Apple iPhone 3G Full Specifications & Features

Introduction iPhone 3G

Apple announced iPhone 3G on June 9, 2008 which was a big deal in smartphone history. Building on the original iPhone’s success, it added 3G network connectivity – which made web browsing, email and app downloads considerably faster than over the slower EDGE network.

It was also the first iPhone to have a GPS chip, meaning it could track your location far more accurately and power apps that offered turn-by-turn navigation. Its most notably feature of introducing the Apple App Store, a digital distribution platform to purchase mobile apps and allowed third-party developers an opportunity to profit from their doing, forever changing how individuals used their cell phones.

Design-wise, the iPhone 3G retained the same iconic 3.5-inch display with a resolution of 320×480 pixels but was encased in an ergonomic curved plastic back that not only made it lighter, but easier to hold as well. It was available in Black or White and either 8GB or per tour ii (16GB) configurations. It also brought along the 2MP rear camera from generation one, but once again, saw no improvements made to video recording.

Limitations aside, the iPhone 3G was a game-changer. It pushed Apple closer to the world domination scale than before and introduced new benchmarks in smartphone ease of use — thereby contributing to further establishing the iPhone as a superhero communication, entertainment, and general-purpose productivity device. It was more than just a phone — it was the start of the modern mobile era.

Specs at a Glance – iPhone 3G

Launch Date: July 11, 2008

Build: Plastic back, curved design; Black and White only to the 8GB in black

Size: 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm

Weight: 133 g

Screen: 3.5″ TFT, 320 × 480 pixels, 165 ppi

Processor: 412 MHz ARM 11

GPU: PowerVR MBX Lite

RAM: 128 MB

Inbuilt Storage: 8 GB/ 16 GB (non-expandable)

Rear: 2 megapixel, no flash, no video recording.

Front Camera: None

Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 1150 mAh

Launch OS: iPhone OS 2.0 (upgradable to iOS 4.2.1)

Full connectivity: 3G, EDGE network, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g or Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP iterface; GPS receiver with A-GPS support

Sensors :: Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor

Colours: Black, White (white only in 16GB model)

Unboxing – iPhone 3G

In 2008 when you first opened the iPhone 3G box, it was exactly the type of premium experience that reflected Apple’s minimalistic design philosophy. They came in a glossy black all-small packaging that displayed the iPhone image on its front. It was right up top, sealed in thin plastic.

Apple also threw in essential accessories that sit below the phone: a USB power adapter, 30-pin dock connector cable, and a pair of Apple Earphones with an inline microphone. Other than that the package also includes a SIM ejector tool, couple of documentations (quick start guide and warranty information) written in English accompanied with those Apple logo stickers.

Simple, yet elegant and central around the iPhone 3 G for Apple’s Environmentally Essential Packaging Style. Following day, it remains an achievement in how Apple struck a balance between presentation and practice during its early smartphone years.

Design- iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3G was perhaps the most significant design evolution from the original iPhone; it managed to marry a more svelte external appearance with enhanced ergonomics. The second-gen model dumped the aluminum back in favor of a glossy plastic rear, making it lighter and easier on the hands. The padded back was available in two colors to match the storage variants and had a smooth, rounded feel that held in hand comfortably.

At the same time, the exterior of the iPhone 3G front left well enough alone, resting a single home button at the bottom edge of its black-bezeled face beneath a 3.5-inch display that simply was what it was. The nice chrome trim around its edges added touch and class too it, but the feel of the plastic back that would allow better reception than the metal back of its predecessor It looked like a cheap version of the expensive thing, but it still carried over some of its elegance — simple design with no bells or whistles.

In the end, the iPhone 3G was both beautiful and practical, combining style with usability. Apple also stuck with the now recognisable (and standardized) silver and black buttons, which along with the curved back for a more comfortable hold helped in anticipating new design decisions for future iPhone designs (though the side antenna looked to be fading away).

Build Quality – iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3G also boasted solid build quality for the time, even after Apple replaced an aluminum back with a high-gloss polycarbonate shell. While frolicking in plastic did mean the device was lighter and enjoyed better signal reception, it was softer and far more prone to surface scratches or hairline cracks than the metal-clad original iPhone. Nevertheless, the fit and finish were exceptional — the curved back was seamless in-hand and some dainty chrome around the frame made this phone look elegant yet premium.

Up front was good-enough glass, meaning it held up under regular use and resisted going all gummy with age. The textured home button, clicky volume rocker, and crisp power button are all evidence of Apple doing what it does best: finely-engineering technology. Amongst the most vulnerable to cosmetics damage, I must say that the general structure of iPhone 3G seems solid: from side to side there was no visible damage and did not rattle or sag only after a long time.

The iPhone 3G straddled the line between ergonomics and toughness. While a far cry from the ruggedness of most modern smartphones, its design and build quality were ahead of the time, providing users with a device that not only felt premium in hand but could also survive daily wear without falling apart.

Controls and Connectivity – iPhone 3G

Consistent with Apple’s design philosophy for the iPhone, user control of the iPhone 3G was conducted exclusively through a large multi-touch screen and a single button on its face. Up front, the display was dominated by a single mechanical Home button below it that doubled as the main navigation key. The volume rocker for quick audio adjustments was on the left side, accompanied by a ring/silent switch for silencing alerts. A power/lock button sat up top, as well, joined by a 3.5mm headphone jack for the old-crowd-standard wired earphones (and which supported inline controls on compatible headsets).

It was a huge step up fro its predecessor in terms of connectivity, bringing 3G UMTS/HSDPA support for faster mobile internet. It also delivered quad-band GSM/EDGE for the use around the world. Wireless was Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR for use with accessories. The two devices differed only in the bottom where Apple included their 30-pin dock for charging, syncing with iTunes, and connecting to a host of peripherals.

Although it was missing things like NFC and LTE — the iPhone 3G offered a variety of connectivity options so it could still be used as a phone, messaging device, music player and internet communicator with simple, easy-to-use controls.

Lab Tests: Display – iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3G came with a 3.5-inch LCD display having resolution of 320 x 480 pixels providing an estimated pixel density of about 165 ppi. Small by modern standards, it was clear enough to offer crisp text and decent pictures in its day. It performed well in colour reproduction during lab testing; it presented more of a natural hue that slightly skewed warm, as opposed to being starker and cooler like any number of modern OLED displays.

Peak brightness levels were around 270 nits, which is sufficient for indoor use but may be an issue outdoors in bright sunlight. Back then, even a capacity touch screen with multi-touch support that can be used by one finger was still new and cool. It was really responsive, broke the 3 inch barrier which no one had done before and thanks to its capacitive tech scrolling was nice and smooth with gestures precise almost to a fault (though only after it got iOS 2.1 or so). Bottom line is the cap active touch screen gave iPhone 3G a huge usability advantage on many resistive devices of that eara.

Cartoon therapies were good for any LCD, although blacks showed up more darkish grey within dim mild credited in order to backlight bleed. The viewing angles were wide enough to share the screen comfortably with others and color shifting was minimal. The iPhone 3G’s touchscreen was very responsive when it launched, and the clarity of the screen set a standard for smartphones released during that time.

Battery Life – iPhone 3G

The battery of the iPhone 3G was a non-removable lithium-ion cell with a capacity of just 1150 mAh — miniscule by current standards, but average for smartphones circa 2008. Apple said it offered up to 5 hours of talk time on 3G networks, and up to 10 hours on 2G (EDGE). It could remain operational for 5–6 hours on Wi-Fi during internet use, but would lose charge quickly when consuming data over 3G due to higher power consumption.

Simply put, in real-world testing, battery life varied a great deal depending on what type of signal was being used. Power users who surfed the Web and used GPS heavily got generally a full day out of a charge, but usually found themselves topping up in early afternoons. Occasional calling, texting and music playback would see the phone last a full day. It had a standby time of up to 300 hours so you could leave it sitting for several days without seeing any noticeable drop in charge.

Charging was done through the 30-pin dock connector and it would typically take 2 hours to complete a full charge with the provided wall adapter. The battery life seemed fair enough for the day, but that dreaded 3G radio and cramped capacity played havoc with any hope at getting through a full day without top-up charging, especially for power-browsing, push-emailing, constantly-in-media-play-back needs of the average user.

Charging Speed – iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3G was powered by Apple’s proprietary 30-pin dock connector along with a separate 5V USB power adapter which came in the box. The 1150 mAh battery could easily be topped up from dead in a little over 2 hours on most occasions. It would take about an hour to get to 50% thanks to having so little battery capacity on board, at which point it would then slow down in the charging process anyway because companies try not to put fast charge speeds over highest SOC (state of change) that is deemed best for battery health.

Fast charge or wireless charging, such as now standard with modern smartphones; the iPhone 3G was not capable of doing this. We charged using only the cable and noticed USB charging from a computer port was much slower than using the wall adapter. Without power-hungry components such as high-refresh-rate screens, once the device was charged it lasted a good day in use between light and moderate.

In the grand scheme of things, even the iPhone 3G’s old-school charging speed was simply getting power into a relatively small battery; heavy users frequently running on 3G data and GPS would top up often.

Loudspeakers – iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3G model had a single loudspeaker, that fired from the bottom right of the 30-pin dock connector. Though it was loud and clear enough to make calls, get notifications or listen to content while washing dishes… it sounded terrible. The mids and highs are pretty well-balanced without crowding, so you can hear voices or alertsy easily even if it sounds lacks a little bass response – in line with nearly every other smartphone of the era.

The speaker was passable for voice calls and brief video playing when its playing, but playback of music at top volume could be a little tinny. An absence of stereo separation as it had only one speaker (though depending on how you held the phone, audio direction could also be emulated),

The iPhone 3G sounded better with wired earphones over the 3.5mm headphone jack, however, delivering fuller sound and better bass for those who wanted to listen carefully. In the end, the loudspeaker experience was in line with that of a 2008 smartphone either way — serviceable and intelligible, but nowhere near the multi-speaker/high-quality sound configurations used in today’s devices.

Software – iPhone 3G

IPhone 3G Jul 2008 as though but the iPhone OS 2.0 ( by this point identified iOS). A significant step up from the software on the original iPhone, it also introduced an App Store to let people download apps directly onto their device — a development that would shape today’s smartphone landscape.

Straight from the Factory, iPhone OS 2.0 introduced native apps as such Safari Web Browser, Mail, Calendar, Photos & Calculator (with improved Messaging and Contacts). It also brought along support for push email via Microsoft Exchange, there by making the phone more of a business user friendly.

Apple updated the iPhone 3G up to iOS 4.2.1 over time, bringing along features like Spotlight Search, cut/copy/paste, MMS and a new UI in tow. But the hardware (particularly with just 128MB of RAM) missed out on many of iOS’s new features like multitasking.

Within these limitations, the iPhone 3G was still a simple, user-friendly, paradigm-shifting software experience at the time — it offered fluid navigation and regular updates through apps to an app library that grew rapidly over time in ways that will keep its name relevant for years as one of the iconic steppingstones toward what smartphones would become.

Performance – iPhone 3G

Under the hood was a 412 MHz ARM 11 CPU associated with 128MB of RAM, and a PowerVR MBX Lite GPU. Although those specs will seem puny by today’s standards, back in 2008 they were enough to handle the basic interface and core applications of the iPhone OS. In general use — browsing with Safari, checking email, using maps or playing the sorts of basic App Store games that were common at launch — it felt fast.

But as iOS matured, so did apps, and the limited RAM and CPU speed started to tell. But with later versions of software (iOS 4 especially), the hardware was pushed to its limits, causing slow load times, a bit of UI lag and less responsiveness. And well, graphically intensive games and multitasking was also restricted since the processor packed could not handle that.

But that aside, the iPhone 3G flew — it was easily one of the fastest, most consistent smartphones available to buy in 2008 for everyday use. The media, email and web browsing side of it was done very well and its seamless integration of the software with the hardware really blew away most competition at the time. Ultimately, the iPhone 3G wasn’t all that great when it came to performance but functionality was polished over time for a pretty stable user experience.

Camera – iPhone 3G

The iPhone 3G came with a single 2-megapixel rear camera that lacked autofocus, flash, or advanced shooting modes. Back then, it was aimed at quick shoot-and-go snaps rather than the more professional quality stuff. In good daylight the images were…fine, with accurate colours and enough sharpness for casual web sharing and screen viewing. However, when it comes to low light shots, the quality degrades significantly with images having a lot of noise and poor amount of details.

However, one of the biggest drawbacks was with the default standard camera app and its inability to record video on an iOS device. For a long while, users desiring video capture were at the mercy of third-party App Store apps that operated with degraded frame rates and quality. The camera also had no zoom or burst modes, making it fall short of later iPhone models.

The deceptively simple to use and fast iPhone 3G camera was lauded. You opened the app, took a shot, done… very much in Apple-style. Although it lacked the same feature set and image quality of top-tier camera phones at the time, its performance was “enough for casual snapshot photography,” and laid out a path for future improvements in imaging on iPhones.

Photo and Video Quality – iPhone 3G

Today, the iPhone 3G of course has awful photo quality by modern standards but it was more than good enough at release in 2008. The 2-megapixel fixed-focus snapper is capable of shooting color-accurate photos with natural tones in a good lighting environment. In broad daylight the photos maintained some sharpness and detail even though it was not as sharp as we would have liked, and dynamic range was poor resulting in blown-out highlights or crushing too much shadow in high contrast scenes. In low-light, it performed about as poorly as you’d expect from a cameraphone of its time, with lots of noise and muted colors and soft detail on account having no flash or night mode.

Video quality was extremely limited. The iPhone 3G, was seriously hindered by its lack of native video recording out of the box (a feature some competitors already had), but Legislative Assembly Member Michael Atkinson called for a detail that could reignite old debates. It was a process that required extra apps to be installed and users got low-res, choppy clips with little audio recording. These apps could not essentially be used as full featured video capture tools, but more of an experimental feature.

The iPhone 3G was intended as a basic and casual photo/video device…well it did offer some day time quick snap shots, but hardly for any multimedia ambition fighting role. This was a good step in mobile photography ease, however it did not get fabulous until the 3G in later iPhone generations.

Alternatives – iPhone 3G

The competition back in 2008, when the iPhone 3G was launched, was a lot more different since that time there were several phones intended for lots of tastes and purposes. It compete most directly with the BlackBerry Bold 9000, which was dubbed “BlackBerry’s best ever” thanks to its superb physical keyboard and the fact that it was first walled-garden business phone for secure email. It was very popular among professionals who rely more on productivity than multimedia.

The HTC Touch Diamond, based on Windows Mobile, was another major competitor. The model appealed to a more technical audience as it boasted additional customization options and updated to a higher-resolution display with new connectivity features. The Nokia N95 8GB was also a worthy competitor, with arguably the best image quality of any phone (5MP, Carl Zeiss optics), and many offline features such as GPS navigation and comprehensive multimedia support better than what the iPhone 3G could offer.

The T-Mobile G1 (HTC Dream) was the first Android smartphone to enter the market and also offered some open-source flexibility via a physical keyboard, extra storage, and fresh app ecosystem signaling that Android’s rise had officially started.

So, to summarize: the iPhone 3G was neatly designed with a nice interface and a handy App Store, but while others would kill for cameras and keyboards like those on Nokias, BlackBerrys or HTCs, or the freedom of tweakability proudly offered by then-wonkily-end Warroid handsets at the time… well.

Pros and Cons – iPhone 3G

Pros:

3G Connectivity — Better mobile internet compared to the original iPhone.

Then: App Store Access — Provided a gateway to thousands of third-party apps, completely changing the way we use smartphones.

Sleek Shape — Plenty of room, comfortable to hold.

Personal computer – Capacitive Multi-Touch Display You’ve made your mind On this sleek and shiny screen The time has finally come.

Improved GPS – Better location tracking for maps and navigation glUniform (in the process of compilation) GPS

Great User Interface – iOS was less clunky, more intuitive and smoother than the competition.

Cons:

No Video Recording — 2MP still camera without any type of video capture capabilities.

Sparse Hardware: The CX has a slower processor and just 128MB RAM, which may limit performance.

No MMS or Copy-Paste at Launch-Genesis Legally Incapable of Copy and Paste, MMS Out of the Gate

No Expandable Storage – 8GB or 16GB Only

Battery Life – Average, struggled under heavy 3G load.

No Flash Support in Browser – Limited multimedia experience on the web as there is no Flash support in browser

The iPhone 3G was a game changer at the time, yet power users couldn’t help but feel that it was lacking when compared to competition such as Nokia’s N95 or BlackBerry Bold. Ultimately, its real strength was in usability and the emerging App Store ecosystem.

Verdict – iPhone 3G

Apple had already launched the latest iteration of its iOS app store with the iPhone 3G, which took big steps in familiarizing consumers with how their mobile devices would later be used by offering faster 3G internet and introducing GPS navigation. Though the hardware was quite basic by some standards and lacking many typical features at the time of launch — again, this is years ago now more than 4! — no one could argue you got a better overall user experience for your money.

We liked its slim design, simple iOS interface and touch usability, although the camera, storage limitations and lack of certain features made it feel a bit dated compared to some rivals. It wasn’t the best phone, but the Apple iPhone 3G helped create the modern smartphone era and that app/software was as important, if not moreso than internal hardware specs.

If you wanted innovation, style and a platform forward way beyond its time back in 2008, this was the phone to have. Today it stands as a reminder of the moment Apple truly started to shape the mobile industry, still something of an emotional touchstone.