Here’s a summary of my experiences, good and bad, with the iPhone 4 after using it for 24 hours.
Good
Fast. A hell of a lot faster than my iPhone 3G
Great display. Debates aside, holding it up next to my iPhone 3G the iPhone 4 display is amazing
Better camera with good video. First photos: http://post.ly/kY8M
Ability to choose the image size/resolution when emailing photos, including full size
Folders! I can get to all of my favorite apps from the first home screen
Direct access to inboxes. Not the unified inbox option, which I don’t want, but a direct way to get to any accounts inbox. The only way I can use the unified inbox is if I can choose which accounts to include instead of including all of them.
Backup during syncing to iTunes is a lot faster.
Bad
Glass on the front and back means more smudges.
Emailing videos compresses them. I need to find a way to easily (over the air) move videos around to my iPad, Macbook Pro and online.
Ugly
I cannot get my two A2DP Bluetooth devices (Jabra Stone earpiece and Kensington headset) to be seen by the iPhone 4. Apple, Bluetooth keyboard support is nice but how about getting A2DP working.
Reports are coming out that holding the iPhone by it’s new antenna, you know… the edge of the phone, causes the signal to drop. IMy tests show that there is an issue with this. I immediately ordered one of those expensive rubber bands (aka Bumpers) which I’m hoping will address the problem. Seems like they should have included a “Bumper” with the phone. [Update:] the problem seems intermittent. I tried showing off the issue to a half dozen different coworkers this morning and the signal was fine. I made sure I had the palm of my left hand overlap the two antennae (the alleged cause of the problem) but the signal never dropped.
Unknown
Battery life. I’ve read reports of people getting good battery life, in one account up to 38 hours under “heavy use.” Since I live in an area that has crappy Internet, thus WiFi at home isn’t a great option, is out in the boonies, and is surrounded by trees, the phone is constantly going in and out of 3G service. More importantly, the phone is expending battery power to find and connect to the 3G network frequently. During my full day of testing which included shooting videos and trying to email those videos and full size photos over the constantly alternating Edge/3G network, I got 12 hours of battery life. Definitely an improvement over my iPhone 3G and I’d expect it to be better under typical use.
Using the provided headset, since my Jabra Stone doesn’t work with it yet, Judy said the call quality was a lot better. I haven’t tested it with just the phone by itself to see if the second mic really helps with noise reduction.
FaceTime. I’m still waiting for someone I know to get the iPhone 4 so I can test FaceTime with them. A local (i.e. Chicagoan) contacted me on Twitter last night to see if I wanted to try FaceTime, but I was on my slow WiFi at home so it wasn’t worth trying it.
Posted on the August 19th, 2008 under iPhone by Al
It arrived yesterday.
The packaging was awesome:
Not only did it continue the “skeleton look” into the packaging but it wasn’t the standard hermetically sealed plastic that requires sharp instruments to open. The cardboard outer packaging is easily removed and the inner plactic packaging pops open with your figures. Nice.
My white iPhone before:
and then transformed:
It fits perfectly, the buttons are easily accesses and it looks cool. I have to admit that the white isn’t as white as the iPhone itself but then again Steve Jobs probably spent millions getting the formula for the ultimate white.
I had a hard time deciding between a few of the CapsuleRebel covers. I almost bought two. I may even pick up a second (or third) one for use in different occasions. Maybe.
I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I’ve had pratically no problems with the 3G iPhone and only minor issues with a couple of apps since Day 1. Then I installed the iTunes 7.7.1 update when it came out. That’s when the troubles started. Luckily, the iPhone itself hasn’t been affected but the iPhone with iTunes experience has degraded.
It started with a constant and reproducible crash of the MDCrashReportTool. The following sequence causes the crash:
One of the great features of Twitter is that you can access and post it in various ways: from the website, from a dedicated client on Mac or PC, from a cell phone via SMS or mobile app, etc. Maybe someday we’ll see digital cameras with built-in Twitter access. With all of these different access methods, which is the best? Below is my limited evaluation of a few of the apps I’ve used.
But first, I want to mention a feature that no app appears to provide, but I’d really like to see. When a tweet (i.e. a Twitter update or message) is directed to another person using the @reply (where reply is the user’s twitter account name) at the beginning of the message, that message is only displayed to the person it was directed and not display to others, even if you follow the sender. For example, if you follow me (frumpa) and I send a message to @ev none of the applications below will show you that message. The only way you’ll be able to see those messages is if you go the that person’s Twitter page via a browser (e.g. twitter.com/ev). This only occurs if the message starts with @reply. If the @reply is somewhere else in the message everyone sees it. Maybe I’m the minority here but if I’m following someone I want to see all of their messages. Why? Sometimes a message directed to someone else may also be of interest to me, or others.
I started using Twinkle, an iPhone app, on Thursday night (July 17th) and wrote this post about it. Here are my impressions and what I’ve learned about it after using it for few days.
Twinkle has it’s own network which it uses for its Nearby service. The Nearby service, also a section in the app, manages messages sent through the service. When you send a message from Twinkle, which they call “pings”, it goes to the Twinkle network (i.e. Tapulous servers) where they are stored and then forwarded to Twitter. This requires you to configure Twinkle with a Tapulous user account and, optionally, a Twitter account. You could easily just use the Tapulous account, but not just a Twitter account at this time. This has caused some confusion for people as to where messages are going and why messages are not showing up on Twitter. Although in some cases people didn’t add their Twitter account or don’t have one. In fact, it can cause more confusion if a person has a Twitter account but creates a Tapulous account with a different user name. Confusion in the sense that you can’t follow the user via the Twitter website, or traditional Twitter client since you don’t know their Twitter account name.
The other day Robert Scoble had a Qik video in which he interviewed on of the developers of Twinkle (web link, iTune link) a Twitter client for the iPhone. Yes, yet another Twitter client and yes for the iPhone. Twinkle caught my eye because it’s location-aware.
Unlike Twitterrific and Twittelator which can add a link to your tweet to show your location, Twinkle can show you a feed of tweets by people within a certain radius of you. When it launches it requests the use of the GPS to find your current location.
The default distance to search for “local” tweets is 50 miles but that can be changed.
Like my previous post on this topic, here’s another batch of apps that caught my eye, but this time only focusing on free apps. (Note – links below are iTunes links, not web browser links)
Flashlight (a free version), FlatLux and MyLite – all free
Both are trying to steal market share away from the $1.99 Flashlight app mentioned in the previous post.
Probably not, especially if you’re not a tech-head or willing to bounce around to difference screens to enable and/or disable difference services (e.g. 3G, GPS, WiFi, etc) to manage the battery life on a regular basis.
Who is the iPhone for?
Answer the following questions:
Do you use social services like Twitter, FriendFeed, Brightkite, etc.?
Do you like to quickly and easily send photos to an online photo sharing account such as Flickr?
Do you crave the freedom to check e-mail and surface the web at any time?
Do you want e-mail and webpages to be readable in the small form-factor of a phone?
Do you want a device that can install a plethora of mobile applications and games?
If you answered “yes” to at least half of the above questions then the iPhone, either the original iPhone, the 3G version (again be aware of its hungry power consumption) or the iPod Touch are devices you should consider. The original (non-3G) iPhone is would the bes choice for the average consumer.
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