Review: The iPhone 3GS By Steven Levy

We've spent some quality time with the iPhone 3GS over the last couple of days and it looks like Apple is going to remain king of the smartphones with its latest iDevice. Although the 3GS is not significantly changed from the older 3G model, there are still a number of updates that make the 3GS noteworthy. From the mind of reviewer Steven Levy:

It's not as dramatic an advance as the previous ones. But the new phone introduces a long list of improvements, big and small. Taken together, they're enough to re-establish Apple's once-shrinking lead in a brutal technology competition that is making the chariot race in Ben Hur look like a walk in the park.

As promised, Apple has indeed ramped up the speed with which the new phone performs tasks like launching apps, loading web pages, and displaying graphics. Apple claims speed boosts of up to two times of what the 3G delivers, and in some benchmarks cites even better performance. I haven't done scientific measurements, but you don't need a stopwatch to notice the new phone is zippier than its predecessor. I appreciated getting box scores faster and videos playing sooner in the MLB.com At Bat application, and it was clear that web pages loaded faster. In the case of a game like Tiger Woods Golf, the boost is significant enough to make me more likely to play when I don't have much time.

In part because Apple is offering many of its innovations as part of the general iPhone 3.0 upgrade – the wise thing for those more recent buyers to do will be to install the new software and stick with their 3G iPhones at least until their contracts run down. This will provide a saner upgrade path to the 3GS's considerable, but not earth-shattering, improvements. Speed is wonderful. But sometimes it's prudent to wait for it.

Remember, this isn't the whole review — just a mere sampling to get your motor running. For the deeper download hit up wired.com/reviews or click here for the full version.