A Week With The iPhone4

A lot of press has been written about the iPhone4 ranging from strange yellow discoloration on the Retina Display screen, to the "death grip" that causes reception problems, to how easy it is to break. Therefore, my first comment is that such statements have been a common element with each release of the iPhone. Then come the highly publicized class action lawsuits, followed by...well nothing. The point is some people like to complain. Many of these are competitors. Many just like to cause controversy. Remember the cracking on the white iPhone 3GS? Neither do I. Remember the iPhone first generation overheating issue. Neither do I. The one news piece that stands out in the current iPhone release is the fact that Apple sold 1.7 million of them in less than a week. In comparison, how is the Microsoft Kin doing? Point made.

Now to the iPhone4 and my experience with it. First, my screen looked fine. In fact, the Retina Display is simply outstanding. No yellow discoloration, just clear, clean, bright, high-density color.

As for phone reception, I am left-handed and could only cause a decrease in bars if I cupped BOTH hands around the metal sides that double as an antenna. I cannot imagine a natural situation where holding the iPhone in that manner would be used. Indeed, the noise canceling second microphone is a quantum improvement in call quality and has been under-reported,

Other features of the iPhone4 and/or IOS4 that are significant improvements include the Photos app which now categorizes photos by album, event (not available previously), location, and face recognition. The camera digital zoom is nice, particularly on the iPhone4 which has a 5 MP camera. You can get closeups without too much resolution degradation.

The mail app is nice with its universal inbox and threaded messages. I find I like the old inbox better because the universal inbox does not tell you which mail account a given message is from. The threadscare helpful in tracing an extended mail conservation.

App folders is a significant improvement, as is the multiple-tasking. Actually, the fast application switching is the real improvement.

As this post indicates, I am more than satisfied with the iPhone4. It is noticeably lighter than the 3GS, and noticeably thinner. My one complaint is Apple did away with the home button double-press to get to my favorite phone numbers. It would be nice to have a way to bring that capability back. Otherwise a great job of engineering and implementation.