Ricky Says

I'm enroute to Dallas, TX right now and it's a wifi flight with American Airlines. I'm typing... I mean tapping this post on my iPhone 3GS, after paying a nominal $7.95 fee.

The Internet speed on the in-flight wifi connection is plenty fast to download a music album from iTunes while updating 4 apps, browsing the web and checkng email, without any noticeable slow down.

GPS looks a little confused though - it thinks I'm still at the airport even though we've been traveling for a couple hours, probably because that's where the signal is coming from:

SMS also doesn't work, so don't plan on texting on these flights. You also can't share a connection between a laptop and mobile device - you have to pay an additional connection for a laptop or mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, etc).

I'd love to see wifi be free on flights, but all things considered, I felt it was still a great value since I was able to get a lot of work done (and play) instead of wasting a few hours in the air.

Question: Does the new iphone 3gs take decent videos, and are the pictures that much better too?

Answer: Having just purchased an iPhone 3GS a couple weeks ago, I'll answer this first-hand. The photos are much better with the new 3.0 megapixel auto-focusing iphone camera, and the 30 frame-per-second video recorder is surprisingly good.

I'll start with the video. It's easy to take good video when you have a nice steady tripod and a slow moving area to record. But that'd be way too boring.

Instead, how about a front row ride on the Timber Terror roller coaster at the Silverwood amusement park? I happened to be vacationing there this week with my family, and was able to snag a front row seat on this fast and bumpy thriller. Here's the video I took (picture me holding onto the front rail with my left hand and holding even tighter to my new iPhone with my right hand).

Here's the original 39 MB Quicktime movie file that looks quite a bit better then the one that was uploaded to YouTube: timber-terrror-silverwood.mov

Here's the YouTube version:

That's pretty good video quality in my opinion, and the roller coaster ride was a lot of fun too (except for the 2 girls screaming in my ear right behind me).

Videos are recorded in Quicktime .mov format and can be uploaded directly to YouTube from the iPhone, or sent to your friends via email.

The new iPhone 3GS has arrived, and I've had a chance to put it through it's paces over the last couple of days. I definitely recommend it - especially if you can get the upgrade pricing - and be sure to check with an Apple store for in-stock availability, because AT&T stores are currently backed up at least a week.

The first thing I did when I upgraded was to copy everything from the old iPhone 3G to the new 3GS. This included all the apps I had purchased, and all the music, photos, contacts, email, notes - the whole enchilada.

Overall the process went fairly well, and I'll rate it a B+ in spite of a few gotchas along the way.

Here are the steps I took to backup my old 3G and restore the new 3GS from the backup. These same steps can be followed to fully backup an iPhone 3G (and you might realize after reading this article that the backups you've been doing have not been backing up your purchased apps).

1. Backup the old iPhone 3G

Connect your iPhone to your computer with the USB data cable and open iTunes. Wait for it to recognize your iPhone, and then right-click on your iPhone in the left side bar. Select "Backup" from the short-cut menu to start the backup.

The first backup took about 20 minutes on my iPhone, which was loaded with about 4 GB of data. I say first, because I ended up having to do it again because the first run didn't backup my purchased apps nor my music files.

Instead, I received an error message indicating that not everything was transferred, and that my computer wasn't authorized to play the items (even though I had already authorized my computer).

Turns out you have to tell iTunes to transfer purchased apps from your iPhone to your computer, and Apple didn't put the menu option in a prominent location.

2. Transfer Purchased Apps

If you own an iPhone 3G as I have for several months, then you're probably used to a daily battery charging routine. I usually charge my iPhone every morning and sometimes again during the day.

I also travel a lot and like to listen to music while flying, so I often get off the plane with a dead iPhone battery and can't check email or find where I'm at using Google Maps/GPS.

That all has changed after receiving a treasured Father's Day gift from my son, that's tripled the amount of time I can use my iPhone in between charges.

Sure, Apple provides several tips for conserving power and extending iPhone battery life, but they all follow a similar approach that basically involves NOT using important features like Wi-Fi, 3G wireless network speed, GPS location services, etc.

Basically all the features that drew me to the iPhone in the first place, and convinced me to trade in my Blackberry for one, are the ones Apple recommends I stop using in order to extend battery life. No thanks - I'm not about to turn them all off just to add a few minutes to an already short battery life. I would have stuck with my Blackberry if that was the end of the story. Fortunately it wasn't.

The gift I received from my son was a Tekkeon MP1800 lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack that gives me 2 1/2 iPhone charges, so I can stay powered up even when I don't have an outlet nearby.