Review: iPhone 4

Introduction

There has been a lot of hype surrounding Apple's new iPhone 4 but has it really lived up to it?

Pros

• The screen is awesome
• The interface is good, as usual
• battery life has improved
• Fast

Cons

• Facetime is useless
• Glass makes it feel too delicate
• Not really revolutionary

Design

Well, if you don't know what Apple's iPhone looks like, then you must have been living under a rock for the past few months. Anyway, it feels nice in the hand and noticeably slimmer. It also feels quite solid. I, however, was a bit nervous, the glass looked good but it made the phone feel like it could scratch easily. I was also scared of dropping it in case the glass cracked. I did find a nice case to put it in, but phones always look better when they are out of the case.

Performance

When, I first turned the phone on, I noticed the bright screen. The display was crisp and vibrant and it looked really good. I watched a few YouTube videos on it and they also looked really crisp. The phone's screen also felt a lot more responsive than the older iPhone 3G although it did feel a little sticky which was weird. The interface looked the same as it has done on all iPhones since the first one so there is nothing new worth mentioning. However, when comparing performance between the 3G and the 4, there was a huge difference. This could have just been because the 3G was running iOS 4 which made it sluggish. I looked at iBooks and there was no delays on the iPhone 4 while on the 3G, it took a while to even turn the page.

Logically, the next step would have been to explore the new camera and it feels really cool. The photos came out quite well and the addition of a flash makes a huge difference to the photos. Personally, I liked the tap to focus feature which was really useful and I thought it made it easier to focus than a conventional compact camera. The fact that the phone can also capture video is cool as is the ability to switch between the two cameras to take photos of yourself, if that's what you're into. This brings me onto one of the most hyped features of the phone, Facetime. Facetime is essentially video calling, except worse. Instead of being able to call anyone who has a phone capable of video calling, you can only call other iPhone 4s. On top of this, both of you have to be on WiFi. So essentially the feature is useless.

There have also been a lot of complaints about the reception of the phone but when I used it, I found no such issue. This could have been because the phone is on Telstra, one of the best networks which has really good coverage. I never noticed any drop in signal strength no matter how I held the phone. Call clarity was also really good throughout and I had no call drops. Again, this could have just been because of the network. I have heard AT&T is quite crap so this could have been why signal was lost so quickly.

Conclusion

Overall, the phone is quite good. it is fast, responsive and the retina display is really crisp and vibrant. The phone feels nice in the hand and is incredibly solid. The new features that were promised all worked well. However, i don't think the phone is really worth upgrading to if you have the 3GS. It has a few new features but nothing revolutionary. If you have the 3G though, it is a worthwhile upgrade as you get a better camera and compass functionality. On top of this you also get a much speedier phone and a better screen.