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iPhone 3GS — Technical Specifications (Apple Support)

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The iPhone 3GS is a smartphone designed and marketed by Apple, and the third generation of the iPhone. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8, 2009 — the first iPhone introduced by Phil Schiller rather than Steve Jobs, who was on medical leave — and released on June 19, 2009. The "S" officially stood for "Speed."

Externally the 3GS is nearly indistinguishable from the iPhone 3G; the changes are almost entirely internal. A new Cortex-A8 processor and doubled RAM made the phone roughly twice as fast in practice, a 3-megapixel autofocus camera brought video recording to the iPhone for the first time, and a digital compass, Voice Control, and faster 7.2 Mbps 3G rounded out the update. It established the "S-year" cadence — a major redesign one year, an internal speed-and-camera refresh the next — that Apple would follow for most of the following decade.

The 3GS became one of the longest-serving iPhones ever sold. After the iPhone 4 launched it stayed on as the entry model, dropping to $99 and eventually to free-on-contract, and it was not discontinued until September 2012 — nearly three and a half years after release — with software support continuing into 2014.

The iPhone 3GS reused the iPhone 3G's curved polycarbonate design almost exactly: same 115.5 × 62.1 × 12.3 mm dimensions, same black and white color options, and the same 3.5-inch 320 × 480 display. At 135 grams it is two grams heavier than the 3G. The most visible tell is the shinier text on the back, matching the case's gloss.

One genuinely new surface treatment mattered in daily use: the screen gained an oleophobic (oil-repelling) coating, making fingerprints far easier to wipe off — a first for the industry.

The 3GS moved to a Samsung S5PC100 system-on-a-chip with an ARM Cortex-A8 core at 600 MHz — a generational jump from the ARM11 design used in the first two iPhones — plus PowerVR SGX535 graphics with OpenGL ES 2.0 support and 256 MB of RAM, double the 3G's. Apple advertised the phone as "up to 2x faster," and real-world app launches and web rendering roughly bore that out.

Cellular data doubled too, with HSDPA 7.2 support. A magnetometer enabled the new Compass app and, more importantly, map orientation. Storage launched at 16 and 32 GB; an 8 GB variant introduced in June 2010 carried the model as the budget option late in its life.

The new 3-megapixel camera added autofocus with tap-to-focus — the shot refocuses and re-exposes around wherever the user touches — along with automatic white balance and macro support. The headline feature was video: VGA-resolution recording at 30 frames per second, with basic trim editing on the phone and direct upload to YouTube. The iPhone finally recording video removed one of the most common reasons to carry a separate device, though there was still no flash and no front camera.

The 3GS shipped with iPhone OS 3.0, which brought the platform's long-awaited copy and paste, MMS, Spotlight search, and push notifications for third-party apps. Voice Control — a precursor to Siri — let users dial contacts and control music by voice, exclusive to the 3GS at launch.

Its support life became legendary. The 3GS received iOS 4 (2010), iOS 5 (2011), and iOS 6 (2012), with a final security update — iOS 6.1.6 — arriving in February 2014, almost five years after the hardware debuted. Unlike the iPhone 3G's difficult iOS 4 experience, the 3GS's doubled RAM and faster processor let it absorb later updates gracefully; it even supported iOS 4's multitasking, which the 3G did not.

Apple sold over one million iPhone 3GS units in the launch weekend, matching the 3G's record pace despite the phone being an internal refresh. Reviews were strongly positive, with a consistent caveat: the upgrade mattered far more to owners of the original iPhone than to 3G owners mid-contract. The speed increase, camera, and video recording drew praise; the unchanged design and screen resolution — by then trailing rivals' displays — drew most of the criticism.

AT&T's network exclusivity in the United States remained a sore point, as did the carrier's delays enabling MMS and tethering, features the phone supported elsewhere at launch.

After the iPhone 4 arrived in June 2010, the 3GS continued as the $99 model, and from October 2011 it was free with a two-year contract — the phone that introduced millions of budget buyers to the platform. It was discontinued on September 12, 2012, alongside the iPhone 5's announcement.

The 3GS created the template of the "S" iteration: keep the body, transform the internals. It proved that an off-year refresh could sell at full flagship pace, and its four-plus years of software updates set an expectation of long support life that became one of the iPhone's defining competitive advantages — a lineage that runs unbroken to the current iPhone 17 generation.