Inside, the phone is similar too, but there have been some strategic changes from one generation to the next that have important implications for Apple’s many suppliers. According to a teardown analysis conducted by the research firm IHS iSuppli, chipmaker Intel, which last year acquired the wireless operations of the German chip concern Infineon, has been almost entirely bounced out of the 4S in favor of a set of chips from Qualcomm. The shift to Qualcomm had been rumored as far back as last September.

Before Intel acquired its wireless unit, Infineon had previously supplied Apple with a chip known as a baseband processor that Apple had used in combination with chips from Skyworks and Triquint to work with wireless phone networks. “Qualcomm is the big winner here,” says Andrew Rassweiler, an analyst with IHS iSuppli who conducted the teardown. “It is selling Apple a whole suite of chips that adds up to about $14 to $15 per iPhone.”

Intel spent $1.4 billion to acquire Infineon’s wireless chip operations last year in a move seen as meant to shore up its presence in the wireless phone industry overall. It has struggled to win business for its Atom line of microprocessors, which are aimed at mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Infineon still has a small chip in the iPhone, but Rassweiler says it’s far less significant and a lot less costly than the one it supplied Apple before. “It’s almost like Apple threw them a bone with a 50-cent part after they lost a much more high profile chip that cost about $10,” he says. Intel had no comment.

ISuppli regularly conducts teardown studies of wireless phones and other consumer electronics devices in order to find out who a manufacturer’s vendors are — like most manufacturers, Apple prevents its suppliers from identifying themselves, much as they’d love to — but also to determine what each part costs. The combined cost of components — analysts check on the list prices of each part — is known as a bill-of-materials (BOM) estimate that gives a fair idea how much a manufacturer, in this case Apple, makes in gross margin on each device sold. Apple doesn’t disclose its gross margin on a per-product basis but when it reported its quarterly results yesterday it said its overall gross margin was 40.3 percent.

In the case of the iPhone 4S, Rassweiler estimates that the BOM cost ranges from $188 for the 16 gigabyte version of the iPhone 4S to $207 for the 32GB version and $245 for the 64GB version. Apple and its carrier partners sell the phones for $199, $299 and $399 respectively, typically with a two-year contract for wireless service that carriers use to subsidize the cost they pay Apple.

The costliest components are the ones that determine the price: Memory chips. Apple has been known in the past to rely mostly upon South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest supplier of memory, and from Japan’s Toshiba. In the phone that Rassweiler’s team tore down, the memory chips came from Samsung rival Hynix Semiconductor. “That struck us as a bit of a surprise,” Rassweiler says. It’s hard not to wonder if adding Hynix to the stable of iPhone memory suppliers is a partial response by Apple to the complicated patent fight it is waging with Samsung in courtrooms around the world.

Even so, Samsung appears to be have maintained its role as the manufacturer of the Apple-designed A5 processor that provides the iPhone 4S, and also the iPad 2, with most of its computing horsepower. Some published reports in recent months had suggested that because of the patent fight, Apple might end a relationship that dates back to the original iPhone and move its chip manufacturing contract to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the huge chip manufacturing foundry. Rassweiler says there’s no sign on the latest A5 chips that that has occurred. “The markings are the same as what we saw in the iPad 2,” he says. The estimated cost for the A5 chip is $15 each, he says.

Apple started designing its own chips for the iPhone and iPad products beginning in 2010 with the release of the first iPad. The chip is thought to have been designed by teams from PA Semi and Intrinsity, two privately held chip design firms that Apple acquired in 2008 and 2010 respectively.

However, it’s also clear that the A5 chip is taking on more of the heavy computing lifting inside the device than the previous A4 chip, Rassweiler says. For example: The iPhone 4 contains a chip from privately held Audience Semiconductor, based in Mountain View, Calif., that handled noise cancellation. There’s no such chip inside the iPhone 4S, Rassweiler says, so it appears that noise-cancellation duties may have been moved to the beefier A5 chip itself.

Triquint Semiconductor provided a set of chips that make up a wireless transmit module that works with the wireless phone networks. Triquint has traditionally been an iPhone supplier, Rassweiler says, but the value of what it supplies to Apple appears to have dropped. One wireless chip company that has seen the value of what it supplies to Apple increase is Avago Technologies. Like Triquint, it too has been an iPhone supplier, but the overall value of the chips it supplies has gone up in the 4S.

STMicroelectronics, the European chipmaker, maintained its role as the supplier of gyroscope chips that help determine the phone’s position and rotate the screen for playing games and displaying pictures and videos. AKM Semiconductor again supplied the compass chip. Texas Instruments continued in its role supplying the chip that controls the iPhone’s display, and an audio chip.

One vendor could not be identified. Rassweiler says that Apple appears to have taken pains to hide the identity of the company that supplies the parts that power the iPhone 4S’s highly regarded 8 megapixel camera. This is not new, and the candidates include Largan Precision Co., a Taiwanese supplier of camera modules to wireless phone companies, and Omnivision. “We don’t know exactly who makes it,” Rassweiler told me. Whoever the supplier is, Rassweiler estimates the camera added $17.60 to the cost to build the iPhone. And they’re likely to make a lot on the deal. IHS iSuppli is forecasting that Apple will sell 81 million iPhone 4Ss around the world next year.

Update: A few of you have written in saying that it was Sony who supplied the camera. Maybe. The folks at Chipworks dissected the camera module and found a Sony-made CMOS image sensor inside it. That doesn’t make the whole module a Sony’s however. It could be a Sony camera or it could be that whoever made the camera used a Sony sensor. And last week Barron’s reported on some debate among analysts over whether or not Apple has split the camera supply contract 50-50 between Omnivision and Sony.

Liveblog

9:13 am PT: Quite a scene here this morning; the queue for media credentials is nearly as long as some of the iPhone 3G launch lines I saw a few years back. Moments ago, an Apple PR rep slipped through the doors of the Yerba Buena Center to ask that the press waiting outside take two big steps back. The last time that happened to me, I was at a Jesus Lizard show.

9:54 am: The doors open and the press enters the event hall. Initially, at least, the scene is pretty crazy. “This is like the subway in New York,” an attendee behind me jokes. More like the subway in Tokyo, I think to myself.

A Bob Dylan soundtrack plays as media and guests file in. It’s momentarily interrupted by a “please take your seats, our event is about to begin” announcement.

10:00 am: Interesting stage set-up today: Instead of an empty stage or a simple table, there are a black leather chair and side-table. Lights are dimming….

And Steve Jobs takes the stage to a standing ovation.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical product, but first a few updates….A few weeks ago we sold our 250 millionth iPod…I didn’t want to let that moment pass without recognizing it.”

10:05 am: Jobs offers a quick overview of Apple’s retail operations and some of the new stores it has opened recently before moving on to the iTunes App Store. “A few weeks ago we announced that three billion applications had been downloaded from the App Store–that’s in 18 months…amazing.”
He notes, as he did in the company’s earnings release the other day, that Apple is now a $50 billion company.

Apple is a mobile devices company, says Jobs, “the largest mobile devices company in the world now. Larger than Sony’s mobile device business, larger than Samsung’s and, astonishingly, Nokia’s as well.”

10:07 am: A quick historical overview now. Jobs touches on the first PowerBook, introduced in 1991. He moves on to the MacBook and then the iPhone.

“All of us use laptops and smartphones, now. And the question has arisen lately: Is there room for a device in the middle?…We’ve pondered this question as well.”

This “middle” device, says Jobs, must be better at doing certain tasks than either the laptop or smartphone. If there’s going to be a third-device category, it must be better at browsing the Web, video, photos, music, etc.

“Some folks say this device is a netbook…. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything.”

10:10 am: But we have something that is, says Jobs, “and it’s called the iPad.”

Photos of the device appear on the giant screens. Very thin. Very slick. “IPad offers the best Web browsing experience there is–way better than laptops.” There is no camera that I can see. That’s not going to go over well with folks hoping for a device that supports video iChat.

10:13 am: Further details: The “iPad is a dream to type on,” Jobs says, pointing out its life-sized onscreen keyboard. It’s also an awesome way to enjoy media. iTunes, iTunes University and YouTube HD support are built in.

10:14 am: Jobs sits down to demo the device: “Using this thing is remarkable. It’s so much more intimate and capable than the laptop.” He loads Safari and surfs over to the New York Times (NYT). The iPad loads quickly and Jobs is able to easily navigate the page, loading stories and zooming in on articles.

10:15 am: Demonstrating landscape and portrait now. “This device adapts to the way I want to use it.”

Definitely an impressive browsing experience. Fast and elegant.

Now, an overview of Mail. Also elegant. Nice split-screen presentation. Hit compose, and a nice onscreen keyboard pops up. Jobs types out a message to his colleagues at Apple. Seems relatively easy.

10:19 am: Moving on to iPad’s photo capabilities. It supports iPhoto’s Events, Faces and Places features. It also offers built-in slideshows complete with soundtracks and transitions.

Running a slideshow demo, Jobs pauses and looks out at the audience with a Chesire Cat-wide grin. He’s clearly relishing this moment.

10:22 am:: The iTunes experience on iPad is much as you would expect. Similar, if not identical, to what the software currently offers. Calendar and Contacts apps are also nice and, again, similar to what you’d find on a MacBook or iPhone.

10:24 am: Demoing Google Maps now. The iPad supports Google Street View and the implementation is very slick.

10:25 am: Moving on to video. Jobs calls up an HD clip from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube and displays it in both portrait and landscape. That finished, he fires up iTunes and loads “Star Trek” to demo the device’s video features, scrubbing, etc. Then he shows us a clip from Pixar’s “Up.” Tap to go full-screen. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

10:27 am: Watching that is nothing like actually having one in your hands, says Jobs.

• iPad is one-half-inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds, and comes with 9.7 inch IPS display–“very high-quality display”
• Full capacitive multitouch
• 16GB-64GB flash storage
• iPad is powered by our Apple’s custom silicon–“We did it inhouse and it just screams,” says Jobs.
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, compass.
• Battery life: 10 hours.

“And in addition to 10 hours of battery life, iPad offers a full month of standby time,” Jobs notes. “It’s also a good environmental citizen,” he adds, noting that it’s a very green device.

10:31 am: Jobs invites Scott Forestall to the stage to talk about apps on the device.

“We built the iPad to run virtually every app in the App Store right out of the box,” Forestall says.

Evidently, a built-in pixel-doubling feature automatically scales iPhone apps to full-screen iPad apps.

10:35 am: Forestall runs an unmodified racing game from the App Store. He first demos it in the screen size of an iPhone. Then, using the pixel-doubling feature, he blows it out to full screen. Very slick.

“So you can buy the iPad, take it home, hook it up and download all your iPhone apps and run them with no problem at all,” he says.

Forestall announces a new iPhone software development kit specifically geared to the iPad. He notes that iPad-specific applications will be featured “front and center” in the App Store.
He then invites Gameloft’s Mark Hickey to the stage to demo some new games the company has developed using the new SDK.

Hickey notes that the iPad’s additional screen space is a boon for developers, particularly those building games. He demos a first-person shooter that showcases this. “We’re now able to interact with the game world in ways that we weren’t able to before.”

10:40 am: Next up, the New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz takes the stage to talk about its iPad effort.

After talking up the Times iPhone app, Nisenholtz segues to the the paper’s new iPad app: “We think we’ve captured the experience and essence of reading the newspaper.”

The app is largely what you’d expect. Tap to resize text, zoom, breaking news updates, video. “This is everything you love about the paper and everything you love about the Web.”

10:44 am: Now, a painting application called Brushes that was famously used to create a New Yorker cover.
The app is impressive enough on iPhone; it’s even more so on the iPad. It supports “playback” of paintings, and as the presenter notes, brings us one step closer to a real virtual painting studio.

10:46 am: EA’s Travis Boatman take’s the stage. The topic of his presentation: Need For Speed.

“Building for the iPad is a little bit like holding a high-def TV screen a few inches from your face,” he says.

The iPad version of Need for Speed boasts a number of touch-activated enhancements: Tap on the car to view its interior, tap on the rear-view mirror to look behind you.

10:52 am: Up next: MLB.com’s Chad Evans. He demos the outfit’s iPad-optimized app, which uses the device’s additional screen space to display video excerpts and MLB TV.

MLB TV can be streamed like and enhanced with onscreen stats and data. “This big display really allows us to create a much more immersive experience,” Evans says.

10:52 am: Forestall returns to the stage to make another brief plug for the SDK before Jobs takes over for him.
“Let me show you another one of our apps that we’re very excited about,” Jobs says. “An e-book reader.”

Behind him a photo of Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle appears. “Amazon did a great job with their reader and we’re standing on their shoulders here….Today we’re announcing the iBooks store,” says Jobs, adding that it will be supported initially by Penguin, Simon & Schuster and a number of other big publishers.

The iBooks Store interface begins with a simple bookshelf view. Tap the screen and it loads a more iTunes-like view. Purchase a book and it’s added to your bookshelf with a slick little animation.

The reading experience seems very appealing. Much more book-like. From where I sit, the pages look like they’re written on paper.

“We use the e-pub format, the most popular open-book format in the world,” says Jobs. “We think iPad is going to be a very popular e-reader not just for bestsellers, but for textbooks as well.”

10:58 am: And here’s another new product announcement: A new version of iWork tweaked for use on the iPad. Jobs invites Phil Schiller on stage to demo it.

“We have a completely new version of Keynote, a completely new version of Pages and a completely new version of Numbers–all optimized for multitouch.

Schiller demos Keynote first. Creating presentations appears intuitive and simple–a slide navigator on the left, tap to load individual slides in the main window, drag to rearrange.

Nice use of multitouch gestures to enhance the app. Pinch to resize photos, tap to insert animations and transitions. These are all fairly advanced techniques and the device seems to handle them well.

11:05 am: Moving on to Pages now. Also impressive, though creating a written document on a tablet device like the iPad seems like it might be a drag. A nice tool for editing, though. Simple controls.

11:07 am: Moving on to Numbers. This application also makes good use of multitouch gestures and boasts a data-entry keyboard along with some 250 built-in functions. The software’s gesture capabilities makes Excel look antediluvian.
Powerful and fast.

So what’s Apple going to charge for iWork? $9.99 each, says Schiller, who notes that all three applications are compatible with their Mac versions.

Jobs returns to the stage, grinning. “Isn’t that great?” he asks for what’s easily the 10th time. iPad, he says, will synch to Mac or PC via USB.

11:14 am: Evidently, there will be two iPad models–one with Wi-Fi-only and one with Wi-Fi and 3G. The 3G device will come with two plans: 250 MB per month for $14.99, unlimited data for $29.99.

And who’s the carrier? AT&T.

A small groan ripples through the audience.

Jobs allows that AT&T is also throwing in free Wi-Fi at its hotspots. He follows that up by noting that there are no contracts for the iPad. You can cancel at anytime.

All iPad 3G models are unlocked and they use new GSM micro SIMS, so chances are they will just work, Jobs says, after noting that Apple hasn’t yet worked out international carrier deals.

11:16 am: Now a quick overview as a wrap-up. Jobs touts the overall tablet experience along with the new iBook app and iBook Store. “This is an amazing product with tremendous breadth. What should we charge for it?…When we set out to develop the iPad we not only had aggressive UI goals, we had aggressive price goals, because we wanted to put this in the hands of as many people as possible….IPad pricing starts not at $999, but $499,” Jobs says to a huge round of applause.

$499 for 16GB base model.
32GB for $599.
64GB for $699.
Adding 3G requires an additional fee.

Apple will ship Wi-Fi models in 60 days and 3G models in 90.

11:20 am: Apple has created new accessories for the iPad: A standard dock and a second dock with a keyboard attached to it. “Keep one of these in your den and you can write the next “War and Peace” on it.” The final accessory, a new case that doubles as a stand.

Running a video now. It features a number of Apple execs enthusiastically talking up the iPad.

11:25 am: Let me circle back here for a moment to pricing. Adding 3G to iPad requires an additional $130. So we’re talking $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB and $829 for the 64GB version.

Designer Jon Ives on the iPad: “In many ways iPad defines our vision, our sense of what’s next.”

11:32 am: Jobs returns to the stage and recalls the “middle device” scenario he mentioned earlier today. “Can we create this new category? The bar is set pretty high, but we think we’ve got the goods.”

“This is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” he adds. “The reason the iPad is going to be so great is because Apple has always strived to be at the junction of technology and liberal arts.”

And with that he concludes. Lights go up and Dylan begins playing over the speakers again.

View the slideshow

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• Apple’s Tablet: A $2.8 Billion Business?
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• Apple Announces Jan. 27 Special Event: “Come See Our Latest Creation”
• Major Apple Product Announcement Set for Wednesday, Jan. 27
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• Time (Finally) for the Tablet? Apple Developers Supersizing Their Apps for January Event.
• The Apple Tablet Is Delayed? So What?
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• Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?
• Imaginary Demand for Mythical Apple Tablet Exceeds All Estimates
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• iFugly

Lonely Planet, best known as a traditional travel guidebook publisher, is announcing a new U.S. head tomorrow, as it increasingly moves to reposition the company as much more of a “cross-media” platform.

John Boris–set to take over today as new managing director of Lonely Planet Americas, based at its Oakland, Calif., office–comes to the company from Zagat Survey, where he was the SVP of marketing and interactive.

Previous to that, Boris worked at 1-800 Flowers and Fresh Direct.

“I’m thrilled to be joining one of the world’s best-loved travel brands at such an exciting time, with Lonely Planet rapidly evolving as a cross-media travel player,” he said in a press release.

As the paid versus free content online debate gets louder over the next year, how well known brands like Lonely Planet–which has a strong reputation among consumers–handle the fallout will be more and more interesting to watch.

Indeed, in recent months, Lonely Planet has been escalating its digital content efforts, which was the initial promise when BBC Worldwide bought 75 percent of the Melbourne, Australia-based company for about $200 million in late 2007.

But the digitization of Lonely Planet’s business, as with many traditional media publishers like it, has been slow going, with 75 percent of its revenue still in print.

While that business remains profitable, the breakdown between print and digital will be changing sooner than later, since digital is where much of the growth is coming from, said CEO Matt Goldberg to me over a recent dinner in San Francisco.

Goldberg–who came to Lonely Planet early this year from Dow Jones, where he was SVP of digital strategy and operations, including for WSJ.com–noted that Lonely Planet’s digital businesses have doubled their revenues to $20 million this year via premium pricing and advertising.

Besides the obvious use of Twitter and Facebook, Goldberg flagged a number of the more promising and innovative digital initiatives now at work at Lonely Planet, especially in its key U.S. market.

They include:

* Leveraging the 700,000 registered members of Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree community,

* The announcement this week of putting all or part of 600 of its travel guides on the international release of the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle e-reader.

* Work on collaborative trip planning for its “Trippy” gadget, as part of the Google Wave beta launched last week.

* A compass application for Google (GOOG) Android handsets that make use of augmented reality technology to highlight points of interest in cities. As Goldberg described it in an email, travelers will be able to “pan a city destination using the video on their handset and see Lonely Planet recommendations (points of interest from our City Guides) as virtual sticky notes above real live points of interest.”

* Over 500,000 downloads from around 70 premium-priced apps on the iPhone from Apple (AAPL), as well as various location-based guide apps for Nokia (NOK) and BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM).

* Travel music collections featured on Spotify and other online music services.

Goldberg highlighted other interesting ideas, such as an online travel video contest and even a “hack” day in Australia recently, which will be followed by one in the U.S. in the late winter.

While not all of it is going to work, this kind of endless experimentation at Lonely Planet is probably the right way to keep figuring out how to deal with the seismic media shifts that show no sign of abating.

But the iPhone is drawing increasing competition from entrenched smart-phone makers anxious to emulate the upstart. The most significant of these is Palm’s (PALM) impressive new Pre, which is off to a good start with an estimated 100,000 or so units sold since it launched on June 6.

So, like a shark, Apple (AAPL) must keep moving. This week, it is introducing two new products designed to consolidate and increase its position as the leader in this new generation of hand-held computers. I’ve been testing both and I like them a lot, with some minor caveats.

One of the new products is a refreshed model of the iPhone itself, called the iPhone 3G S. It looks the same, but offers more speed, more memory, more battery life, and a few new features, including video recording and a better camera for still photos.

The second is OS 3.0, the third version of the iPhone’s operating system, which comes on the 3G S and also can be installed on all prior iPhones and Touches. It includes a much longer list of added features, some innovative and some long overdue catch-ups to other phones. These include such widely requested capabilities as cut, copy and paste; systemwide searching; a wider virtual keyboard; and a feature called MMS that allows users to send photos and videos directly to other phones without using email.

Apple last week also made a bold business move to complement these new products. It decided to keep making the current model, the iPhone 3G, and to slash its price by 50%, to $99. That’s an unheard-of price tag for a pocket computer of this power and versatility, and gives millions of additional consumers a reason to choose the iPhone instead of a competitor.

In my tests, both the new phone and the new operating system performed well, with a few small exceptions. I believe the two strengthen the iPhone platform, make it likely the iPhone will continue to attract scads of apps, and are good for consumers.

But I also regard these changes as more evolutionary than revolutionary, and I don’t think this latest iPhone is as compelling an upgrade for the average user as the 3G model was last year for owners of the original 2007 iPhone.

Current iPhone owners can get an improved product by merely sticking with their existing phones and upgrading to the feature-laden new operating system, which is free (it costs $10 for iPod Touch owners), rather than shelling out at least $199 for the new iPhone 3G S. And many new iPhone buyers can opt for the $99 3G model, which is not only cheaper, but also greatly improved by the new OS 3.0.

On the other hand, power users will crave the new model’s much-better performance, battery life, storage and other features. And some will want the new model because, unlike the current model, it’s capable of handling a new cellular network feature that, in the next few years, will offer double the current data speeds.

The new, free operating system is available for download starting June 17. The iPhone 3G S will go on sale June 19 for $199 for a version with 16 gigabytes of memory, and $299 for 32 gigabytes of memory. Those memory capacities are double the amounts offered on the previous model last year at the same prices, and far exceed the built-in memory on most competing smart phones.

These prices are for new U.S. customers on the AT&T network, plus current owners who are eligible for what AT&T (T) calls a “standard” upgrade. If you already own an older iPhone, you could pay $200 more to upgrade, depending on how far along you are in your two-year service contract and how much you spend monthly. But AT&T, stung by criticism in recent days, has just decided to offer the lower, new-customer prices at launch to iPhone 3G owners eligible for upgrades at any time up to Sept. 30 of this year, even if they were originally told they’d have to pay the $200 premium.

Before I detail the new features and how they worked in my tests, let me state up-front what the new iPhone and its new operating system don’t deliver. The iPhone still lacks a physical keyboard. It still can’t run more than one third-party app at a time, as the Pre does. Its otherwise excellent Web browser still can’t play videos created in Adobe’s Flash software, which is widely used on the Web. And it still isn’t available on any U.S. carrier besides AT&T.

Also, AT&T won’t enable MMS until late this summer, even though dozens of other iPhone carriers in other countries are doing so immediately. And AT&T hasn’t set a date by which it will offer tethering, a new iPhone feature that allows the device to be used as a modem for a laptop. Other carriers in other countries are allowing this right away.

Here’s a rundown of the most important new features of both the new hardware and software, and how they performed in my tests.

The iPhone 3G S

Speed: To me, this is the most important feature of the new iPhone 3G S. In fact, the “S” in the name stands for speed. During my week of testing, the new model proved dramatically snappier in every way than my iPhone 3G. Its processor is 50% faster than in the prior model, and it sports a new graphics chip.

Applications opened much more quickly. Web pages loaded far faster. The camera was ready to use almost instantly. And I never once saw the occasional, annoying iPhone behavior where you strike a key while typing and it sits there, seemingly stuck, before you can continue.

Cellular-data speeds were about the same, but in repeated testing on different Wi-Fi networks, the 3G S racked up speeds 30% to 50% faster than on the 3G running at the same time on the same networks.

Battery Life: On my 3G iPhone, I usually could make it through the day, but it was often a close call, with the battery indicator winding up in the red. By contrast, the new model did much better, never hitting the red zone and rarely requiring interim charging at the office or in the car, even though, because I was testing it, I was pounding it much harder than usual, making more voice calls, playing lots of videos and music, trying numerous apps, constantly downloading email from two accounts, and syncing two calendars over the air.

Apple claims about the same talk time for the new model as on the old, and about the same Web-surfing time over the cellular network. But it says the 3G S gets about 50% more battery life when playing videos or surfing the Internet over Wi-Fi and 25% more time — an astounding 30 hours — for continuous music playback.

Memory: With the new 32-gigabyte model, I was able to store over 3,000 songs, more than 1,600 photos, 74 videos, 67 applications, 400 emails, nearly 1,000 contacts, months of calendar data, and dozens of documents, and still have 5 gigabytes left over—more than most phones offer out of the box.

Camera: The new model’s camera has a 3 megapixel resolution, up from 2 megapixels, and has autofocus and a feature that lets you tap the screen to change the focus to an object or person in the background of a shot. It still lacks zoom or a flash, though it does better in low light. It also has a macro feature for close-up shots. In my tests, all of this worked, but I didn’t think the pictures it took were dramatically better than those on the old model, and it can’t compete with phones like Nokia’s (NOK) new $700 N97, which has a 5-megapixel camera with zoom.

Video: The new video recorder worked well, even in low light, and lets you post videos directly to YouTube, among other places. You can also trim your videos right on the phone. This all worked well, but the videos aren’t high definition, and pale in comparison to those on the latest HD model of the popular $229 Flip pocket camcorder.

Voice Control: By simply holding down the new iPhone’s home button, you can dial contacts and control music playback by uttering voice commands. The phone will even tell you which song is playing. Like most voice-recognition systems, this one isn’t perfect. But it worked most of the time.

Compass: I don’t consider this important for most users, but it did work when I was walking or driving. It can orient maps in the direction you’re heading.

Small Touches: You can optionally turn on a new battery indicator that shows a precise percentage of battery life left. The screen has a new coating that resists oil and grease from fingerprints.

Downsides: The new phone crashed on me twice during my tests. Once, the voice-control feature killed the sound on the built-in iPod, requiring a reboot. But I couldn’t replicate this problem. Another time, the phone froze while downloading a TV show. Apple blamed this on a prerelease server issue, and it didn’t happen again.

iPhone Operating System 3.0

Copy, Cut and Paste: Apple is late with this common feature, but it’s the best implementation I’ve seen on a phone. In a text page, you just double tap on a word, and it is selected with little handles around it that let you expand or contract the selected area. Then, you just click on a copy icon that pops up over the selection. To paste, you tap elsewhere in the page, or even in another app, and a paste icon pops up. Click that icon, and the selected text is pasted in. It worked well in all my tests.

The feature works a bit differently for some Web pages, where you hold down your finger over an area and it selects a whole block of text, like a paragraph, but still has the handles that allow adjusting the selection. It also allows copying and pasting photos. You can also just select a word or a section or a whole page of text and delete it. And if you want to undo a paste, just shake the phone.

Some Web pages and third-party apps don’t yet support this feature, but most do.

Search: Before, you could search only in the Contacts app. Now, there are search features in Mail, Calendar, the built-in iPod and Notes. And there is a way to search the whole phone at once. You just hit the home button, slowly, twice, and a special search screen appears. Type in any phrase, and it brings up every instance in multiple apps.

This is another catch-up feature, but it works well. For instance, when I searched for the word “Phil,” it brought up songs by Phil Collins, a note about Philadelphia, calendar items mentioning people named Phil or Phillips, emails to or from people with those names, and contacts for people named Phil or Phillips.

In email, the search function will even find messages that aren’t on your phone but that are stored on the servers of certain email services. For instance, I was able to almost instantly find emails from two years ago stored on Google’s (GOOG) Gmail.

One downside — in email, search looks for words only in email headers, not in the body of the messages.

Landscape Keyboard: In older iPods, the only built-in program that supported a wider, landscape keyboard, which is better for thumb typing, was the Web browser. Now, you can turn the phone horizontally and use a landscape keyboard in the Mail, Messages and Notes programs as well.

Find My iPhone: If you belong to Apple’s $99 a year MobileMe service, you can now locate a lost iPhone on a map on any computer, send the iPhone a message saying how to return it to you, and cause it to emit a beep, even if the sound is turned off. I tested this and it worked well. You can even remotely wipe all your data off the phone.

Voice Memos: The OS includes a Voice Memo app that lets you dictate reminders or other messages, and then edit and email them. I found it worked well.

Navigation: Another catch-up feature, turn-by-turn navigation with voice prompts, is also now supported. I tested this with a third-party app called Gokivo, and it did OK, though the developer admits to a prerelease bug I encountered.

Auto-Authentication: In the new OS, the iPhone can remember your log-in credentials for commercial Wi-Fi hotspot services, so you don’t have to enter them again and again. Unfortunately, in my tests with the AT&T Wi-Fi service, this failed repeatedly in several Starbucks (SBUX) shops. Apple blames a glitch in my prerelease phone’s SIM card.

Push Notification: To make up for its lack of multitasking, the new iPhone OS has a feature where third-party apps can notify you of new events, like a sports score, or a new invitation to an online game. I tried this with a game called TapTap Revenge, and it worked fine.

Stocks: The built-in stock application now has much more detailed data, including market cap, news headlines and price/earnings ratio for each stock.

MMS and Tethering: I couldn’t test these useful features because my tests were all done on AT&T, which hasn’t rolled them out.

Minor Touches: You can now move an icon among screens with one continuous motion, instead of stopping at each screen. And there are two more screens to house icons. You can finally synchronize Notes with your PC or Mac. You also can now maintain both calendars and contacts synced wirelessly with online services and those synced via cable with your computer. And you can play games and transfer files wirelessly over Bluetooth with other iPods or Touches that are nearby.

Bottom Line: Both the new iPhone and iPhone OS are packed with features that make a great product even better. But, for many users, the software may be enough of a boost to keep them from buying the new model.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090617/new-iphone-is-better-model-or-just-get-os-30/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080829/comcast-busts-a-cap/ http://allthingsd.com/20080829/comcast-busts-a-cap/#comments Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:00:33 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=4146

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080829/comcast-busts-a-cap/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080827/magnetic-cows/ http://allthingsd.com/20080827/magnetic-cows/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:19:04 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=3922 Holy cow. … Cattle grazing or at rest tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction–just like a compass needle. This according to European researchers who scrutinized Google Earth (GOOG) photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds around the world. Plotted onto a compass, the animals’ positions were generally within five degrees of magnetic north or south. “The magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment,” the researchers wrote in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. “Our analysis … clearly provides the crucial proof in favor of the Earth’s magnetic field being the responsive cue.”

An interesting observation, especially since cows’ … animal magnetism has been chalked up to wind and the angle of the sun for hundreds of years.

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