First impressions of my iPhone 4

Well I’ve had my new phone for around 4 days now and I have to say I’m impressed. It’s a huge change when you’ve been used to an iPhone 3G for two years.

I’ve moved from O2 to T-Mobile and now to Orange. I am sad to leave T-Mobile as they were brilliant as an interim SIM to keep my handset ticking over for the first 6 months of this year. Their tech support were also brilliant and texted me the PAC whilst I was still talking to them. However, they (T-Mo) *still* haven’t announced their pricing or availability yet and the handset’s been out nearly a week already. I reckon they’ll lose a few customers (like me) who wanted the handset sooner. I wonder if it’s because they don’t mind people defecting to Orange, seeing as they’re both the same company now, under the ‘Everything Everywhere’ banner.

The PAC process was pretty painless too – although a minor quibble with Orange would be that their system said ‘We’ll send you an email to tell you when your porting date will be’ which never arrived. When I rang them to check, the Orange person I spoke to was like ‘Er, let’s try your PAC again’ at which point they said it failed. A quick chat to the knowledgeable people at T-Mobile (including a very helpful geordie lady) and they confirmed that the port was due to go through and was cue’d up ready to roll that night (which it did perfectly.) Shame Orange couldn’t tell me that.

Anyway, Some good things I’ve noticed;

• The screen is stunningly sharp. You really notice the difference side by side – but older apps suffer more because they’re not the correct resolution, so they look a little more jagged. It’ll tidy up in time. Those apps written for iPhone 4 / iOS 4 really shine. Godfinger, for example, just looks stunning whereas it just won’t run at all on the 3G.
• The handset is alot quicker. Night and Day comparing it to a regular 3G with iOS4. Much more responsive and tactile.
• Sat-Nav (in my case, TomTom, but even in the maps apps) is just spot on. Very quick to pinpoint location.
• Data handling seems faster. Even on Wifi – downloading or loading items seems very very quick.
• Like the multi-tasking although sometimes it can be a pain. When you’ve been used to killing an app with one press of the home button, it’s a frustration when you re-enter the app for it to remember where you were sometimes. I do end up going in regularly and clearing out the task manager. There maybe needs to be a way to get back to the home screen and kill  the app stone dead without having to faff.
• It works as an iPod with the JVC head unit in my car where the 3G wouldn’t play ball and threw a ‘You’re not a supported device’ strop and the head unit would just sit and wait. This one just worked straight off. A great pluspoint for me.
• Bluetooth playback seems to be better, although it’s still *very* choppy. (Of course, now the car supports me plugging it directly in then I’ll not be using the BT audio again.) I did notice it supports obex through my head unit now so there is an option to sync contacts to my head unit which I don’t remember seeing on the 3G.
• Sorry T-Mobile – Orange’s 3G network is muuuuuch faster than yours. Very fast data rates on the new handset – although that could be HSDPA vs regular 3G at work there.
• 720p video is great, as is the 5 megapixel camera – I won’t need to take my Sony W270 around with me so much now.
  

  A Sample Image taken by my iPhone 4 - Click for Actual Size

Some bad things I’ve noticed;

• More applications crash than before. Normally without warning too. On the 3G they used to just hang. Now they just go ‘pop’ and you’re back to the home screens.
• I’ve found some errors in the iTunes music store on the handset. Some podcasts throw up application errors but then start playing in the background invisibly even though they’re not in the iPod app. In fact, nothing is shown as playing but it’s definitely playing. The only way to stop them playing is to go to the home screen and then double click and kill the iTMS app which stops it playing.
• The antenna issue, obviously. I can replicate it perfectly every time. However, now I have a nice Griffin Graphite case on it, it’s more of a non-issue, but it is still a bit patchy dependent on how you hold it.
• More of an iOS 4 upgrade issue, but when iTunes does it’s restore and first sync, it forgets you had the 128K downsample option ticked, and then overfills your iPhone and either crashes during first sync, or just misses half your music off and throws a strop. To fix, you have to untick almost everything to sync, and then re-tick it all and it works again, resyncing at the amended bitrate and filling it up properly.

So is it worth upgrading to? If you’ve a 3G and you can do it, I would recommend getting one. I’m sort of tied into the investment now as I’ve spend money on loads of Apps, which I’ve now got to a closed set of a few I use daily.