Apple iPhone 3GS

After using a 3GS for 3 years and iPhone 5 for a month, I have to say I like the 3.5" iPhones over 4" iPhone 5. 4" is marginally bigger in terms of screen size, but it's quite a lot more awkward to use with one hand only. I also don't like the 16:9 aspect ratio of iPhone 5, it's too narrow in portrait and too short in landscape. 3:2 was so much nicer. I love iPad's 4:3. Finally, it feels like there's too much bezel on the iPhone 5 (compared to say Galaxy S3 and Note 2).

IP_7 means it's ok with water immersion for up to 30 minutes, down to 1m. You can go swimming with an IP_7 rated device. IP_8 is "more than 1m, more than 30min water immersion" rating. "outdoors in the rain" needs IP_5 rating if you want to be safe. You do not need a dive watch to go out in rain. Even non-waterproof devices are not exactly made of sugar. My first iphone was a 3gs. I want running with the device in an armband. My rain precautions were plugging in 3.5mm earphones, and pointing the charge port downwards. Regularly got caught in rain with it, and the device was completely fine two years later when I sold it.

I'll disagree on this point. I've used my 3GS for two years, and it served well as a quick and dirty way to develop in... unusual places. I'm not even talking about SSHing into another computer; just to localhost, quickly using vi to change a file, then running a git commit is ridiculously convenient for someone who doesn't own an Air and doesn't want to lug his laptop around. The only problem, really, is the speed, which I agree isn't the fastest, but the iPhone 4 is really usable. When I upgrade to the 4S in a year or so, it'll probably be ready for most stuff I want to do in a pinch.

I don't have a Kindle, but I've been reading books exclusively on my phone since I had a 3gs IIRC. I've increased the text size over the years and love having the 2-3 books I'm typically reading at once readily available.

What's hilarious is that typing was nearly perfect on my 3gs (with "iPhone OS 3"--back before it was even "iOS").

Speaking for myself, I've been auto migrating since I got an iPhone 3GS in 2009. The only thing that needs serious cleanup is my music library.

I have an iPhone 3GS from 2009. It still makes and receive phone calls and will pick up email. Some web pages will still render

I seriously wish I could just use my iPhone 3GS still. I mean, maybe with a slightly newer iOS than it supported, but otherwise, for me that was the perfect form factor, and it was such a "focused" product back then.

idk I was happy with whatever the iPhone 3gs did. Yeah there's some really amazing stuff the new phone can do but I honestly don't care. If I need a piece of correctly specked camera equipment I'd probably buy a dedicated device with proper cooling and a removable memory card.

I don't agree actually, having used various mobile devices, including a Palm III, Jornada 548, Visor Pro, and the Samsung Blackjack 1 and 2. Sure, they had some nice features (and gimmicks) but the ease of use outside of the basic PIM apps left much to be desired, the screens were mediocre at best, and mobile web browsers on Pocket PC and the Blackjacks were at best good only for checking news/weather. I still remember watching the iPhone keynote livestream and being absolutely blown away, only settling for the Samsung because my parents didn't want to splurge (probably for the best, as I lost the 1 and got a 2 as the replacement). In my second year of college I lucked out and a friend sold me her iPhone with a shattered front glass, and with a bit of surgery I repaired it and used it until the launch of the 3GS. After that I never looked back (well, now I collect vintage PDAs so that's not /entirely/ true heh). Don't get me wrong the other devices were (and are!) fun to tinker with, but for something I use every day and depend on like a phone I just want it to work.

Given that, it's no surprise that using any big tech product in the current year is a sad, underwhelming, mildly frustrating experience. Everyone seems to have collectively forgotten how cool it felt to use gmail back in the day, for example. Getting an iPhone 3GS was, for me, magical. But the incentives and economic realities are so vastly different right now, I wonder if we'll ever recapture that spirit.

Back in 2010 I had an iPhone 3GS and a Blackberry Bold. I really wanted to justify using the Bold because of the professional image I associated with it. In repeated typing speed tests, I found my WPM to be essentially the same between the two. Every other aspect of the iPhone user experience was vastly better. I kept the iPhone and never looked back to phones with keyboards.

Very interesting post. I often took "product sense" to be magic, I did not really understand what was it that made iPhone soar in sales when it introduced very little over a Nokia S-series I had at the time and didn't even have a keyboard. Reasoning alone did not suffice: I could explain success of OS X (a UNIX that ran on commodity-ish hardware that "just worked" -- I did not have to rebuild my kernel to get a WiFi card to function!), the iPod (ease of iTunes/ITMS/using a large hard-disk instead of a 128mb flash...), but not the iPhone. When I (reluctantly) went to pick up an iPhone 3GS two years after the first iPhone's release, I began to "get it" -- it wasn't about a feature matrix, but the quality (including visual) of the features it did have and (most importantly) the way these features played together. Within minutes of having an iPhone I was able to use capabilities that my Nokia phone claimed to have, but that I have never found particularly useful/usable. Technically I could use cut-and-paste to share articles from the web browser on my phone via email, but I never did (but I began doing it daily on the iPhone!); technically, I could I could run apps on the Nokia but the only third party app I remember loading was Google Maps, etc... iPhone was far from the first smart phone, but it "democratized" use of smart-phone as a smart-phone: while it was still a toy largely for the well-to-do, it was no longer a toy solely for a small fraction of well-to-do technical inte

The "real-world" performance is only better if you don't hold it in your left hand. I can't hear very well out of my right ear, so I've always used my left hand to hold phones to my left ear. I never had any trouble with my 3GS, but my iPhone 4 is almost instantly transformed into an iPod Touch 4 when I hold it normally (i.e. the "wrong" way). Personally, I like the rest of the phone's new features enough to adapt my grip during non-voice usage (which is most of what I use it for anyway). However, people aren't exaggerating the attenuation issue at all.

Well I had you beat in terms of crappy old phone ownership. I just upgraded from my good old Sony Ericsson w800i (had it for ~3 years) to an iPhone 3GS. I thought long and hard about this move, I've seriously pondering upgrading my phone for about 3 - 4 months now. I finally went with an iPhone mainly for two reasons: 1. I bought myself a Mac desktop last year and I love it. I felt the iPhone would compliment nicely. 2. They've had a couple of iterations to sort out the kinks in the iPhone now and IMHO it shows. The 3GS feels very polished to me and I don't regret my decision. I've only had my iPhone for about 10 days and I already have Google Sync set up for email/calendar syncing, I've used it as a Skype VoIP handset (in conjunction with my home Wi-Fi), I've got games on my phone that are actually worth playing, mobile Internet access that's actually practical to use and I've got an awesome remote for use with the VLC media player. I've even made a few phone calls. I really thought about getting one of the slightly less mainstream phones that might give me more "geek cred" or something. But in the end, I just want as good a user experience as possible and I felt I would get that from the iPhone. YMMV. Granted, upgrading from a SE w800i I probably would be more than happy with any of the current generation of phones and I can't directly comment on the N1. But all my research led me to the conclusion that if you're looking for polished, go with the iPhone. If you're wanting a

I've only had my iPhone since the 3GS launched (so barely two full weeks) but I've already stopped taking my laptop with me when I work out of town. I used to lug my laptop around as more of a precautionary measure and not out of necessity. But with decent SSH, FTP and other "sys admin" apps available for the iPhone my laptop is now collecting dust in a closet.

These subjective evals are why community reviews are garbage. Personally I think the 3GS is a better product. I know a few folk who returned their original iPhone because the headphone jack didn’t allow their headphones to connect, and there were obvious limitations that weren’t addressed until the 3GS The iPhone was revolutionary no argument. But that doesn’t mean later revs were not better products for their time.

Now is bad too, but my recollection is that the iPhone 3G-era task killer was EXTREMELY aggressive and required "tricks" to keep your state in the one app you could run

I run caseless too and would be willing to sacrifice a few mm for better durability and no bump. Plastic is fine too. Bring back designs like the iPhone 3GS which were curved to fit your palm and if dropped would just bounce and tank it!

Surely that's not why the interface is a laggy 10fps piece of shit and the touch latency is over 200ms. If my iPhone 3GS from 2009 can display the UI in 60fps without lagging like crazy then so can a $100k BMW that's straight from the factory. It doesn't need hundreds of extra modules.

The 3GS was light years better than the original iPhone, and by that time it had things like actual GPS, the App Store, and usable mobile data. The original iPhone was seriously limited. Ironically many of the things you are identifying about the iPhone are also true of the Vision Pro - for example the eye and hand tracking that enable gestures that actually work in an incredibly intuitive way is a game changer - including literally pinch to zoom. I think there are other things you are seriously underestimating about Vision Pro - for example the quality of movies, including 3D, is better than anything I've ever seen in any home, movie theater, or other headset. It's simply stunning. I also don't think a lot of people have tried thing like using FaceTime with the first person camera. I have, and it's an incredible way to give a presentation or explain things to people even if they are using a phone at the other end. Incredibly natural. There really are as many steps forward, if not more so with the Vision Pro than with the iPhone.