Why doesn't Apple enable some 3GS features on the 3G?

This has been discussed before. For one voice support is very challenging programatically.

vinay427 said:

Hey,

I've always wondered why Apple doesn't enable the various 3GS features on the 3G that can be enabled? Here are the features I thought of.

1. voice command
2. battery percentage meter
3. video (like Cycorder)

Here are the reasons I thought of so far.

1. reason to buy the 3GS (the most obvious one)
2. has to have something new and ready for WWDC

Also, don't say that it will make 3GS owners mad, because if they had enabled as part of 3.0 or something 3GS owners would have known that it was also on the 3G before they bought the device.

Can anyone think of any other reasons for why they did that?

And don't flame me. I'm just asking for answers to a question that has remained in my head for a week now.

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1. Voice Command probably requires extra hardware
2. Battery Meter: They probably think that the battery on the 3G will not display accurate results with the %
3. Video: Video Editing does not make sense without a video camera. The video camera requires a new camera/new hardware.

vinay427 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there wouldn't be any difference be of putting it on the 3G and the 3GS. It could have been integrated into 3.0.

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No because it needs a more powerful processor to run.

vinay427 said:

Hey,

I've always wondered why Apple doesn't enable the various 3GS features on the 3G that can be enabled? Here are the features I thought of.

1. voice command
2. battery percentage meter
3. video (like Cycorder)

Here are the reasons I thought of so far.

1. reason to buy the 3GS (the most obvious one)
2. has to have something new and ready for WWDC

Also, don't say that it will make 3GS owners mad, because if they had enabled as part of 3.0 or something 3GS owners would have known that it was also on the 3G before they bought the device.

Can anyone think of any other reasons for why they did that?

And don't flame me. I'm just asking for answers to a question that has remained in my head for a week now.

Click to expand...

Because the hardware does not support Apple's implementation of the feature. If you are familiar with Apple, you know the quality of video from Cycorder would not meet their standards.

As far as the other two features, it has been speculated that voice control takes advantage of new digital signal processing hardware. I'd guess that the 3G battery does not report its charge accurately enough for Apple to consider a percentage to be reliable.

what about the % batt

thats totally hardware too lol...

vinay427 said:

My responses:
1. No, it probably doesn't. What other hardware would it need then?
2. A device that can't keep track of its exact battery stats is pretty pathetic. It knows when 20% and 10% levels are reached though.
3. There is Cycorder that works fine.

How does it require a better processor? It's just like running any other app. AFAIK, it's not even background tasking when Voice Command is open.

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You're right - Apple didn't put these in 3.0 just so that people would have to buy the 3GS to get those features...

vinay427 said:

3. There is Cycorder that works fine.

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The iPhone 3GS records 30 fps at VGA (640x480) resolution.

Cycorder records 6-15 fps at 384x288.

Big difference.

vinay427 said:

Do you have any proof for that? I Googled "iPhone Digital Signal Processing" and came up with nothing relating the two.

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No proof. That's why I called it speculation.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/06/17/3g-s-hardware-thurrott

vinay427 said:

My responses:
1. No, it probably doesn't. What other hardware would it need then?
2. A device that can't keep track of its exact battery stats is pretty pathetic. It knows when 20% and 10% levels are reached though.
3. There is Cycorder that works fine.



How does it require a better processor? It's just like running any other app. AFAIK, it's not even background tasking when Voice Command is open.

EDIT: Saw posts 6 and 7 above. I stand corrected about the battery percentage if that's true. Cycorder worked fine when I tried it. It was smooth and crisp.

EDIT2: Do you have any proof for that? I Googled "iPhone Digital Signal Processing" and came up with nothing relating the two.

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What extra hardware? Faster processor with more Level 1 cache and Level 2 cache not present in the iPhone and iPhone 3G processor and double the ram. Voice recognition requires more processing power and ram.

You might be right about the battery percentage but Cycoder is crap in comparison to the 3Gs camera and the hardware in the 3G lacks auto focus capability.

Because they want the older iphone users to upgrade.

Just Jailbreak youll get most of the features you want.

if my 5 year old sony ericsson can do high quality video, voice control, battery percentage, why cant the iPhone 3G one of the most technologically advanced and most powerful phone in the world???

But aren't there already some voice recognition applications in the AppStore that can be used with the iPhone 3G? Unless of course that Apple's voice recognition is just too sophisticated for the hardware, which I honestly don't think it is.

tinny the cat said:

if my 5 year old sony ericsson can do high quality video, voice control, battery percentage, why cant the iPhone 3G one of the most technologically advanced and most powerful phone in the world???

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Apple could have implemented the features you describe at a quality consistent with your 5 year old phone. They chose to do it better (in their opinion).

M-5 said:

But aren't there already some voice recognition applications in the AppStore that can be used with the iPhone 3G? Unless of course that Apple's voice recognition is just too sophisticated for the hardware, which I honestly don't think it is.

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It doesn't matter if they wrote the software to take advantage of specific hardware features that are not present in the 3G. The processor and related components may be optimized for specific functions (video encoding, audio decoding, etc.)

I can use voice control on my Original iPhone. An App called "Say Who". It can be used to tell the iPhone who to call. It can use to much processing power to have the iPhone realize you want "Are We The Waiting" to play. The Original and iPhone 3G have their processor running at 412 MHZ, but can run at 600 MHZ! The 3GS has a processor running at 600 MHZ and it can go up to 833 MHZ. So they could make the processor run at full speed. Also can't they use some of the flash based storage as RAM? And about battery life, iFixit says "Apple promises improved battery life with the 3GS. The battery is listed as 3.7V and 4.51 Whr. This comes out to 1219 mAh, compared to 1150 mAh on the 3G. That's only a 6% increase." The Original iPhone's battery is a 1200 mAh.
Not too much of a difference. So could boost the speed and lower the battery life just by a little. So the iPhone and iPhone 3G could handle voice control and run as fast as the 3GS, but then Apple wouldn't be selling to many 3GSes.

BaldiMac said:

Apple could have implemented the features you describe at a quality consistent with your 5 year old phone. They chose to do it better (in their opinion).

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but they could do 10x better than the sony with the iPhone 3G

BaldiMac said:

It doesn't matter if they wrote the software to take advantage of specific hardware features that are not present in the 3G. The processor and related components may be optimized for specific functions (video encoding, audio decoding, etc.)

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Are you saying it's not possible to implement their Voice Recognition into the 3G? Plenty of 3rd party voice recognition apps already work on the 3G; I cannot see how Apple can't make it function on last gen's hardware.

M-5 said:

Are you saying it's not possible to implement their Voice Recognition into the 3G? Plenty of 3rd party voice recognition apps already work on the 3G; I cannot see how Apple can't make it function on last gen's hardware.

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No, I'm speculating that their implementation of voice control does not work on the 3G.

They could make it function on the 3G. The question is could they make it function up to their standards. They chose to not spend additional time re-engineering the feature to work less efficiently on the older hardware.

Also, keep in mind that the voice control is tied into the new accessibility features as well. It may also be a core technology that has capabilities that are not evident at this time.