iPhone 4 review

So, against all the odds I now have an iPhone 4. It’s hard to explain why I have one except to say that I was able to buy one for a cheap price (less than I sold my iPhone 3GS for) and simply renew my contract for another 18 months. My theory is to sell the second best phone on a platform quickly to make the financial hit as little as possible and on this occasion it worked. This enables me to judge the phone on merit and not consider if it is worth the full price because ultimately no mobile phone is worth £600. That is not possible.

The fact is that I, for the first time in my life, would not have upgraded from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4 if it involved paying a serious amount of money because I could not see the advantages. The retina display is nice of course, but what’s so bad about the 3GS screen? The extra RAM is of course useful now that iOS 4 seriously affects performance on the 3G and 3GS and the better camera is a bonus, but all of those together could not persuade me to part with £100’s because they look like improvements with a few novelty features thrown in for good measure. That was my viewpoint and an hour after picking it up it was still the same. And then I used it…

Design

If you own an iPhone 3G or 3GS your very first impressions could be disappointing. It looks identical to previous models from the front and of course so does the software so the initial buzz of something new is absent here. Apple has not radically changed the design of the iPhone since the 3G, but the design is what causes most discussion in reviews. The completely flat front and rear married to the metal edging make for a very good looking phone and one which sits right in almost any situation.

I was one of those people who was not impressed with the iPhone 3G design when it was unveiled and who wanted a flat back on it. I am now one of those people who prefers the iPhone 3G/3GS design to the iPhone 4. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great and Apple has done a sterling job, but it creates an overwhelming feeling of wanting to protect it. I think it is the strengthened glass and the sharp edging that brings this out in me, because I never had this feeling with the 3GS. It is ironic that the better quality materials and more angular design cause me to cherish it more and thus sling it in a case, add a screen protector and ruin the beauty of it straight away. I have been scratching my head about the iPhone 4 design and still can’t quite make up my mind where I stand on it. I like great looking phones, but I also like phones that offer a feeling of confidence in daily use. Sadly Apple has form in this area with the dreadful scratch magnets that are the iPod Touches and iPods and the iPhone 3G was also prone to similar issues. I need more time to get my head around the design, but suspect that it will eventually prove a winner to me and that Apple knows what I need better than I do…

Screen

The Retina screen has received lots of attention and you would think that it is the most incredibly invention ever if you read some reviews, but in general use you may not notice a huge difference from previous iPhones. It is without doubt much clearer and the eBook reading experience is vastly improved, videos look stunning (they really do) and so do photos, every other part of the core apps looks better on this screen, but not to the point that I would consider it to be a killer improvement. Maybe it is because I have reviewed the Samsung Wave and Galaxy recently, both of which come with Super AMOLED screens, which have already shown me what a brilliant screen looks like. Don’t get me wrong, the Retina display is wonderful to look at and use and is a leap forward, but is it that much better than the Super AMOLED screens? The pixels per inch and other specs may suggest so, and so will Apple, but I cannot help thinking that this technology is not half as revolutionary in day to day use as some would have you believe. So much marketing material and online time has been devoted to this feature and ultimately it feels like a technical exercise that could never fulfil the hype. By the way, I have perfect eyesight (tested last week) so it can’t be me.

Maybe I am being too harsh in the way that I am when I go to watch an overly hyped movie, it will never fulfil expectations, and maybe I just expect Apple to blow my socks off every time. Either way, Apple is responsible for the hype surrounding this feature, but also responsible for a screen that is very, very good. It’s just not ‘blow your socks off’ good and I don’t think that is technically possible at this time.

Performance

The new processor and extra RAM have been included to deal with iOS 4 and more intense functions and as such are difficult to judge after a few days use. I fully expect software to be released that pushes the new hardware to the limit, but at this time the iPhone 4 feels identical to a pre-iOS4 iPhone 3GS which is not a bad thing. Of course the ability to run multiple heavy apps at once is an advantage and I expect to improve my view on this once I really start digging around and pushing it as far as I can. One point to note is that there are still occasions when switching screens and apps is accomplished with a small stutter. On no other phone would this even reach my consciousness, but it is apparent to those who have been using iPhones for a long time. I suspect that iOS 4 still needs some tweaking to bring back the perfect smoothness of the previous version.

Entertainment

The iPod was built on entertainment and the first iPhone was effectively an iPod with mobile phone features and so the process has continued. Throughout my time with various iPods and iPhone I have always been impressed by the sound quality provided by the included headphones. What I did not expect was the improvement shown in the iPhone 4. In short, the sound quality is the very best I have heard on any mobile phone, smartphone or MP3 player. It is a leap from the 3GS and potentially a leap from everything else, but strangely I see no mention of changes from Apple in this area.

Video playback is also stunning and the films just jump from the screen. This is the area in which I have noticed the screen improvement the most and it is now more of a joy that it was previously, which is no easy task. I have noticed improvements in speed as well when pausing films and choosing media from the iPod app so this is evidence that something faster is going on behind the scenes.

Photos also look a lot crisper than before and ‘different’ to other phones. Like videos, they leap out at you, but arguably in the same way photos do on Super AMOLED.

Gaming is fast becoming a core feature of the iPhone and the gyroscope has been included to take things one step further in this area. It’s early days, but the look of most games is much better once they have been optimised for the new screen and the potential is now huge for what could follow. I need to spend some more time looking at this and testing some more games though because I have noticed some stuttering in supposedly iOS 4 optimised games which is most unexpected.

Let’s get the antenna issue out of the way now. Apple published a letter explaining what the issue is with reception on the iPhone 4 and the following part sums it up best-

“Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.”

The entire premise of the letter is that the software is causing the bars to display wrong and this would appear to align nicely with reports from the US of less dropped calls and generally better phone performance. I fully understand what Apple is saying here, but I am far from convinced. Last Friday evening I stood in a field near my house with the iPhone 4 in one hand and my iPhone 3GS in another; both had Vodafone SIM cards in them and 3G enabled. The iPhone 4 displayed ‘no service’ and the iPhone 3GS displayed 1 bar. I attempted a call on the iPhone 4 and was unable to, I could with the 3GS. Now, it is my understanding ‘software’ will not stop a phone making a call if there are no bars showing. Apple said about the impending update “The real signal strength remains the same…” and “Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.” Well, if the real signal strength remains the same I will still not be able to make a call in the situation already described and if the problem was there on the 3GS why did I not suffer the same problem?

I have worked in mobile telecoms for 15 years, on the handset side and more recently the network side, so I know what I am talking about and I am not convinced that this problem will be solved easily. Many people say they have not had problems with the antenna and others are happy to use a case to fix the problem, but the fact is that the iPhone 4 I am using is not noticeably better in the signal department than the 3GS and appears to be less stable in keeping a signal with a variance of bars popping up and dropping off in quick succession. It’s not the end of the world, but some improvement would have been nice to see, particularly because the iPhone range has not been good in this area so far.

Voice quality and the speakerphone have been markedly improved. I have read rave reviews about the quality and can understand this if they have been using an iPhone 3G or 3GS for the past couple of years, but the fact remains that the iPhone 4 is now comparable to the BlackBerry 9700, Samsung Galaxy and Nokia E72 in these areas. That is a great improvement for those who need good quality voice communication and it puts the iPhone on a level playing field with other high-end smartphones as far as voice goes. I tested the received call quality with two people and both said that my iPhone 4 and Curve 8310 sounded the same to them when calling from my house. However, when I called one of them back to repeat the test in my garden on a windy day the iPhone 4 did much better- seems that the noise reduction works quite well.

Let’s move onto the camera which has been cranked up to 5 Megapixels and had HD video recording thrown in for good measure. There are a few 8 Megapixel smartphones on the market now and many with better flash technology, but this one is seriously good. Image capture is super quick and the tap to focus feature seems to work every single time. Even the zoom works better than I have seen on a phone before and I was able to capture some shots of my daughter from a ‘long’ distance and still make out that it was her (not easy with most cameras). The video recorder is even better than the camera and produces wonderful quality videos with excellent audio. I took a video of my son at football training from about 30 feet away and it still picked up the voice of his football trainer. It is easily the best smartphone camera I have used; a near perfect blend of hidden technology, speed and ease of use.

Photo scaled down to 640 pixels wide-

Photo zoomed in-

When you add iMovie this offers up the ability to capture photos and video, string them together into a pleasing montage and then upload them to YouTube without touching anything but the iPhone, as I have done here (remember that YouTube seriously compresses the output)-

FaceTime is the real innovation on the iPhone 4 and one that is not innovative at all. I have been able to make video calls for years, but never bothered because the costs have been too high and the quality has been dreadful. The innovation here is that it works so well and my first FaceTime call with Gavin was a real eye opener. The fact my daughter kept jumping in front of the screen to speak to him and ask him silly questions only helped me realise the potential because it made the call so much more interactive. There is a serious fault with FaceTime though because myself and Gavin both felt that we looked fat in the video and that can’t possibly be true!

Battery life has also received considerable attention and many websites have salivated over the improvement. It is better than the previous iPhones, but from a personal point of view I would still like to see more. I tested it over a full day and, starting at 100%, managed the following-

30 minute drive using TomTom, HD traffic and music playing via an FM transmitter: down to 81%

3 text messages, 42 photos and 12 minutes of video recording over a 3 hour period: down to 59%

23 more photos plus a further 11 minutes of video recording over a 2 hour period: down to 40%

30 minute drive home with TomTom, HD traffic and transmitted music: down to 19%

This isn’t too bad, but you can see that a really heavy day will drain the battery before night falls and as such a car charger and as many other chargers as you can find would be useful. The day above was an exception, but the next day my son had a football tournament and I took over 50 photos, did 40 minutes of driving all in all with HD traffic and music playing and for good measure managed 15 minutes of video recording. The battery went down to 49% by the end of the day which is comparatively better. Why the difference? I had 3G turned off.

I can cope with the iPhone 4 battery life, but when so much effort has been put into the screen, design and OS it is a shame that once again the battery department is not given the same attention.

Conclusion

Life is a series of moments and the iPhone 4 is a good tool to have around to capture and enhance them. I can grab a shot of my children doing something silly, I can video my son taking the final penalty in a football tournament and know that the moments will be captured with the kind of quality that seemed impossible only a few years ago. I can sit in the garden and listen to music in glorious quality that fills my head with voices, tunes and every other small sound the artist wanted me to hear. I can watch a film or read an eBook while lying in bed and experience both in a manner I never have before. Photos, games, websites and everything else jumps from the iPhone 4 screen and offers something new to everyone, something that just works so well it is impossible not to let it get under your skin in the shortest of times. I started this review (in part one) calling the changes mere improvements and bemoaned the fact that there were no fantastic innovations from the 3GS, but there surely is. The weaknesses have been strengthened and Apple has created an impossibly good smartphone. I took some time to consider iOS4, the iPhone 4 design and came to the conclusion that this phone feels like a conclusion- a conclusion to many years of smartphone unreliability, poor quality features, bad build quality and too much fiddly to really enjoy what a phone can do for me.

It is without doubt the best smartphone I have ever used and will only struggle in trying to attain the hype that Apple has built up around it. Apple has created a wondrous phone that will let you do almost anything you want and in doing so also created a culture where it has to be squeaky clean in every area. The minor niggles get blown up out of all proportion and so do the features that work fantastically. Every aspect of every Apple smartphone will forevermore be scrutinised to the nth degree and this can surely only be a good thing because it forces Apple to innovate and to do so with care to ensure that everything works. Over the next week or so we will see what becomes of the antenna problem and just maybe Apple will solve it quickly, but even if it can’t it has still produced a smartphone that raises the bar once more to a level that for the first time I cannot quite comprehend. I cannot comprehend improvements in many of the features and struggle to see how the iPhone 5 can possibly improve on the 4, and this should always be the goal of any smartphone manufacturer; make the user feel that they own the best phone on the market and make it even better in a year’s time. Apple seems to be doing that quite well and that is a good signal (excuse the pun)…