iPhone 3G: Multimedia

Music

The iPod is a global phenomenon. Over 100 million have been sold worldwide and it’s a regular Best Buy in our MP3 player reviews. And the iPhone 3G's music player doesn't disappoint - happily we can report that Apple has exceeded our expectations and produced a device that works brilliantly.

Flick through your album covers to select what you'd like to hear.

Listening to music

• Instead of the iconic click wheel, you control the iPhone’s built-in 8GB or 16GB iPod by gliding your finger over the interface. This presents you with a 3D rolodex of album covers that you can flip through.
• You can move from the iPod to most other iPhone functions and the music continues to play.
• There’s also a flight mode allowing you to use the player even when the phone is turned off.
• You can also browse and download music wirelessly using the built-in iTunes store application directly to the iPhone 3G.

Sound quality

• Sound quality through the iPod-style headphones is very good.
• These have a built-in microphone so they can double as a headset for phone calls.
• Alternatively you can use Bluetooth headsets (though only in mono) or connect your own set. Unlike the first generation iPhone, the iPhone 3G doesn't need a special adapter to use third-party headphones.

Camera

After the impressive performance of the iPhone’s music player, the built-in camera is a bit of a letdown. It’s pretty basic, and the 2 megapixel resolution can’t compete with many of its rivals (such as the 5Mp camera on the Nokia N95), but it's competent enough.

Spartan and straightforward, the iPhone’s camera aims to make picture-taking as simple as possible. And it largely succeeds. You use your thumb to click on the (virtual) shutter button and take the picture, which is indicated by a virtual shutter sound.

The large LCD screen, much bigger than on other phones, makes it easy to frame images and its also great for displaying your shots.

Picture quality is comparable to those from our tests of other high-resolution camera phones. Which is to say, images were better than those from most camera phones but fell short of those from a typical digital camera.

The iPhone’s dynamic range (which is the difference between the lightest and darkest elements of a displayed image) is especially good. And images taken in low light are passable, which isn’t always the case with camera phones, although colour balance is only fair, with many daylight shots bearing a bluish tinge.

Organiser

As a smart phone, the iPhone 3G is a fairly basic device - although new additions, such as downloadable software from the App Store, will see a rush of software programs designed to fill any holes in the phone's featureset.

The clever voicemail system lets you access messages in whatever order you want

You can view documents, as well as edit them, but it doesn’t appear as a hard drive when connected to a computer. This means that you can’t shuttle files, such as documents and spreadsheets, between work and home, instead you'll have to email them.

And entering and editing events on the calendar is not as intuitive as it is on Treos and other smartphones.

Maps

iPhone 3G now includes GPS navigation, which works with Google Maps to provide a guide to your location. The iPhone 3G uses a combination of mobile phone masts and GPS satellite - called assisted GPS - to give a more accurate picture of your location. Early reports from users in the US suggests that the GPS accuracy is very good.

You type in a location address and Google pinpoints it on a map, which you can zoom in on by spreading your fingers apart on the screen.

Touching the direction buttons allows you type another address for written turn-by-turn directions.