The new iPhone has lived up to my expectations, but there are still the obvious drawbacks.

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Jun 28, 2010

So I’ve spent the last few days using the new iPhone 4 with varied reactions. Four full days with the device isn’t sufficient enough for me to give my final opinion on it yet, but here are my initial thoughts in no particular order:

Screen and resolution: easily the most impressive thing about the new model. It feels like my eyes are playing tricks on me when viewing most text on it; it’s that crisp and clear that it almost pops off the screen. Of course, with this new high resolution comes the drawback of non-high-resolution graphics showing their true form (ie. pixelation). The majority of apps I’ve used still have their icons, buttons and images looking blurry due to this.
Rainbow effect: This is kind of a strange thing I noticed by accident, but when viewing the phone with my sunglasses on, it leaves a slight rainbow tint that follows the direct sunlight. I thought it might just be my pair of sunglasses doing this, but then someone else experienced seeing the same thing without me saying anything relating to this issue. Perhaps this was true with the 3GS model as well with its new oleophobic screen, but I never used one to say with certainty.
Effect on older models: Last thing I’ll say about the display. Again, my eyes seem to deceive me; now when I view my old 3G model, it looks terribly pixelated. I never thought the screen looked bad before, but now it seems so poor in comparison to the new model. I think my eyes are starting to focus and tune themselves in a different manner, it seems like I can spot pixels on the older model a mile away. It’s slightly freaky. Could the new iPhone be changing how well we can all view pixels now? (this might just be me though, of course)
Mold and feel: This new model feels very solid in hand, actually making the 3GS and previous iPhone models feel like Fischer Price toys in comparison. While slightly heavier, I think it gives the device a more “high-end” feel to it.
Grip out of pocket: This is one thing that I’ve been noticing while taking my phone out to use and something I’ll just have to adjust to. It’s now slightly more difficult to just pull out the phone and make a quick call since I’m constantly pulling it out of pocket either upside down or backwards. Of course, this is due to all the edges of the phone being perfectly symmetrical. This is the only instance where I can say the old curved backing helped.
Camera & video: Pictures are really crisp with good lighting, still iffy in darker environments. The flash intensity is subpar, but I’ll take it. 720p video looks outstanding.
Wallpaper: Long overdue, I was sick of the old boring black. I now have a new favorite wallpaper to use as well.
Multitasking: Doesn’t really feel like multitasking, more like a fast-app switcher. I find it slightly weird that apps must be manually closed as well, instead of being on some sort of timer to close out automatically.
Speed: It feels faster than my Macbook Pro, that includes opening apps, browsing the web and viewing photos; it’s that fast.
Battery: Seems to be holding up well, drained it twice so far and a full charge seems to take at least a full day of heavy use to get it down again.
Reception: The big one, I won’t belabor the obvious design flaws in putting the antenna’s on the outside edges of the device; that’s already been covered in the media well enough over the last week. I’ll just say that it has been affecting me more than I anticipated so far. I rarely have more than 3 bars indoors now (living in Chicago, that’s unacceptable in my opinion) and if I hold it the “wrong way” like Steve says, I usually will drop to one bar or zero. This issue isn’t a fluke, my 3G never had zero bars in the two years that I owned it. I’ve hit zero at least three separate times in the last four days. I’ve had to subconsciously keep track of where my fingers are to make sure one of those side antenna bands aren’t touching any skin. It’s rather frustrating at this point and I hope there’s some sort of fix soon besides purchasing a bumper.

All in all an impressive, beautiful phone and interface. If Apple can work out the main issue of reception signal (hopefully with a firmware update), I would be another happy customer.