Review: iPhone 3GS
The biggest changes to messaging in the iPhone aren't yet available. Apple has finally given the iPhone the ability to send MMS messages - meaning pictures, voice memos and video clips. Sadly, this feature is network-dependent, and AT&T isn't quite ready to switch it on yet. It's quite a shame.
In the mean time the one new feature that is going to have the biggest impact on messaging is the cut-and-paste feature. Yes, we know other phones have had this capability forever. It works really well on the iPhone.
On the screen with the text you want to copy, press and hold the screen near that text. Let go, and a menu will appear to select, select all. It selects what it thinks you wanted, but you can adjust it by sliding the two small dots that appear at the beginning and end of the selected text. When you're done highlighting, you can choose to copy or cut that text. (A paste option also appears if you've previously copied something.) If you copy it, it will be stored in the phone's memory. You can then paste it into another text field by repeating the same process. It is VERY handy when composing text messages or emails and you want to send a portion of the same information to someone else, but not all of the content of any given message.
The SMS application has been changed a bit. The progress bar you see as messages are sending has become less prominent, providing a visual cue that you don't need to wait for it to finish sending before starting something else. You can also now "edit" a message thread. Clicking the "Edit" button lets you select individual messages in that thread and either delete or forward them.
As for email, that application is mostly unchanged, too. It's still just as easy to set up accounts from Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft Exchange and other email providers. I wish Apple had changed the maximum number of emails that can be stored in any one email account at a time. The max is still 200 emails, which is barely one day's worth of email for me. The best new feature here is the ability to search the inbox. The search field can be found at the top of the inbox, and it will search all the emails stored on the device. This can be awesome or severely limited (as in my case) depending on how many emails you get and need access to at any one time. You can also select multiple messages for deleting or moving to other folders. That's helpful.
Also, according to some, there appears to be a size limit for video files that are attached to emails. I didn't run into this problem, but others did. It turns out, if the video is too long (or too big a file) the email application will spit you out into the video editing screen, with a pre-selected portion of the video trimmed at what is, apparently, the "correct" length.
Apple iPhone 3GS
