Voice Quality Battle: iPhone First Gen vs. iPhone 3G

Most of the early reviews of the iPhone 3G have cited vastly improved call quality, partly due to work Apple has done to the hardware and partly due to the inherent boost you get when you’re within 3G coverage. To put the iPhone 3G to the test, we tried a little experiment. Mind you, it’s not exactly scientific, but we think it will give you an idea of how much improved the iPhone 3G is over the first-gen iPhone.

Download the MP3 files below and listen for yourself.

For the first test, we made two calls indoors, one with the first-gen iPhone and the second with the iPhone 3G. We read the same paragraph from a New York Times movie review of the awful Love Guru and attempted to do so at the same volume in our voice. Both iPhones were set to max volume before placing the call. Have a listen at the first two tests and decide for yourself which sounds better. To me, the first-gen iPhone sounds ok, but I definitely noticed more fuzziness on the line. Some words are garbled. With the iPhone 3G, the call sounds much clearer and very few words are clipped.

Listen to a recording of a call made from indoors with the first gen iPhone

Listen to a recording of a call made from indoors with the iPhone 3G

For our second test, we took both iPhones right outside our office in Times Square and read the same paragraph when leaving a voicemail message. Please forgive the geekiness of my voice. What’s most dramatic here is the difference in volume between the two calls. Again, I tried my best not to shout on either call, but the iPhone 3G call was much louder, maybe because the iPhone 3G does a better job of minimizing background noise. On the first-gen iPhone voicemail, my voice sounds faint and like it’s trying to compete with the sound of traffic in the background.

Bottom line: you won’t need to shout when you’re on a call with the iPhone 3G to be heard.

There’s one other point I wanted to make. During the outdoor test on the first-gen iPhone, I couldn’t even hear the voicemail beep on my end and didn’t know exactly when I could start leaving the message. On the iPhone 3G, the beep was perfectly audible. Stay tuned for a our full review, but for now I have full confidence in saying the iPhone 3G is a much better phone.

Listen to a recording of a call made from the city street with the first gen iPhone

Listen to a recording of a call made from the city street with the iPhone 3G