Apple's iPhone 3G: How it's shaping up

In less than a day, Apple's new iPhone 3G (click on image at right) will be available to iFans in North America. Since Consumer Reports doesn't accept free review units from manufacturers, our secret shoppers will be up bright and early—perhaps, even standing in line next to some of you—to buy the new iPhone.

We expect to post our first impressions of the device on Friday and will continue to weigh in more firmly and regularly as we complete our tests and reviews of Apple's latest cell phone.

However, looking closely at Apple's official iPhone 3G features list, spec sheet and early online reviews from major publications, here are some of our observations of the iPhone's likely strengths and weaknesses:

• GPS, but not innovative GPS. The new iPhone uses space-based GPS satellites which should provide more accurate positioning information than the old iPhone's Wi-Fi and cellular-based navigation scheme. But out-of-box, the iPhone 3G's navigation won't be as innovative as other cell phones with GPS, such as the Samsung Instinct's "voice-activated" GPS navigation.

• Faster wireless Web—with tradeoffs. AT&T's 3G cell-network should provide better Web browsing and file downloads. But as the New York Times' David Pogue and USA Today's Ed Baig pointed out, AT&T's 3G network is not yet universally available, particularly in many suburban and rural areas. And the early reviews seem to confirm that using the 3G network takes a toll on battery life. Like all the models in our latest cell phone Ratings (available to subscribers), we'll put the new iPhone through many tests—including battery life—in our labs.


• Better—but pushy—business behavior. Unlike many models in our Ratings of smartphones, the original iPhone didn't support "push" e-mail. But the new iPhone 3G will connect to corporate e-mail systems using Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync servers. This allows e-mails to be sent (or "pushed") to your iPhone as soon as they're received on your company's e-mail server. It also means changes you make on your iPhone's Outlook calendar will be zapped to your office PC—and other iPhones on your corporate's network, too.
  
  Personal and corporate e-mail accounts can co-exist on the new iPhone. Maybe. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg discovered that all of his personal calendar and contact information were erased once he synchronized his new iPhone with the Exchange server. (We'll report what our lab technician find as they put the new iPhone through our various tests.)
  
  The new iPhone also adds the capability to view Microsoft PowerPoint files. (Owners of the old iPhone could only view two Microsoft Office files—Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.)


• New, intriguing and fun applications. There will be a whole slew of programs— games; chat and social networking software; tools for traveling, news, sports, finance, and business—from third-party developers that can be downloaded (typically at $10 a pop) directly onto the new iPhone via a simple "App Store" button. (The games, given iPhone's dazzling display, should be especially impressive.) What's more, owners of a current iPhone or an iPod Touch will have access to that library of programs via iTunes—after installing a software upgrade on their mobile Apple device.

—Michael Gikas