The iPhone 3GS hits Australia on June 26 and, though few people outside Apples Silicon Valley headquarters have had the chance to play with the coveted device, Apple has shown off what it claims is its biggest, baddest and most impressive iPhone yet.

Speed
We're told the S in 3GS stands for speed. Apple says the new phone is its fastest to date, with speeds at least twice that of its predecessor. The company says the 3GS will load a game, Sim City, for example, 2.4 times faster than the iPhone 3G, while surfing a graphic-heavy website will be at least 2.9 times faster.

Camera
The iPhone finally gets the ability to shoot video and the in-phone cameras resolution has been bumped up from two megapixels to three megapixels. The camera also now supports autofocus, but, arguably, all these features should have been included in the iPhone 3G when it launched a year ago. Tap-in-focus is a new feature that allows the iPhone to auto focus regions of a photo just by tapping that a specific area.

The VGA video camera shoots at 30fps and includes auto focus, auto white balance and auto exposure while the ability to perform basic editing and instant sharing to YouTube with the phone is promising.

Battery life
Apple hasn't said much about the 3GSs battery life except that it has improved, allegedly offering up to nine hours when surfing the internet via Wi-Fi (up from six hours), at least 30 hours audio playback (up from 24 hours) and up to 10 hours video playback (up from seven hours). Of course, inadequate battery life has been one of the biggest frustrations of previous iPhones, which tend to spend inordinate amounts of time on charge, so seeing is most definitely believing in this case.

Voice
Apple's iPhone 3GS preview didn't include a working example of this feature, just lots of pretty pictures. The company says the iPhone 3GS will allow users to control their phone and music collection using voice commands such as "call home", "what song is playing" or "play playlist Jogging" to call up a playlist called Jogging. Of course, well have to wait to see how well this feature works in the real world, let alone with the Aussie accent.

Other cool stuff
A new ET-phone-home feature called Find My iPhone allows owners to track lost iPhones, be it in the loungroom or another city. If the phone is not lost, but stolen or irretrievable, it can be wiped remotely, ensuring your private data doesn't end up in the wrong hands. Copy, cut and paste finally comes to the iPhone and works across applications. Also new to the iPhone is the inclusion of a digital compass. Were not really sure why.

Price
At the time of writing, Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Virgin had not yet announced pricing, but it is expected to be, roughly, in accordance with US costs where the 32 Gb model sells for US$299 ($365) and the 16Gb model for US$199 ($243). The price of the existing 8Gb iPhone 3Gs will drop to US$99 (about $120) but there no news yet whether that price reduction will trickle through to Australia.

What's not included
Missing are some obvious features such as the ability to multitask, a feature available on the competing Palm Pre, as well as a memory card slot and Flash support for the iPhones Safari browser.