Yesterday, I woke up nice and early and headed for the Apple store at South Park mall, Charlotte. This would be the third time I would be attempting to buy an iPhone 3GS. I was the third person to enter the store out of the 5 people that had also been waiting for it to open. The purchasing process was quick and my new white 16GB iPhone GS was activated with little to no fanfare.

The iPhone 3GS replaces my 2 years old original iPhone and believe me when I say that this is a HUGE jump. Applications launch instantly and the various animations are smoother than a baby’s bottom. I find myself switching in and out of applications just to see how fast it is. I was going to include a short video comparing the iPhone 3GS to the original iPhone but this would be like racing a VW Beetle with a Porsche 911. Apart from the speed of the new hardware, the new iPhone curved back fits better in my palm, like a bar of soap. Its also lighter although I prefer the old iPhone’s aluminum’s cool feeling back. The oleophobic coating works like magic. I was so used to wiping my iPhone after every call to remove face oil but this is no longer the case with the GS. There is virtually no face oil left on the screen which is nothing short of miraculous.

There has been a lot of talk about how little use the magnetometer is with some pundits even calling it a gimmick. This once again goes to show how short-sighted these people are. The digital compass will come into its own as app developers start to tap into its potential. Soon, just like with the original iPhone’s accelerometer, most smartphones will start shipping with digital compasses (pioneered by the Google G1 phone IMHO).

The only real downside to the GS seems to be battery life. I haven’t carried out any scientific tests but it is clear that the phone will always require to be charged by the end of the day.

As someone with 2 young children, the video camera and the quick-edit-and-upload features makes this phone well worth its weight in Gold. As the saying goes, “the best camera is the one you have on you” – I have already shot numerous memorable clips of AJ and Naomi and shared them on my MobileMe gallery (sorry, private).

When I purchased the original iPhone, I based my decision on where Apple would take their new mobile platform. At the time, the iPhone and its OS were severely lacking in features found on even most dumb phones. I am glad that I took the plunge and been a part of the growth of this amazing platform.

Even the most hardcore Apple hater (yes, such a thing exists) has to admit that Apple has done an incredible job in just 2 short years with the iPhone platform. From a billion apps downloaded from the App store in 9 months to a now very mature and amazingly fast iPhone 3GS. Its no wonder that “experienced” mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson are now left scratching their proverbial heads and trying to come up with iPhone-killers.

So, should you get an iPhone 3GS? Well, the answer depends on 3 factors: if you currently do not own an iPhone, then yes go out and get one. If you own the original iPhone, then you should already have this phone! If you own an iPhone 3G then it depends how much on the bleeding edge you have to be. Neither the original iPhone nor the iPhone 3G were speed slouches, and yet the GS manages to blow them out of the water. The added speed, compass, video camera and auto-focus still camera, would, in my opinion, still make a compelling upgrade for any iPhone 3G user.

This may be an obvious one. If you select more than 5 photos on your iPhone, the Share button gets disabled. So what do you do if you want to email out those 7 must-see photos? Copy and Paste to the rescue! Simply click the Copy button, switch to the Mail app and paste away. Make sure you are on Wi-Fi or 3G though as it could take a while to transfer all of them on EDGE/GRPS

Yesterday, Apple introduced a new model of the iPhone and also lowered the iPhone 3G down to $99. Part of the success for the iPhone can be attributed to the app store as it has made consuming applications on the phone very easy.
If you are new to the iPhone platform, you may even be a little overwhelmed by the sheer choice. Worry not, for I am here to help. Here are some applications that I recommend for some common tasks

 

Blogging

For blogging on the go, I use the WordPress app. This app allows you to attach photos to your blog post as well as edit articles already on your blog.

 

Remote Desktop Access

This is a surprisingly crowded area in the app store and there three kinds of remote desktop apps (of which I have one each):

Microsoft RDP Protocol Based: My choice for taking remote control of Windows servers and PCs is an application called Jaadu RDP. The application is incredibly well written and even brings audio from the PC to the iPhone. My only issue with using this (and most RDP clients on the iPhone) is that you have to use the computer’s IP address as the name cannot be resolved by the iPhone

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VNC Based: Jaadu VNC (coming from the author of Jaadu RDP) is just as polished and works just as well as Jaadu RDP (in fact they are identical in usage). I wish the author would use different icons for the different applications though

Proprietary: There aren’t many remote desktop clients in the App store that use a proprietary protocol to connect the host server. I was hoping for a while that GoToMyPC would create a client but one is yet to surface. Instead, their competitor, LogMeIn, offers a very competent solution. In addition to that, you can also sign up with their basic service for free.

 

 

Instant Messaging

Arguably of the best applications written for the iPhone, BeeJiveIM is marvelous. It can connect to multiple services such as AIM, GoogleTalk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo and Facebook! Its list of features include email alerts for when you exit the app and ability to send pictures and audio clips to your chat contacts.

Voice Over IP Telephony

I actually use two clients in this area. I use the Skype app for calling countries that are supported in their "unlimited" international calling plan, and TruPhone for calling everywhere else. Both offer excellent call quality although I believe TruPhone to be slightly better.

Twitter

Another crowded category in the app store is with Tweeter clients. Which makes Tweetie ever more impressive as it manages to outshine most others. Put it this way, I installed Tweetie and have never looked for another Twitter client since.

RSS Readers

This is one category where I have spent the most money on in the App store. I use Google’s Reader service which syncronizes my feeds accross all my devices so I have tried several clients including Feeds, NetNewsWire (uses NewsGator service), NewsStand (no sync support) and Byline. For a while I even switched to Google’s own web app which held its own surpringly well against the native apps. I am now well and truly  a happy user of ByLine. The application is fast,  stable and never misses the beat when syncronizing with the cloud.

Productivity

If you are like me, you would like to move files around, convert some units, store passwords and maybe even access your FTP server using your iPhone. For file sharing, I recommend Air Sharing which has a well thought out UI and supports viewing of all Microsoft Office documents as well as PDFs and image files.

I used to have two different apps for unit conversion and currency conversion but that was before I came accross Convertbot. Now is one cool app that handles both unit conversion and currency conversion. The UI is so innovate and it has some snazzy sound effects to go with it.

1Password is a very useful if you already own the Mac desktop client. It will store and syncronize all your web passwords, credit card information and any other information that you put in it. The application has two levels of security. First, a 4 digit code to get into the application, then a master password to actually view any of the data that you set to be "master password protected”.

For all you fledgling web administrators out there, FTPonTheGo will provide you with access to your FTP server. You can do just about anything that you can using a desktop FTP client including renaming files on the server or viewing pictures and uploading files.

*Updates (thanks Mike): An app that I overlooked is Remember The Milk. This application is a “Get Things Done” task management application. It requires an annual subscription of $25 and with that you get email and SMS alerts of all of you tasks that are due. Here’s hoping that they update their app to use the Push Notification Services sooner rather than later.

Also, I noticed last night that DataViz’s DocumentsToGo is now in the app store. This app will allow you to create and edit Microsoft Office documents (only MS Word in the current version with Excel editing “coming soon”) and comes with a desktop clients that sync all your documents over Wi-Fi. I have only used the app for a few minutes but from what I can tell it is extremely polished and not bad at all for a v1.

Other worthy mentions

FriendExchange (feX) is an application that will sync the photos and birthdays of your Facebook friends with matches in your address

FlightTrack is handy for when you are flying away or meeting someone at the airport as it provides real-time flight information.

Shazam is a very popular app in the app store. If you have ever heard a song that you wanted to find the title or artist, then get this app. The app listens to a songs, uploads a sample for analysis and then return the song details.