My thoughts (and experience) with the iPhone 4

July 12, 2010

I’ve seen two revisions of the iPhone come out before I finally upgraded my original iPhone. In the last 3 years they have added 3G, GPS, more memory, faster speed, and other enhancements. These were good, but not good enough. The $15 a month extra for the same service was also a big factor. However the iPhone 4’s HD video, front facing camera and cheaper monthly plan finally meant an upgrade was in my future.

I was one of the first to preorder my iPhone 4. That also means I was one of the last who pre-ordered to get mine. Apparently those who orders later got theirs a day early. LIFO…Last in, first out. Who knew. I finally did get mine and the difference was significant.

The speed is much faster than my Original iPhone (the Edge/2G version). The screen is better, but not “WOW” better like Steve said. What, Steve Jobs exaggerate?

The difference for me was the video. I found this very useful when Emily and I were on our trip north (see my personal blog about that). We would take short video snippets, then edit on the phone using iMovie. I could then upload these to YouTube or my MobileMe account and share them with friends and family. Pretty cool!

FaceTime. Cool. You’ve probably seen the ads. I’ve used iChat, Skype, AOL, and other video chat systems. This hands down is the best. Quality is superb, no lag, front and rear camera…wow. Well done Apple.

What about the signal? Yes, I can make it lose signal strength. We live in a low signal area so dropped calls are common. Using the phone I can’t say its been an issue I’ve run into. However if I just put my (not dry) finger over the black bit on the lower left it will lose a few bars or switch to searching. Do I have issues using it? No. However I do believe others who say they drop calls. This will likely be the Achilles Heal of this product (and Apple in general). They really did drop the ball here. Antenna designers said it would do this when the leaked prototype hit the news. Steve telling people ‘use a case’ didn’t do much to improve the backlash. The beta of the software update doesn’t seem to do anything. As Microsoft said today, this could be Apple’s Vista.

Having a multi-iPhone family is pretty handy too. Emily and I can now share our financial data (Moneywell for iPhone). I’m beta testing the software and it will allow us to enter transactions on the go. We then sync to the desktop app and poof, its all right there. Over the air syncing is coming too. The most useful one so far is sharing our shopping list (Grocey IQ). If I’m out she can just add items to the shopping list and they get sent to my iPhone’s copy of Grocery IQ. This is very handy. As we think of things we just add them to one list and it keeps the list in sync. Another helpful feature is we can now know where we are (Find my iPhone). If I’m in the office and wondering if Emily has left work yet, I can check using the ‘Find my iPhone’ feature. I can see if she is on the road, look for traffic and warn her of any delays, and know when to get dinner ready.

All in all it is a good upgrade and works better in every way than my old iPhone.