iPhone 3 review: A marginal improvement

I looked forward all day long to getting home and updating the firmware on the two iPhones to iPhone 3.0, and here’s my at-a-glance impression of the install and the handful of features I was most looking forward to testing:

Install. No problems at all.  There were a few installaton horror stories earlier today on AppleInsider — see comments here — but the most common complaint was the download and relaunch time.  I set up the download, took the dogs for a short walk, and it was nearly finished 20 minutes later when I got back inside.  The whole refresh took 25-30 minutes tops from the beginning of the initial download in iTunes 8.2 to the end of the reboot on the first iPhone.

Snappyness. Some people are reporting that apps open and close faster on the iPhone 3G after the update.  I’m not seeing that.  Apps are loading and closing the same as before.

Mail. I got an error message on initial launch, but it straightened itself out with the Exchange Server back at the office and my emails came up just fine.  The folders did have to re-download from Exchange Server, but that was quick and painless.

I suspect landscape view will turn out to be the killer feature in iPhone 3.0.  Landscape is available in every window of Mail — folder list, email list, reading individual emails, and writing individual emails — so you don’t have to go back and forth from landscape to upright.  It is going to take some getting used to, but it won’t be nearly as steep a learning curve as typing on an iPhone for the first time.

The visual difference while typing is more than I expected.  Your eyes have more territory to cover than before, so you may need to hold the iPhone a little further away while typing.  Reaching the letters in the center of the phone is a little awkward, but it beats having to pinch the side of the phone to thumb-type the letters near the sides.  It may take a couple of days to find your rhythm, but I have a feeling typing in landscape is going to be a major improvement over iPhone 2.2.