Apple iPhone 3G S Headphones

Frequency Response (6.69)

The iPhone 3G S headphones have a really decent frequency response. They aren’t perfect, but they did a good job of falling within our limits. The bass trails off towards the low end, which might not be desirable. There’s also a bit of a fall off after the 7kHz line, followed by a bit of a spike at 10kHz.

In general, the response was even. We had no real complaints here.

Click here for more information on our frequency response test.

Distortion (0.69)

As you may or may not have guessed by the score or the graph to the right, the iPhone 3G S’ headphones aren’t the best in terms of distortion. In fact, they’re pretty bad.

The reason for this low-end distortion is likely due to the headphones’ design. Since they sit outside the ear canal, there’s no seal between the headphones and your ear. Therefore, instead of pumping bass directly into your ear, it shotguns it in the right direction. Bassy sounds are hard for in-ears create, since they involve moving a lot of air and in-ears don’t have a lot of room for large, fancy drivers.

We also noticed there was a lot of noise when we hooked it up to an amp.

Click here for more information on our frequency response test.

Tracking (9.52)

Once we finally got the ear buds to stay in place, we found the headphones’ tracking was actually really good.

You may notice that the headphones seem to be heavy in the right channel. This is true, but it’s by a barely audible amount. The things people tend to notice are sudden shifts in volume from one channel to another.

Click here for more information on our frequency response test.