iPhone 4 – First Impressions + Secret Feature

Ok, here’s the summary: Wow!!

Overall I really love it so far, and although I experienced the famous disappearing bars issue first hand, I am really not concerned. One negative so far I noticed is the camera. There are comparisons to other smartphone cameras that say iPhone 4 is better, so maybe I just expected too much… Here’s best shot I managed today, judge for yourself (click for original). This one was outside, but inside photos not as nice, even with flash…

I listed below main positives that I did Not see in mainstream media. I feel that these are really Biggest innovations and they don’t get nearly enough coverage:

• Long Battery Life – Yes, it easily lasted 3 days with pretty heavy usage, including WiFi on all the time, steaming video over 3G and over WiFi, games, surfing, etc. This is amazing technological achievement and was main selling point in my considerations versus Evo and other competitors.
• Fast Internet – I felt that surfing is way faster, but couldn’t explain it. Today I found technical details, and I immediately ran my own SpeedTest to confirm: 4 Mbps down and 800kbps up!! Just in a random mall location! Interestingly enough, there was HTC Evo on Sprint 4G network on display at the mall today, and Internet on it didn’t feel any faster; in fact whole phone didn’t impress much…
• Reader Friendly Display – This is the Secret Feature; Sure everyone is talking about Retina display, but the truth is the screen is not only very sharp, it also feels softer, lending itself to effortless reading! The fonts are paper quality, think laser printer, and the backlight can be adjusted to soft luminance, making reading a joy! This definitely makes iPhone an ePaper competitive reading device – think 10 hours battery life, beautiful soft display AND colors! And of course interactions and video, what more do you need?

Overall – Amazing device and so far I am really satisfied with my purchase. Organizing icons into folders is fun and allows for quick access as well as ability to see what Apps I have in each category, to help me cleanup things I may not be using. I didn’t try the voice recognition features yet, but certainly planning to. I also noticed that typing is easier for some reason. Somehow it is even better at recognizing buttons I want to click, and I find myself able to type faster. Another win for Apple and shows us that closed hardware/software combination can achieve some amazing heights.

Comments #

Comment by Eyal Lantzman on 2010-06-28 09:45:37 -0500 #

Hi,
Nice summary.
Can you elaborate on the signal issues?
If you don’t have a signal it’s can be a killer, no?

Are you keeping your 3G as well?
How did you managed to transfer all the staff from 3G to 4G?

Comment by Adi R on 2010-06-28 21:54:02 -0500 #

You know, I don’t always manage to recreate it even if I try holding it exactly in the spot where they say problems occur. And the most I’ve seen is signal bars going down, not proven that it affects phone performance in any way…
Yes, 3G went to the kids already, they are thrilled. Transferring over stuff to 4G was trivial, as iTunes took care of synchronizing everything. Only thing I lost is my progress in games (Achievements in Plants V Zoombies, etc) and some free eBooks I downloaded via Stanza (so need to re-download).