iPhone 4 Comprehensive Review

ok, here's my long awaited review of the iPhone4.  Its been exactly 9 days since I picked it up, so I think I've been using it enough to give a fair review of its strengths and weaknesses.

(FYI - I upgraded from a 2 year old iPhone 3G, so this review will mostly comment on the iPhone 4 relative to the 3G.  People with a 3GS already have access to some of the features which are 'new' to me.). ;-)

First my phone -

Here's my new iPhone 4 along with the two cheap iPhone 4 cases I got in Shenzhen the weekend before I picked up the phone!  The exciting news about the cases is that -

1) they both fit

2) they both look pretty decent! Blue tinted bumper case.  Fits pretty snug.

This is the one I've been using so far.  People really like the case when they see it.  But after two weeks of usage the gloss on the front edges is starting to wear a bit and its not as snug as it used to be.  I'll probably use it for another few weeks and then either replace it or switch to the other one.

Grace's iPhone3GS's case is similar, here's a side by side

Technically I'm eligible to get a free bumper case from Apple, but when I picked up my phone from the service provider's shop they said 'you have to go to an Apple store to get it.',  which I haven't had time to actually do.  (and maybe I'll never get around to?)

Anyway, enough on the subject of cases (for now).  Let's get to the phone features review itself. Let's go down the list:

Screen- I can't say enough about how the higher resolution screen improves the experience. Especially for surfing webpages.  Text looks sharper and easier to read.  It may not seem like a big deal to some, but trust me, it has a subtle but significant impact on your experience. its most striking if you put it next to an older iPhone or other brand's phone.  Some HTC and Samsung phones have BIGGER screens, but I think you can't compare to the iPhone4.

Processor- especially because I was using an iPhone 3G,  as the OS software got upgraded, performance slowed dramatically.  Opening up apps, selecting dialogue boxes that brought up the keyboards, loading webpages, etc they all became slower and slower. I have no idea how people w/ iPhone 2Gs can do it!   The iPhone 4 is dramatically faster. Especially when surfing the web on wifi.  It gets a lot closer to the speed of browsing on a laptop.

Multi-tasking - an additional contribution to the the speed issue mentioned above is the inclusion of multi-tasking.  When it was announced I didn't think of this as a big deal, but in practice it has a big pay-off.  For example now I can switch between my mail and my twitter client in a second or two, without having to reload the twitter client from scratch every time.  Now it just brings the twitter client to the front and checks for new tweets (we're talking about like 5 seconds vs ~45 seconds on a 3G w/ its slower processor and no multitasking).

Compass- the fact that you can orient Google Maps depending on which direction you're facing seems like its of limited use, but as someone who finds myself lost in the mountains and canyons of HK on occasion (both rural and urban), this is actually more useful than you'd think.

Still Photos - the last few times I've gone out I haven't even used my compact digital camera.  Between the digital zoom and the flash, the iPhone4's camera becomes an acceptable replacement,  at least for snapshots and blogging purposes.  The flash seems to only be good for close-up shots in low-light situations.  

If there is a halfway decent amount of ambient light, I've actually had better results not using the flash for shots of people (anything more than like 4 feet away):

Thank you to Michael Wong for helping me in my review!

Likewise the digital zoom is pretty good.  here's a photo I took at the Summer HKIFF premeire screening. One with my Canon Ixus with a real lens and one with my iphone4 using digital zoom. Which is which?!

Hard to tell the difference!  the iPhone one (right) actually looks better!  Actually this is more an indictment against the Canon than anything else for its poor low light photos!   I could have probably gotten a better pic out of it if I had manually adjusted some settings... but the fact is that iPhone4 took a better picture off the bat... at least good enough for web posting. :-P

Videos- I've already touched on the video issue in my blog about the concert I went to last week. 

Delphic Video Clip:

As you can see, the full HD video comes out pretty decent!  the fact that you can upload it straight from the phone to youtube or twitter (via a 3rd party service) is an interesting (and dangerous) proposition.   I'm tempted to try the iMovie app to see if I can do titles and simple edits w/o having to take an extra step on my laptop.

Design- I remember when the Gizmodo prototype came out some people were claiming that it had to be fake since they didn't think the design was attractive enough to be a real apple product.  But in reality the stainless steel antenna band and squared off sides are a closer match to the design of MacBooks nowadays than the curved iPhone 3G and 3GS ever were! Those look more like an OG Mac PowerBook G3 circa 1997! :-P

and

The build is very solid and the screen doesn't flex at all when you press hard on it.  it takes a little while getting used to the fact that the back is not curved like the 3G/3GS design,  but I don't feel any more likely to have it slip out of my hand or anything. 

I kind of miss the volume rocker switch of the old model compared to the + and - volume buttons on this version.  Especially because of my case,  its harder to push if I want to turn the volume down while its in my pocket.  But I used to do this mostly because the 'in headphone' controls never worked on my iPhone 3G very well for some reason.  Now I have to retrain myself to just reach for that instead of trying to push buttons in my pocket!

Antenna Gate - As an avid iPhone user who lives outside of the USA,  I think a lot of the complaints you hear about the iPhone are more attributable to problems with ATT's network in the US than any actual problem with the iPhone itself.   As I live in HK,  its hard to NOT get a strong signal no matter where you are.  As a result rarely have I had any network issues with my iPhone 3G.    Even for 'antenna-gate', I think it only becomes a problem if you're in a place with a really weak signal.  

I tried a few times with and without my case to get my phone to drop in signal strength.  Apparently it will drop a bit, but never to the point that it drops service.    I chalk up the bad press mostly to hysteria from the press trying to blow something out of proportion (and its something you wouldn't even notice if not for ATT's poor network coverage).

Here's a 'death grip' vs 'no death grip' comparison on my phone without its cover.  I could get it to go down a few bars (from 4 to 2), but the signal never dropped off completely.  Also this 'death grip' configuration is not one that I would ever likely use (and I'm left handed).

Anyway,  this issue of the antenna attenuation seems to be much less significant for those of us not being forced to use ATT.  At least its not so much of an issue for me with my provider (Three HK)

That said,  I havenoticed once in a while even if the signal strength is strong, once in a while the data stream seems to get stuck (like while loading a page it stops half-way and I have to refresh to get it to finish).  I attribute this to network congestion as oppose to an antenna problem, since the signal appears to be strong.  But that's just my hypothesis. :-P

(the fact that you can even be surfing web pages while speeding through the cross harbor subway tunnel is such an amazing technical accomplishment to me that I can forgive them if it gets stuck once in a while!)  :-P

Wow Factor - for at least a few more weeks, the phone still has a wow factor when I meet people.  Ironically the first thing people comment on is the case rather than the phone itself... I don't tell them that it only cost $2 in China... :-P

I have yet to be able to leverage this wow factor into any dates, but I'll keep trying while I still can. :-P

Bottom line- its pretty good.  if you're on a 3G, you should upgrade when your contract expires.  If you're on a 3GS, maybe wait for next year.   If you're on a Blackberry...  i'm not even going to try. :-P