice) - iPhone is exclusive to Orange & T-Mobile in Austria, the 2 worst networks for 3G. (this isn't much of an issue as "worst" here is still pretty good compared to most countries) - ability to resell or otherwise pass it on (obviously) - I can freely move country (it happens) - I can tariff-hop
Doesn’t like itOwned 1 year
Having done the switch from my iPhone 3G to an HTC Magic I find both of these phones are far from perfect. I may switch back again, but believe me, both still have problems. -My iPhone would not rotate when I was rotating my phone, I had to do it 2-3 times or exit safari and restart in the landscape orientation for it to switch. At other time the orientation changed but the width was not changed. -I'm not a big fan of reboot so every 2 or 3 days safari would just start to crash on page load with no reason. Only solved by a reboot. -On the reboot front, once I made everyone at home change there time. Since my phone is taking it's time from the cell provider and this as always worked correctly on my many Motorola phones, I told everybody they were 10 minutes forward. The day after, at work I saw the time on a friends iPhone and it was also 10 minutes forward. This made no sense, we have the same provider. It was probably more than a week since my last reboot. Android may have the same problem, I don't know. -OS 3 gave us the search but before that remembering on which page some of the less used apps were was just a pain. I still don't like this way of organizing, but I lack a better solution. -Talk about obscure way of doing some action on the iPhone. As an example, have you taken a screenshot? The way to do it appeared to you how? -I think the HTC magic has too many buttons, but the iPhone lacks some. Even after a year of using my iPhone, I still sometimes closed the applicati
Likes it
It's a weird hybrid. You load the music into Music, but then have to sync your iPods with Finder. Glad to report that Finder still works great syncing music all the way back to the launch day Shuffle, and even iPhone 3G, which I did just yesterday.
Likes it
Having used a variety of pre-iPhone WinCE, Palm, Psion, etc PDAs, going purely by bullet points specs, the best WinMo devices launched in 2007 were capable and even feature-rich, but I agree the overall user experience was hobbled. Large touch-screen devices integrating phone, data and media needed a different UX and OS. MSFT's business was too platform-centric to take the strategic risk and their mindset was too incremental to make the conceptual leap. I was at the 2007 iPhone announcement, got hands-on a prototype in the booth and had a dev unit pre-ship. As a technology strategist for a F500 ISV, my job was to assess the changing mobile device landscape. With the iPhone I think Apple deserves significant credit for two big things: the conceptual leap to a new UX/OS and going all-in on the large touch screen. Completely sacrificing both a physical keyboard or pen was bold and controversial. While it was the right long-term vision, the reality which often gets glossed over, is the iPhone 1 didn't deliver on the vision and early adopters struggled. It wasn't until the iPhone 3G shipped 18 months later and the app store was released that the iPhone first began to slowly fulfill it's promise. I didn't daily drive an iPhone until the 3G. In recent years, I think many look back with rose-colored glasses at the iPhone launch and give Apple even more expansive credit for the "iPhone breakthrough" than the legitimate credit they justly deserve. Of the major players at the time, Ap…
Likes it
TL;DR article is a nothingburger trying to convince you that one person's preferences are "right". "iphones have better apps" - that's a very opinionated stance, that really should have been worded "iphones have the apps I want". Because I have an android phone, have had for, what, 2 decades now? Since the galaxy s1... And my wife has an iphone - because I started her on that route, because at the time, it was the s1 vs the iphone 3g, and the iphone 3g definitely felt like the superior option, especially with hobbled software updates in my country. In the ensuing years, I've had to support her phone and mine, and I can easily say, hands-down, that my app preference is not on the iOS platform. Doesn't mean "Android is better than iOS" - just means "Android suits _ME_ better than iOS". I even tried a couple of windows phones (my company had them for us to dev on), as well as her old iphone when she upgraded) - and by "tried" I mean, "daily drove" for a week or more. My experience was frustration with the locked-down nature of iphones, disappointment at the small app market for windows phones (even though the hardware - nokia - was glorious), and an eventual return to android even though battery life on the windows phone was phenomenal (the platform simply doesn't allow hogging the cpu - both a challenge for devs, and a boon for users). Honestly, I'm rather bored of people telling me that their opinions are facts, and the best out there. They're tools for tasks. The author didn'…
Likes it
The reason I waited in line and bought an iPhone 3G the day it came out is because I was tired of carrying several different devices everywhere. Even just carrying the flip phone and the iPod was a lot. I remember the reason I made this choice, and nostalgia isn’t going to send me back. The key is to use the smart phone responsibly. Delete all the bad apps, especially the doomscrolling ones.
Likes it
> Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll). Like almost all new products later thought of as 'visionary' innovations, the first iPhone built on pre-existing ideas but integrated them particularly well and added some excellent new refinements. It's easy to forget that the prior five years had been a crucible of in-market experimentation between companies like Nokia, Palm, HP, Sony, Ericsson and Blackberry with platforms like Pocket PC, Palm OS, Windows CE and Windows Mobile. The iPhone was announced in Jan 2007 at MacWorld (and shipped in July), I was there and played with it extensively in the Apple booth. I remember thinking it had some especially clever ideas and was a very nice implementation. It advanced the "premium pocket phone" bar up to a new level but I didn't see it as unusually visionary. It was definitely significant but still a (large) step in an ongoing progression of refinement, integration and search for product/market fit. There were already large color touchscreen devices which integrated a phone, messaging, camera, music player, Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS. Here's an article looking at a few pre-iPhone devices: https://www.phonearena.com/news/6-great-smartphones-from-10-... . The iPhone 1's design was uniquely simple and svelte but I was immediately concerned about it having enough battery to support that screen. The choice to go with just "One Big Button" and no physical keyboard or…
Neutral
I'm not sure why the blogger thinks it's weird that macOS has an icon for the iPhone 3G in it. It's for when I plug my iPhone 3G into my M4 Mac to sync my music, as I did just this past weekend. I also synced one of my iPod Shuffles over the weekend, and can tell you there's also still icons for all of the Shuffles back to the original gum stick ones, and all of the various colors of the other models, plus all of the regular iPods. Shuffles are great for listening to music in bed because you don't have to worry about rolling over on them.
Doesn’t like it
The era before they became waterproof and the screens got some decent durability were, I'm sure, a nightmare. The 3G in particular was a huge ergonomic and quality downgrade from the original iPhone, I had one of those break while just sitting in my pants pocket.
Neutral
Back on the iPhone 3G, PNG decoding alone was slow enough that I had to cache pre-rendered bitmap representations into SQLite blobs to achieve "glassy" scrolling of image-heavy grids; I'd do the SQLite loading on a worker thread and dump the pre-rendered bitmap representation right back into a CGImage wrapper. I recall there being some inline NEON assembly involved as well. Within 1-2 years, those optimizations were totally unnecessary.
Doesn’t like it
Respect? I remember when I got my first and last iPhone - 3g - I found that safari cannot reflow page text to the phone screen. Either tiny zoom and unreabable text, or constant horizontal scrolling. Even first primitive android browser on motorola can do that. Since then, I lost all respect for apple and never had an iphone. And this, imo, is as basic feature, as they get. It is needed by any person with non ideal eyesight for any non responsive page, which for along time was the majority of them.
Likes it
I always am skeptical about this idea that "great marketers make great products". I mean of course marketing is important to sell stuff , and of course people want to think that they have a major contribution into the success of their company, but... Take the iPhone. My first iPhone was a 3G. I did not buy it because Steve Jobs convinced me: I bought it because a friend had one, I tried it and it was actually pretty cool. I had tried a PDA before, and did not feel like buying one. No storytelling there, just a product that was a better fit at a better time.
Doesn’t like it
iPhone 3g. Bought it new yet within a month of purchasing it Apple released iOS 4 which slowed it down so much it might as well have been bricked. That, plus the lack of OTA updates, needing to plug into a PC/Mac with iTunes (horrible app) to load music, backup photos or update lead me to never purchase an Apple product again. Going from that to an HTC Android phone was like going 10 years into the future.
Doesn’t like it
I've been to Shanghai and Beijing in 2010 or so, and I vividly remember that my iPhone 3G (that I jailbroke and unlocked to be able to use local Chinese SIMs, oh, those were the times...) didn't work at all for the purpose of getting around, because Google Maps GPS locations didn't match up with the map. However, there was some obscure third-party mapping software available in the app store (I think it was even the official one, not Cydia) which basically showed a Google Maps view and drew the GPS dot onto it by itself, applying the conversion first and thus fixing the display problem. So at least back then Google Maps apparently didn't yet convert the GPS coordinates to the weird obfuscated Chinese system. But it was a big nuisance and took me a while to figure out. For the first days I thought my jailbreaking activity would have broken the GPS chip or something.
Doesn’t like it
> but you had to have business to afford it. This was a marketing and perception issue, not a price issue. When the original iPhone came out, I had a very nice blackberry, with a personal plan, effectively unlimited data, and the full blackberry suite (minus corporate integration, obviously). And I think it was less expensive than the iPhone plan. But it was a pain in the neck! I had to pick the correct phone plan, add the correct data supplement, negotiate the correct discount (basically everyone was eligible for a discount, but you had to find your particular reason for being eligible in a ridiculous menu), and then convince the sales person to add the special $3.99/mo supplement for blackberry services. It clearly never occurred to anyone involved that this was not a competent way to sell to consumers! I did make fun of my friends for paying several dollars more per month for a device with no keyboard, no GPS, slower data, less efficient text input, and dramatically worse performance in marginal network conditions. When I finally switched to an iPhone 3G, I could do real in the browser, but wow, the ability to make phone calls was seriously downgraded. I feel like my old blackberry may have had the best behaved cellular modem of any smart device I’ve ever owned. I think that, if RIM had gotten YouTube and a music player working, had improved the web browser, and stuck a capacitive touch sensor on their device, and if they had marketed it competently (make it so that…
Doesn’t like it
I used to throw my blackberry at people. One time it missed and it skipped over a natural slate floor like a pebble over water - no damage. Also dropped it on cement many times. Never a scratch (sometimes had to pop the battery back in) Compared to my first iPhone 3G w/ rubber+shell case which I absolutely demolished in my jeans longboarding my first time. I still feel bad about that. At some point phones became less durable than my own body. It's just different.
Doesn’t like it
Who am I? American salaryman by day, wantrepreneur by night. What Hardware am I Using? Just a lenovo T500 w/ windows 7 (and ubuntu virtualbox), and an iphone 3G (soon to be a nexus one). The iphone is jailbroken on tmobile, and I'm not a fan of how there's no springboard widget support, nor the pains of trying to maintain a jailbroken iphone. I use a pair of Meelectronics M6(?) earbuds which are a steal. At work i use a Desktop running windows xp and 2 24" monitors. And what software? real apps: Virtuawin, enso, chrome dev builds, Visual studio, vim, picasa, and itunes (more of a winamp guy though), and sumatra pdf for reading books. f.lux is awesome, and seems to work better than redshift cloud apps: picasa web, irccloud, and countless other google apps What is my dream setup? I want a laptop the size of a macbook air, but with a desktop-fast processor that is largely disabled on battery, but fires up when docked at home. It must also be dead silent, and seamlessly dock to a desktop graphics card. I used to only use a desktop machine 5-6 years ago. and I'm coming to realize doing everything on one big honking laptop sucks. Laptops are terrible ergonomically. Part of me still wants to travel and work though. So I also want a big display that I can roll up in my backpack, and an ergonomic chair i can pack easily too. Lastly, I want a cheap offsite backup setup that let's me