iPhone4 review

I recently blogged about the iPhone4 and hoping to be a proud owner, set the wheels in motion. After a gruelling two hours of being left on hold and almost giving up, I finally managed to place my order for the iPhone4 on 24th June 2010.  Despite this terrible telephone customer experience, the new toy was impressively delivered within 24 hours and I got my hands on it.

Before opening the box I’d already heard the damming reports of the phone immediately losing reception when held in the hand.  This sounded ridiculous and I felt like one of the many geeks who had been over excited by a new gimmick and potentially bought it before all the teething issues had been resolved.  It is true, and I have experienced this problem with reception when on calls.  It’s a hideous design fault and even worse that Apple didn’t uncover and rectify the problem before launching the product.  Apparently, Steve Jobs is instructing users to use tape or nail varnish to resolve the issue – but having bought what is supposed to be such an iconic and sophisticated designed product, I’m not going to be ruining it by plastering over Apple’s mistakes.  I have instead had to resort to buying a case for the phone, which means that I no longer experience the loss of reception, but I am now carrying a beautifully designed product within a not so beautifully designed rubber case.    

Anyway, I’ve managed to get over this major design fault and believe it or not, I’m actually really happy with the iPhone4.

Out of the box, even before switching on the phone, it does feel pretty smart and sophisticated. The stainless steel rim and glass back completely convert the phone from feeling soft and curvy (as on 3G/S), to sleek and sexy.  The phone doesn’t actually feel that much thinner in my opinion and it may be a preconception based on the metal material used on the rim, but I can certainly notice the 2grams of extra weight in the 4GS.

As soon as you switch the phone on, the excellent high resolution screen is remarkable.  Images are crystal clear like photographs and colours are bright.  Talking of photographs, the camera is far and beyond the 3G offering – but as I mentioned in my previous blog, it wasn’t a challenge to create an improvement the original camera. With this great feature and integrated flash, you really don’t need to carry around a dedicated digital camera to take shots day-to-day.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to try out the FaceTime video calling feature as none of my close friends have managed to get their hands on this hot new phone, but I’ll be sure to blog my experience when I’ve used it.  

I’ve only experienced the 3GS iPhone as a guest user on a friends’ device, so it’s difficult to compare the speed of the device but I am not noticing the 4G phone to be that much quicker when surfing the web (unless connected through wifi, when it’s super speedy!).  I assume this won’t change dramatically until 4G is available throughout the UK…but for that, we could be waiting a while.  This isn’t a show stopper for me.  It’s great to be able to use the Internet whilst out and about, but I really don’t want to be one of those people that have their phone stuck to their hand; constantly checking Facebook or surfing mindless pages on the Internet.  I’ll stick to a book or the newspaper for that kind of entertainment, but having said that – it will be great to answer all those questions that come up and the only response I’ve recently had is “I’ll Google it when I get home”.  Now, I can Google it, there and then.

Although I realise this isn’t something new to the 4G, one thing I am totally impressed by on the iPhone are the zillions and zillions of apps that are available – there literally seems to be something for everything.  And, now with the iPhone4 new feature you can organise them into folders which is imperative given the volume of apps available.  Initially, when delving into the app store I went into overdrive, installing anything free.  However, in reality I wonder which apps will be really useful day to day and which ones really don’t have any place in adding value to my life.  It’s interesting to see which companies have and have not decided to create a dedicated iphone app.  In my next blog, I’ll be looking at which companies are really missing out from not having an app and which apps really have little to no use.  So, if you have any thoughts about that do comment…if not, watch this space.