Starting June 15th you can reserve yourself a brand new iPhone 4 from Apple’s website, and you’ll be able to buy them starting June 24th. So before that day comes, I thought I’d post my thoughts on the new iPhone 4 and cover the good, the bad, and yes, the ugly.
There’s certainly more good than bad, but enough with the introductory jibber-jabber, let’s get started.
The Good
There is a lot to like in this phone which really is no surprise – the nuclear arms race really escalated under Apple and the iPhone 4 brings some nifty goodies to the table.
Retina Display
I’ll admit I am a little jealous my phone doesn’t have anything like this. Samsung just said the retina display really isn’t any better than their AMOLED displays, but my eyes tell me different. It looks great and I want one. It has 960 x 640 resolution on a 3.5 inch screen. Remember when your 15″ computer monitor only had an 800 x 600 screen? LCD screen technology sure has come a long way.
Fast Fast Fast
As expected, and just like the iPad, the iPhone 4 features the A4 processor – Apple’s own 1GZ low power chip. It brings the best of both world’s to the table – long battery life (up to 7hrs of talk time or 40hrs of audio playback – that’s amazing!) and blazing fast performance and now that you’re finally getting multi-tasking, you’ll need all the power you can get.
FaceTime
I’ll be honest about FaceTime – Apple’s video phone call feature… to me it’s more novelty than every day practical. Maybe history will prove me wrong, but people have been trying to get people to use video phones for the past 25 years and it’s never really caught on. The fact that it’s Wi-Fi only is both a good thing and bad thing. It’s a good thing that it will make the user experience much better and we know Apple is freakishly anal about ease of use, and Wi-Fi gives the end user the best shot at getting it. However, not being able to use it over 3G is disappointing because it limits where you can use the application.
Sure, I think this feature will be useful for people who travel a lot for work and spend a lot of time in hotel rooms, but keep in mind that to use it, both people need shiny new iPhone 4s (for the moment at least), but for everyday calls, it simply won’t get used.
I think it’s more akin to an application like Google Sky Map – really cool and fun to play with but not something you really end up using all that often.
Gyroscope
While Apple computers aren’t know for their prowess in the gaming arena, when it comes to playing games on a smartphone, the undisputed leader is the iPhone. With their latest creation, a gyroscope has been added which will only improve upon what you can do to play games on the phone.
The Bad
Durability
While Apple went out of their way to talk about how their new steel is so strong and their glass is so much harder and durable than plastic, reality is showing that the iPhone is living in a glass house. Don’t throw stones at it and you sure as heck don’t want to drop it now that it has glass on BOTH sides, not just the display side. Make sure you buy the protective case or you could have a very expensive paperweight in your possession as glass breakage is not covered under the iPhone warranty.
Tethering
While I know some people are eagerly awaiting the arrival of tethering in the new iPhone OS (which has been renamed iOS 4.0), it still sucks compared to what you get with Android 2.2 (Wifi Tethering with 8 Hotspots – no additional fee as long as you don’t go over your data limit). You’ll get charged $20 a month just for the privilege of using it with AT&T and guess what, you can’t tether your iPhone to your iPad. Bummer.
The Ugly
In the United States, your options as far a carriers are as follows: AT&T
As a past AT&T customer myself (back when they were still called Cingular), I can attest to the miserable customer service and poor coverage in many areas. I know it absolutely guarantees I won’t be buying one and will instead stick to Android phones.
And AT&T just recently announced the end of it’s unlimited data plans and is instead imposing a 2GB monthly limit before your start getting overages – it likely won’t immediately effect the casual user, but heavy users could be in for a hefty bill at the end of the month if they’re not careful.
Bottom Line
While I wouldn’t call the iPhone 4 revolutionary even though Steve Jobs tells me so, it’s certainly a nice upgrade and will certainly keep engineers and designers up late at night trying to design an even better Android phone (though I the EVO 4G is extremely impressive if you can handle sub-par battery life and the huge form factor of it’s big screen).
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