I consider myself an evangelical Apple fanboy. I started off as a PC guy. As for cellphone preference, I stuck it out with a Samsung Blackjack I and II. The Blackjack II did everything I wanted to. I could watch tv, manage outlook task lists, and even text to my heart’s content. Then I purchased my macbook Pro and everything changed for me. For the longest time, I had been stuck on a PC doing the most simplest of tasks. With the macbook Pro, I could go anywhere and not sacrifice performance when I had to take my laptop with me. I still had my Blackjack II for a little while longer, but was sick and tired of having to hack my device just to put iTunes tracks on it. I purchased an iTouch as a compromise, but I have to admit that it was the app store more than the device itself which attracted me to Apple’s mobile ecosystem. Three years later and three phone updates later, I purchased my iPhone 4.
The Good
The iPhone 4’s screen is like paper. The fluid motion of applications opening, closing, and being swiped in one direction to that of another is the best experience I have ever had with a phone GUI. You just don’t get the feeling that you are interacting with a screen at all. There are no wait times. Multitasking between watching a movie, reading email, and writing outlines and scripts can all be done seamlessly on the device via Apple’s multi-tasking feature. Though there is not much of a speed difference between the iPhone 3GS running iOS4 and the iPhone 4, you do notice a difference after you have multiple apps running at once.
Of all the cameras I own, I take most of my pictures with my iPhone, so the increase in resolution on the iPhone 4 was an important feature for me. The camera is great and the flash even better, but the HD video capture is where its at. I have been finding myself taking way more HD video footage of my finance and I with the iPhone’s new HD camera capabilities more so than taking pictures. It’s so easy to just point and record and the video quality is top notch.
802.11 N was a much needed feature on the iPhone if you want to transfer HD video (compressed) to the web. I found myself buying an Airport Extreme just to keep up with all the variable frequencies I have in the house, though.
The Bad
Still waiting to create “folders” for pictures and what not. The Photo album is absolutely useless if I can’t organize my photos. I guess I will have to continue using flickr until Apple gets serious about tagging photos on mobile devices. Video in low light situations is horrible and so are pictures with the flash. Though you can create some kewl artistic effects with the iPhone camera + flash, but its no SLR.
The Ugly
Bugs! I ran into a bug yesterday where the iPhone did not delete my pictures correctly. It took me a few hours to figure out how to get rid of these black boxes in my photo album. I also took video of fireworks on the 4th of July in landscape mode and the phone refused to orient the video capture in landscape mode, so you have to tilt your head just to see the footage as intended.
Conclusion
I have a few Droid owners as friends. When they hold their Droid device, they are quick to point out all of the features that they can do as opposed to what I can not. Each app, however, responds differently. There are no standards. Droid might do everything brilliantly, but I don’t want everything. What I want from my phone is efficiency. There is a difference and the iPhone 4 delivers.
