Whilst waiting for our eagerly awaited 3GS phone to arrive (sadly, local stores have sold out, so we ordered online), we decided to test drive the new OS 3.0 on the 3G version of the phone.

Here’s what we found

1. Since it’s a major upgrade, it took some time to download and install the new software – its ~230 MB. But as always installation is as simple as you can imagine. We chose to back up our entire phone before installing the new OS 3.0. So it added to the installation time.

2. We had to realign all our apps starting from the second screen. This might have happened because the first page was full on the phone. The problem was caused by the new addition of “Voice Memos”, which by default, gets added on the home screen, pushing an existing app to second screen. Hence, apps on the second screen are pushed to the third (you get the idea!), and effectively, our second screen was left with just one app!

Tip:  If you have not installed OS 3.0 yet, create a couple of blank spaces on the home screen by moving some apps to the next screen. Then install the new software. Hopefully your existing apps might stay intact.

3. The sound quality of the “Voice Memos” application is great when compared to some of the free voice records available on app store.

4. There is no video recording facility on the iPhone 3G (we were aware of this, but it’s always good to reconfirm with a live test). This feature comes along with hardware improvements in the new 3GS.

5. Spotlight Search page is awesome, to say the least. You can search for any text across multiple apps like Notes, Email, Contacts etc., and the results are instantaneous.

6. With the new OS 3.0, you can (finally!) share/send a contact’s detail to another phone via MMS. It seemed to have been an obvious omission and many users were crying for this functionality. Even though it’s a seemingly basic feature in other phones, this was lacking in the 3G version. With the OS upgrade, you can now share a contact using MMS or email.

Tip: If you are expecting a business card from a non iPhone user, ask them to send it as MMS. Otherwise you will not receive it.

7. You still can’t forward an SMS/MMS message to other phones. But at least there is a work around available now. You can use the good old technique of “copy & paste”. Choose the message you want to forward, press on the message for a second or two. Copy option pops up. Copy it and then paste in a new message. Crude, yet workable.

8. A minor bug seems to have also crept in. Sometimes, the screen goes blank while on a call and you can’t receive the incoming second call or navigate to other applications like maps, contacts, notes. This problem was there in 2.2.X also but is occurring quite often since our upgrade to OS 3.0.

We are still continuing to test, so keep watching this space for more tips and findings!