Upgrading? Here's what you need to know...

If you're upgrading from a Blackberry or even from an iPhone 3G (2008), here's what you need to know about the iPhone 3GS (2009).

THE GOOD:
- Battery life is excellent. I used the phone for over 8 hours yesterday and still had 20% battery left. Much improved over the 2008 model.
- The screen has an anti-smudge coating which works WONDERS! I have yet to see a smudge or fingerprint on the front of the phone.
- The camera is noticeably sharper when taking pictures. It's also a little bit "warmer". The auto-focus feature is very cool.
- VIDEO! You can take hours and hours of video, trim them as needed, and then upload them directly to YouTube. Very streamlined. Very easy.
- Copy & Paste works surprisingly well with the touchscreen. You can only copy one thing at a time though.
- The phone is fast. Applications open quickly. Contacts load immediately. Browsing the internet is a breeze with Safari.
- There is a "hard" switch to turn on Vibrate (located just above the volume rocker), which is great for when you are about to walk into a meeting and need to quickly ensure that your phone won't be ringing at the wrong time.
- When you talk on the phone, the screen itself turns off, which saves a ton on battery life.
- There is a built-in compass, so when you use Google Maps w/ GPS, you can actually see which direction you're headed.
- You can use the Apple iTunes Store on your phone to download not only songs, but also TV Shows & Movies. You can do this over the 3G network. Did I mention there are 50,000+ apps available to download as well?
- If you subscribe to MobileMe ($100/yr), all your contacts, bookmarks, calendars, & emails are synced automatically, which is great if you ever have to switch to another iPhone (via an upgrade/replacement, etc). You can also use a feature called "Find My iPhone" which shows exactly where your phone is located on a map (using GPS).
- If you don't subscribe to MobileMe, you can still have all your contacts, calendars, & emails pushed to your phone using Gmail, Google Calendar, as well as other options like Outlook/MS Exchange, Yahoo!, and AOL.
- Visual Voicemail is really cool, and comes standard (i.e. you see a listing of who called; click on their name and hear their voicemail without having to call your normal VM number).

THE BAD:
- Typing on this phone can be difficult. There is a predictive typing feature, which helps, but until you get used to the on-screen keyboard, don't expect to type as fast as you could on the Blackberry.
- There is no T9 option either, if that's what you're used to.
- Unless you install some sort of hack or mod, your carrier will properly charge you for Laptop Tethering (i.e. using your phone's internet connection on your laptop).
- Very little in way of customizing the phone's home-screen/desktop. You can set a background, but it only appears when the phone is locked. You can move icons around, but you can't change icons or put them into folders.
- The global "spotlight" search works great... except it won't search your text messages.
- You can't delete all your text messages as once if you're looking to free up some space.

THE UGLY:
- AT&T won't support MMS until later this year.
- Certain "sounds" the phone makes are followed by a high-pitch whine which is clearly noticeable & quite annoying.
- Both of the "UGLY" should be fixed in the coming months, so don't let that deter you from picking up this amazing phone.