i've been doing some research on the new iphone 3g, which, now or in the near future, will not be available in malaysia. however, after testing out my colleague's ipod touch, i become involved in the whole iphone craze, and am desperate to own one.

ok, so what's an iphone 3g? the iphone 3g is basically the successor of the 1st generation iphone. well, as the image above clearly demonstrates, it is a combination of gps, web browser, multimedia player, and phone. camera, too.

now that we know what an iphone 3g is, so the next question would be, is it any good? well, i'm sure different people will tell you different things, but personally, i think it's great, even though i don't actually own one. yet.

to be fair, let's first look at the weaknesses of the iphone 3g.

here are the few drawbacks:

- 2.0 megapixel camera without video recording abilities and manual settings of white balance, flash, etc.
- no mms
- no copy-and-paste
- no voice-dialing
- no memory card/stick slots

so the question is, despite all these weaknesses that even older phones could overcome, why do we want one? basically my reasons are as follows:

firstly, it's an apple iphone. 3g. the name "apple" is to the world of technology what "alfa romeo" is to the world of motoring. first, there's the looks. just look at the iphone 3g, and its user interface. it's beautiful and elegant. like the alfa romeo 8c, it's so beautiful it makes you want to forget how bad it handles or how overvalued it is. you simply want to own one. let's be honest here. if you want a cellphone that you can rely on, you could always buy a nokia, or sony ericsson, or even motorola, if you don't mind it's un-user-friendly-ness. why buy an apple, right? why own goldfish, when you can have guppies for much lesser price and even lesser trouble? i'm sure you get the idea here.

now let's talk about usability. i realise the iphone isn't a tool that enables you to do everything you want. but well, it has its strengths. let's go back to the basics first. if you've seen an ipod touch, you'd know that it's just like the iphone, minus the phone functions. so basically, the iphone is an ipod that is able to work as a phone, so sound quality for mp3 playbacks are as good as, if not better than the ipod touch. also, having a capacity up to 32gb means that you could store much, much more media inside your iphone without even needing to insert extra memory cards. so for those of you out there who are complaining about the absence of this feature (card slots), you already have a capacity big enough for thousands of songs, what more do you want?

as a phone, the iphone 3g is a better phone than the 1st gen iphone. it has a plastic back cover, which has less interference than the previous aluminium back cover. moreover, it has 3g now, which means data transfer is much faster. however, some people do complain that it is unable to voice-dial (there is however, apps that enable you to voice-dial in the app store). is it really that difficult to tap your phones a few times to call the people you want to call?

another good thing about iphone is that the sms system is very much like the ichat program, where instead of an inbox full of smses delivered to you, and a "sent" folder of smses you wrote, you have a list of messages and replies like you get in instant messaging programs. very good feature if you ask me.

now let's go to web browsing. with 3g, surfing speed is definitely much faster. also, with safari, the iphone is able to surf html webpages rather than those mobile phone webpages. so with the iphone, you get to watch videos, listen to music, contact people via phonecalls, sms, email, and even surf the net. it also has the gps feature, but since i'm in malaysia, where the gps system is still only as reliable as the government, i think i need not mention much about it.

in a nutshell, an iphone 3g is what you want, but not what you need. it all comes down to how you chose to live your life. if you're the kind of person who will only purchase something if it's worth every penny, don't buy the iphone. in fact, don't buy any cell phone at all. but if you don't mind paying a little bit of money for some fun once in a while, then iphone is more fun than you can ever imagine. but bear in mind, i'm not an iphone owner, which means i have not seen or touched or used a real iphone before, and i wrote all these based on almost nothing at all, so buy it at your own risk.

oh, by the way, if you happen to know where to get an unlocked iphone 3g for less than rm1000, or if you happen to be selling them for that price, please do let me know. my contacts are all over the blog. thanks.