And suddenly, iPhone 4
It’s been about five months, so about time I posted another comment on here. As always, follow me on twitter or add me on Facebook. That’s really the best way to follow what I am up to (if you’re into that sort of thing).
So, I figured I’d focus this post on the new iPhone so as to free up my twitter account a bit. I already have a few extensive posts about my cell phone stuff since I moved to San Antonio, and you can read this here if you’d like: http://www.tsuehpsyde.com/?cat=3&paged=2
The general consensus is:
So, to date, I have been with AT&T and my iPhone 3GS for a year. Thoughts?
So, things were good.
Then AT&T/Apple decided to offer full subsidy on the next iPhone if you were eligible for an upgrade any time in 2010. Interesting enough, I was set for an upgrade in November of 2010, and a week before pre-order, showed that I was able to upgrade at the new customer price on release day by only extending my contract a year (throwing away the current one and starting a fresh 2 year). 1 year for $400 off a new phone that will clearly hold me out for two years? Yes please.
So I wake up on pre-order morning around 7:30AM (somewhat normal wake up time) to find Apple’s site dying under the load. Big surprise. I get ready for work and periodically check the site, see if I can punch through and sneak a “ship to me” pre-order. I try without results until I get to work, and I try at work for maybe an hour on and off. No dice. I leave for an early lunch break and head to the same place I went to get my iPhone 3GS: Best Buy. Show up, pay $50 for a gift card, and I am on my way. Fast forward a week and a half, and I drive to Best Buy in the morning, get there at 8:50AM to no lines. Two guys are getting checked out at the two registers for Best Buy mobile, and that’s it. I check my Facebook/Twitter/Emails/News Sites and before I know it (maybe 5 mins), I am seated and getting myself this: http://yfrog.com/5na60oj
Just like last year, there were no lines at all, and activation was a snap. In fact, I had just been handed that phone and took that pic and attempted to upload to twitter only to have my cell service already be cut off. Had to upload it a few hours later, heh. Meanwhile, the line at the Apple store across the street was easily 2-3 hours long, if not longer to get into the store. So my tip to you is, if you want to avoid the rabid fanboys and simply get a great phone, go to Best Buy and avoid the crazy. Two years running and it’s been good for me.
Okay, so the back story out of the way, now what? Well, as I said above, I felt this phone was much better suited to keep me for two years than my current phone. Those reasons are (in no particular order):
There are other cool things, like the speaker phone being better, and the mute toggle switch not being so easy to be abused like in the previous phones, but those were the big winners for me. I’ll try to address these in the same order as listed. The first one alone deserves mention, but it ties into the other two after it as well: the iPhone’s interface is just amazing. It’s beautiful, it’s smooth, and it feels well packaged. I’ve used both the Android platform and the WebOS platform, and I have to say, the 3D acceleration (or if not that, just the UI programming itself) just simply is not there. Apple’s rubber banding, as well as smooth scrolling, is still #1. And at this point, WebOS is about to die (HP bought out Palm and has openly said they have no intention to keep after the phone market
), so that only leaves Android (Droid is a specific brand of Android by Motorola/Verizon, FYI) to fight with Apple, imo. Nokia’s stuff isn’t in the same league, and BlackBerry users are a different type of user, though BlackBerry is working on a web browser using Apple’s WebKit, heh.
All that said, the mix of more memory and faster processor makes for a very nice experience. Mix that with HSUPA and the maps application on 3G is outstanding. I show people how fast it refreshes the panels of the map (as long as Google’s servers are playing nice) and it’s unreal how fast it works. The HSUPA just makes the entire thing smooth sailing. And for an example of the speed I’m seeing, check it out here: http://www.speedtest.net/iphone/43602317.png
Note that is 2x faster than any EVO 4G tests on Sprint I have seen to date. In theory, 4G is faster. In real world usage? Not so much. (at least in San Antonio) Also, hooking into Wireless N is quite nice at home. The WiFi performance on the iPhone 4 is notably more stable than on the 3GS. For some reason, the signal bounced everywhere on my 3GS.
That leaves us with the antennas. Ahh yes, this one has exposure EVERYWHERE. As you may or may not have read, holding the phone on the lower left side can bridge the two antennas (the outside band is two, one for the phone stuff, and one for everything else) causing reception to drop by about 20 db. The more amazing thing is when you see the phone go visually from 5 bars to searching. Kind of scary. Me personally? I’ve only seen it a few times. I can make it happen (if I am in a lower reception area), but it’s usually not a problem. It’s more of a problem when using the phone as an “internet communications device” than as a phone. I also saw one of the students @ the church trying to read iBooks and the data dropped off completely until I grabbed it to look and it worked instantly. I laughed, and thought it was funny. Thus far, I can count 2 calls that have dropped or failed to call because I held it in a way that caused this.
So, what’s my verdict? I’m personally okay with it. I think Apple should have laminated the outside to avoid this, but I have no idea why they didn’t. All phones have this issue to some degree (Nexus one being a popular Android phone with it), but this one is super duper easy to replicate based on the black line of the phone. I like the idea of the antenna being on the outside, probably since I’m a geek. I’m cool with slapping a bumper on it (though I think at this point, Apple should be giving them out for free) and calling it a day. I think Apple is fumbling the ball HARD on this issue right now (recently admitting to fudging the bars to make things look better), but I’m ultimately fine with it. I’m curious to see if Apple’s software update also handling the bridging scenario on the baseband software (some sort of compensation on that side for the antenna changing characteristics) or if they truly are just fiddling with the bars. Also, if the software cannot fix this issue, I am curious to see if iPhone 5 (or 4G or whatever they call it) has a laminate around it, or if they change the design again, or do nothing. But as shown in my above speed test, the phone has the fastest 3G performance I’ve ever had, so I’m cool with it. Also, I’ve had two phones (first one had a stuck pixel), and both had the issue, so I don’t see this being a manufacturing defect. This is a design flaw/deficiency/feature.
So, now that I covered that, what do I think the next iPhone (call it iPhone 5?) will have? Let me take a stab at it.
Let’s see if I am even close.
So we’ll see how that goes.
As always, I’ll try to update this blog with the longer thoughts that are too big for Facebook or twitter.
