After months of hype and speculation the iPhone 4 has finally arrived in Ireland. It boasts a host of new features and upgrades which Apple hopes will keep their smartphone in the hearts, minds and pockets of consumers as it fights off  serious challenges from Google and Microsoft.
By Leo Stiles
But is the hype justified? Does the phone offer more than its Android competitors and just how bad is the reception problem? Joe has the answers to all these questions and more as we put the iPhone 4 to the test and give you the definitive review.
Phone Reception
There is just no point in doing an iPhone 4 review without getting the signal attenuation issue out of the way. On the two units we tested both had issues when left bottom corner of the phone came into contact with the skin. One of the phones seemed to be more affected than the other with a quite alarming drop off in signal even after we updated both phones to iOS version 4.0.1.
We did a test with both models and touched the corner of the phone while making a call. At first nothing happened but then the quality of the call dropped dramatically to the point where you couldn’t have a conversation.
Popping the phone into a case does solve much of the problem but there is no way Apple should have ever released a phone that was as compromised as this. After all, it is a phone and no matter how many other things it can do, it should be a robust phone first and everything else second.
The offending corner
It all smacks of design coming before anything else and despite the free cases that are now being offered to users, we hate that this flaw compromises a terrific piece of technology so severely. Future versions will have to do better if Apple wants to maintain its market share.
Signal issues are network dependent in some regards and our test phones were on the 3 network so we don’t know if the phone performs better on other networks. What we do know is that 3G data performance was patchy all the way through Galway, Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Cork.
Speaking of free cases – you can get yours by downloading the iPhone case app from the app store that will offer you the choice of an official Apple bumper or a range of third party cases. This is great but the rub here is that you will have to wait as long as six weeks and chances are you will be sick of the signal problem long before then and end up shelling out for one at your local phone shop.
iPhone 4 Review: The Hardware
Design
What is so maddening about the signal issues is that it is caused by such a beautiful design. The plastic of the older models is gone, replaced instead with aluminium and glass which makes the phone gleam. The phone is now flat and its corners are sharper with the volume, screen lock and mute buttons now rendered in metal. The phone is thin too; about 25 per cent thinner than the 3GS model and if you put that model side by side with the iPhone 4, the 3Gs looks like a Fisher Price phone by comparison.
Unfortunately there is a minor trade-off here in that the new model is not as comfortable in the hand and the glass surface of the back is much more slippery leading to a couple of near drops during the last few days that saw us running off to buy a rubber case to prevent another heart attack moment.
The Screen
For our money the defining feature of the iPhone 4 has to be the screen which is nothing short of jaw dropping. It is the one thing that makes us want to forgive any amount of signal attenuation. Switch on the phone and the difference is immediate; the colours pop and there not a single pixel is visible to the naked eye. Fire up Safari for some web browsing and it’s even more impressive with the text pin sharp and the pictures showing a level of detail we don’t even get on the office laptops, some of which sport very nice Samsung screens.
The Camera
Aside from the new aesthetics, the iPhone 4 features two new cameras. The first is a front facing camera to facilitate the new Face Time feature of the phone and is a pretty standard 1.5 megapixel camera that should eliminate the old need for contortions when taking a self portrait. The front camera does reasonably well in day light but in low light the results are pretty grainy.
The camera on the back has had a serious upgrade from the 3GS which had a pretty decent 3 megapixel camera. The new camera is now 5 megapixels and has an LED flash that give low light photography on the iPhone a huge lift. Pictures taken with the new camera are fantastic with a level of detail that might well make to leave your regular camera behind for your next holiday.
The only downer is that once again Apple have refused to give the camera dedicated shutter button which is just infuriating as hitting the touch screen button can be very counter-intuitive when you are trying to fire off a quick snap. Why one of the volume buttons couldn’t double up as the camera button is mystifying and could be easily fixed with an update.
My favourite feature of the new camera has to be HD video recording. It delivers proper 720p video that can be uploaded to YouTube or edited on the phone using the new iMovie software that can be downloaded from the app store. Video results are very sharp and even with some jumping about the image stays surprisingly stable.
iBooks, Apple’s e-book reader, is another highlight and we managed to read a couple of chapters of Sherlock Holmes without strain or discomfort, something that no handheld device has managed to do yet.
Other Features
The headphone jack now has a much more solid design and there is now a second noise dampening microphone that filters out background noise for much cleaner sound during phone calls.
Under the hood there is now the inclusion of a six axis gyroscope which should have benefits for gaming apps by giving more control options. The digital compass from the 3GS returns and at the heart of the phone is the ARM A4 processor which is the same chip at the core of the iPad and makes using the phone a joy due to the sheer speed at which everything runs.
iPhone 4 Review: The Software
Multitasking
The iPhone operating system was updated earlier this year giving some of the features available for the iPhone 4 to owners of the 3G and 3GS. Features such as multitasking really come to life here with the phone running a good many number of apps in the background without causing the phone to miss a beat. We especially liked being able to listen to a radio app while browsing the net or updating on Twitter, with switching between apps a matter of double clicking the home button and then hitting the app icon. Switching is very fast and at last gives users the flexibility that Android users have long taken for granted.
Not all apps will support multitasking as Apple has the final say on what software can or can’t use the feature. Apple’s reasoning is that a large number of resource-happy apps running at the same time will adversely affect the phones performance. This is hard to argue with and the sort of apps that have been granted permission to use multitasking are so far the right ones.
The mail application has been upgraded with a few tweaks and now boasts a unified inbox and topic grouping and saves you from constantly searching for conversation threads and the annoyance of having to switch accounts again and again. It’s still a long way from the desktop experience but is far more usable now and it’s nice to see Apple moving in the right direction with this.
Face Time
Face Time is an iPhone 4 exclusive feature that allows video calling over Wi-Fi. It seems like an odd move as video calling has never really taken off on mobile devices even after multiple attempts and I don’t really see this feature changing that. The performance of the app is great with crisp clean video and smooth updates that feel very much like its Mac bound relative iChat. Such performance can only come at a huge data cost which should explain the restriction to Wi-Fi as mobile carriers are already being squeezed for bandwidth as it is. Your standard 2GB of data a month wouldn’t last long if faced with multiple video calls. Mark this feature as a gimmick for now.
App Performance
The A4 processor makes using the phone a dream with massively improved response times and loading speeds that were up to four times faster than the old 3G model. Unsurprisingly, it’s the games that benefited the most with improved visuals and no slowdown or laggy responses to your commands.
Games that had been updated especially to support the new phone were in some cases quite spectacular. Take N.O.V.A. for example. On the older phones it was the best example of a console level game on a mobile phone, with superior graphics and controls. The iPhone 4 version of the game has to be seen to be believed with HD graphics that surpasses PSP games with ease and really represents the next generation of mobile phone games. Added to this are the improved gyroscopic controls and it’s clear that Sony and Nintendo are about to get some major competition in the handheld gaming space.
Regular apps such as Facebook and Twiiter also run much faster and look sharper. Quicker response times and upload speeds now make them more of pleasure to use than their desktop equivalents.
Apps that are not optimised for the iPhone 4 certainly run faster but tend to look a bit fuzzy on the new screen due to a much lower resolution.
Folders
As good as apps are, scrolling through page after page to find the right one has become a bit tiresome and we were happy to see that Apple has implemented folders into the new operating system to store your apps in a much more flexible way.
Just drag two app icons together and the phone automatically creates a folder which can be named whatever you like. It’s all very simple but for some reason Apple has limited a folder to just 12 apps which results in multiple folders for similar apps you have downloaded.
Safari
The fact that almost nothing has changed on the built-in web browser is depressing because as you might know already, it still doesn’t support Flash. Frankly, we are sick of it. HTML5 may well be the future of the internet but this future is years away and denying iPhone users a rich web experience right now. It’s getting ridiculous.
The Rest
- You can now lock the orientation of the screen which is handy for web browsing and certain apps.
- The battery level can now be displayed as a percentage which is really handy for gauging just how much more time you can play Angry Birds before you have to find a place to recharge.
- Wallpapers can now be applied to the home screen as well as the lock screen giving a more personal touch to the phone.
- You can now pair a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPhone which doesn’t mean much now but an iPhone version of iWork has been rumoured for months so this will probably make more sense later.
iPhone 4 Review: The Verdict
The headline features of the iPhone 4; the screen, the camera, the updates to the operating system are all five star additions to the already excellent iPhone experience and if it wasn’t for the signal issues that we experienced with the phone, we would have no hesitation in saying that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market.
Unfortunately, the reception issue affects the phone on such a fundamental level that we cannot give the it our full recommendation, especially as buying an iPhone 4 will not only be an expensive purchase but one that will lock you into using the phone for 18 months or more, which is a long time to have to put up with such a big flaw.
It’s very difficult for us to say this because on almost every other level we loved the iPhone 4, but if you want an Apple mobile and you can’t wait until the inevitable iPhone 5 next year then we would say that you should consider the 3GS as not only does it run flawlessly, it has iOS4, many of the same features as the iPhone 4 and will cost you significantly less to buy.
Hopefully, this time next year we will be able to tell you about a flawless iPhone but for now, sadly, we can’t.
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