If waiting in line for three hours to buy a product on release day makes one a fan boy, then I guess I qualify now.
I’ve been using a first generation iPhone (quite happily, I might add) since bringing one back from south of the border nearly three years ago. That is easily the longest I’ve ever used a cell phone, and even though it is now three product revisions out-of-date, I don’t harbour the resentment towards it that I have towards previous devices I’ve owned. In that three years I’ve said time and again that it was the best phone I have ever owned, and given the current state of affairs, I wouldn’t consider anything but an iPhone. Friday was the launch of the iPhone 4 in Canada, and given that my phone is officially outmoded, I decided to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
I didn’t originally plan on doing the whole launch day thing, but you know how these things go when you’re under peer influence. Trevor and I talked each other into scouring Lethbridge in search of available phones, and after shuttling between a few locations and then standing in line for a few hours, we managed to get our hands on the shiny new phones at the Rogers store in Park Place mall.
After a day and a half of use with my new phone, I’m ready to share my preliminary thoughts on it. Let’s start with the questions that people have asked me so far:
Can I invoke the death grip to make it lose bars?
My neighbourhood has intermittently flaky Rogers service; based on the less sensational death grip reports I’ve read, that sounds like prime conditions to demonstrate this phenomenon, and indeed I can make it happen if I really consciously try to do it. So far it seems academic to me since I’ve made a few calls from my house while the phone is showing one or two bars and I’m holding it in my left hand; I haven’t dropped a call yet.
Is the screen as good as advertised?
Bear in mind that I’m a pretty pro-Apple, pro-iPhone guy, but yeah, despite the hokey retina display moniker, it’s pretty darned fantastic. Even getting up close to the display, I can’t distinguish individual pixels with the naked eye. Trevor and I have commented to each other while exchanging text messages that the display is beautifully clear and crisp.
Man I can’t get over how clear the text is.
– Trevor via SMS
How does FaceTime perform?
Based on my first two FaceTime calls, it’s as good as I expected, and possibly better. Trevor called me from the Safeway parking lot using their free wifi. There were moments of choppiness in his video, and the call was abruptly ended due to an unknown error, but for the duration of the call, the video and voice quality were excellent. I later chatted with Jeddy for a solid 15 minutes, and the whole things was virtually flawless. We put the app through its paces, swapping between front- and rear-facing cameras, changing portrait/landscape orientation, and continuing a call in the background while checking my calendar. Everything worked as smoothly and as intuitively as you’d expect from an Apple product. It just works.
Are you getting a case for it?
I don’t love adding bulk to my phone. I’ve managed to go three years without a case on my old iPhone, so I’m likely to do the same again. That said, Apple is just giving them away, so I might as well get one and see if I like it. My order for a Griffin Reveal Etch is already in.
Further preliminary thoughts
Again, keep in mind that I’ve been using the first generation phone for three years and have missed out on several advances that were introduced in the 3G and 3Gs models; this is a big upgrade for me (and for the first time in three years, I have the cool phone again).
The speed is probably the most noticeable thing for me right now. Apps launch quickly and the typing feels so much more natural because of its responsiveness. iOS 4’s multi-tasking further improves the feeling of system speed, since you can quickly switch between many apps without losing your context within an app or being required to detour through the home screen along the way.
The unified inbox seems like a nice feature, but it’ll probably take some time for me to acclimate to it. I generally prefer having my inboxes divided up, since my email accounts all serve different purposes. Granted I can still view each inbox individually, and the option to view the inbox directly as opposed to viewing the full list of folders first is a nice improvement for me there.
The built-in speakers sound better to me. Speakerphone on the original phone was hit and miss, but here we are making FaceTime calls and raving about the audio quality. Playing music on the device, I can certainly notice the volume difference between the two devices.
iOS 4 folders are great. 3G users plagued by performance issues after the iOS 4 upgrade may not consider folders worth the performance hit, but on the top end hardware it is certainly a welcome feature to clean up and organize my cluttered pages worth of apps.
I haven’t played with the camera a whole bunch yet, but it’s easy to see that it outperforms the first generation phone in a big way. Somehow I was expecting more from the video, but I think that’s a result of comparing it against the quality of video from my parents’ new Canon G11.
Did I mention I was using an original iPhone before. Just the move to 3G from Edge is an awesome improvement for me.
It is blowing my mind a little bit to think that I paid more than twice as much for my first iPhone than I did for this one.
So the bottom line is that the iPhone is still the best phone I’ve ever used, and it continues to get better. Say what you will about iTunes or App Store approval processes, the whole experience of using an iPhone is tough to match. Now it’s time to start writing some apps for this thing.