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http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2444024,iphone4-ihnatko-review-apple-062810.article#

June 28, 2010
By ANDY IHNATKO <ai@andyi.com> ai@andyi.com

In 2007, the iPhone was truly revolutionary and everyone was just grateful
to have them at all. Every June since, there's been a new model. Apple
typically kept adding features like 3G, GPS, the ability to run third-party
apps ... features that seemed thrilling and exotic within the context of the
iPhone but which in the larger world of smartphones were about as unusual as
nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere.

But who cares? Each of these features made the iPhone materially better. And
the true star of the iPhone experience was always the iPhone OS (now
iOS 4)<https://edit.stngweb.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2428780,ihnatko-apple-ios4-iphone-apple-062410.article%E2%80%9D>,
which I'm convinced remains head-and-shoulders the easiest, most attractive,
and most meticulously-cultivated mobile OS out there.
» Click to enlarge
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Andy Ihnatko

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The Apple iPhone
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Another June has come, and we inevitably have another iPhone. As I run
through the list of the iPhone 4's new features, I am once again tempted to
crank up my cynicism generator and note that most these items are features
we've seen before on other phones: things like a high-definition display, an
LED flash, a forward-facing camera and the ability to do video conferencing.

If a quick glance at the iPhone 4's new features inspires initial cynicism,
spending five days immersed in the actual device makes another impression
entirely. For the first time since 2007, I feel as though the device I'm
carrying isn't merely an *improved* iPhone, but a truly *new* one.
iPhone 4 Design

I'm surprised by what often passes for mobile phone design these days. I
flip a $200 phone in my hands in search of the Power button and it feels
like a 1984 handheld electronic football game. It's filled with odd angles
and bumps, and I can feel loose seams where sections of the case don't fit
together properly.

The iPhone 4 feels as though someone sat down, cracked his or her knuckles,
and decided that they were going to design and construct the hell out of
this thing.

The iPhone 4 is a frame of stainless steel that contains the phone's screen
and electronics, sandwiched between two sheets of aluminosilicate glass, at
the back and the front. The frame is interrupted sparingly and politely by
the usual small assortment of iPhone function buttons, done up in brushed
metal. At 9.3 millimeters thin, the iPhone is the thinnest smartphone on the
market, according to Apple.

Well, I can't imagine a phone being any thinner without sacrificing
function. I was concerned that the flat shape and hard edges would be
uncomfortable to hold and operate. Not so; the iPhone 4 feels terrific in
your hand. It has a positive and reassuring heft as you root it out of a
jacket pocket. That kind of thing actually does matter.

Another advantage of this design is that its thin profile and straight,
simple lines make it more "case-able" than any other iPhone. In some ways,
it seems like a "blank" phone. You can add protection to the iPhone without
necessarily adding bulk and ugliness ... two factors which have historically
led me to carry my various phones around as-is, naked and afraid.

Apple has started the ball rolling with their own "bumper" cases: a
rubberized collar (available in six colors) that snaps around the
stainless-steel frame and offers a welcome measure of impact-protection.

At $29, the bumper seems a bit pricey. But it isn't just a thick rubber
band: the iPhone's power and volume buttons are covered by well-engineered
mechanical pushers. Once it's in place, the bumper looks like an integral
part of the iPhone.

I like what the bumper does to the iPhone 4. It adds practically no bulk to
the phone and doesn't mar its clean design at all. Meanwhile, its rubberized
surface makes the iPhone much "grippier" and prevents it from sliding away
from you on a marble tabletop when you make a clumsy reach for it.

Which brings us to the subject of ...
Durability

The iPhone 4 represents a radical new design. I've never seen a phone that
even comes close to this.

Which naturally invited me to wonder about how durable this design is. Once,
while juggling car keys and packages, I dropped a Nexus One about 40 inches
straight onto a marble floor. The dent and the scuff proved that it had
landed right on a corner of the case. The impact had sent the battery and
the battery cover flying but otherwise, the phone was completely undamaged.

And *that's* what I've come to expect from plastic cases. I trust them. All
I know about stainless steel is that it transmits force instead of absorbing
it; what I know about glass is that it fractures instead of patiently
rippling.

In my briefings with Apple, I was told a little bit about this
aluminosilicate glass. It's actually 30 times stronger than ordinary plastic
and it's even used in the windshields of military helicopters.

Fab. But what happens to a military helicopter if it slips out of your coat
pocket and drops onto your driveway as you're getting out of the car? I've
never done that to any of my own military helicopters, so I really have no
idea.

All of these things were on my mind as I unboxed the iPhone 4 and charged it
up.

Before I tell you what happened to this phone, I should point out that my
brother tech columnist Walt Mossberg over at the Wall Street Journal dropped
his prerelease iPhone 4 "several times from a few feet onto a hard surface
with no problem." Ed Baig over at USA Today said that "an Apple executive
dropped it in front of me. The phone was undamaged."

BoingBoing <http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/22/apple-iphone-4-hands.html>"banged
it on the side of metal tables" without incident.

I mention all of this intentional abuse of Apple property for two reasons:

First, to indicate that the iPhone 4 is indeed designed to be very tough,
and in particular, that if Apple was willing drop one in front of a
reviewer, then they must be pretty confident about the iPhone 4's
durability.

And secondly, to make myself feel a little better about the fact that I
accidentally dropped and broke Apple's loaner iPhone 4 about 10 hours after
unboxing it (see the accompanying gallery).

Yeah. I'm not proud about that. The back panel was thoroughly cracked up ...
though the iPhone still worked fine.

I was out with friends, it was after dinner, and I was idly playing with the
iPhone 4 on top of the table the same way I idly play with my iPhone 3GS and
my Nexus One. But for some reason, it skidded out of my reach and clattered
onto the hard floor.

It wasn't in a bumper case. If it were, I probably couldn't have fumbled it
across the table and it might have had some protection when it hit the hard
floor. I couldn't tell if it had hit the metal table leg on the way down or
had smacked into the floor cleanly. But the results were pretty impeccable.

So: what have we learned, Charlie Brown?

Actually, not very much. I don't think it's reasonable to expect any
consumer phone to survive a drop from a table. As soon as a phone becomes
airborne, it's out of warranty and enters the realm of "Do you feel lucky
today, punk?"

The experience did encourage me to spend a lot of time over the past five
days investigating the durability of the iPhone 4. This YouTube video is
typical of what I've been hearing and seeing:

It's a static drop test in which the iPhone 4 free-falls from what appears
to be about forty inches, straight onto asphalt. It's perfectly fine after
the first drop. The guy in the video has to drop it *four* times to get the
screen to break. It's clear that he's even trying to impart some spin after
the first one.

This, and conversations with other iPhone 4 users, has left me convinced
that the iPhone 4 is (at the very least) no less durable than any other
consumer smartphone, despite its radical new design. You don't need to
handle it with anything more than the usual amount of caution and care you'd
use with any smartphone.

I'm annoyed that the iPhone now has *two* crackable glass panels instead of
one. But it appears that any drop that would break an iPhone 4 would have
totaled an iPhone 3GS just as readily. The lesson remains: take care of your
toys.

That said: I'll definitely be carrying my iPhone — and all of my phones — in
cases from now on.

I asked Apple if the Apple Stores offered a specific repair for a broken
back panel.

Obviously, it was carelessly-inflicted damage and shouldn't be covered by
warranty. But I've seen the iPhone 4 disassembled: it would appear that the
back panel lifts straight off after the removal of two exposed screws.

Apple referred me to the standard policy regarding out-of-warranty repairs:
it's a flat-rate fee of $199. I suspect that replacement rear panels will
soon become popular items on fix-your-iPhone-yourself retail sites.
Signal Issues

I noticed something odd with the iPhone from almost the moment I first
powered it up: my cell signal was fluctuating. I normally get a strong
five-bar signal in my office but sometimes it would slowly creep down to
just one, and then back up again; other times I'd pick it up and there'd be
no problem. Meanwhile, my iPhone 3GS showed a full signal.

The iPhone's stainless-steel frame isn't just there for style and structure;
it's also the phone's antenna assembly. The black seams between its steel
sections represent gaps between the phone's Bluetooth/WiFi/GPS antenna and
the larger one that's responsible for the connection to the cell network.

If I bridge the gap between the two antennas at the bottom-left corner of
the iPhone, it somehow interferes with the performance of the cell antenna.
Press it into my palm, and the signal drops. Remove it, and the signal comes
back.

It was my first exposure to a problem I'd see described all over message
boards over the coming days. Same symptoms, same problem.

Apple's formal statement regarding this problem is:

"Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna
performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the
placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone."

Which, frankly, is an odd response. Apple has a point regarding "cold spots"
on most mobile phones. But I have three other phones here in the office and
no matter how I hold them, I can't reproduce the same sort of dramatic
impact as I can create by simply bridging the gap at the base of the iPhone
with the heel of my left hand.

Furthermore, the problem simply doesn't happen when the iPhone is wearing a
case ... even Apple's bumper case. So it's definitely a physical "bridging"
problem, not a "blocking" problem. It's pretty clear that this is a problem
unique to a phone that wears its antennas on the outside.

Naturally, this problem has received a lot of play online. That's a shame,
because it only tells a fraction of the whole story. It's not necessary to
hold the iPhone 4 in a specific way to avoid the problem. Quite the
opposite; in my experiments, I found that there was just one position in
which the signal degrades ...and it's not even how I normally hold a phone.

Bottom line on *this* bit: be aware of the problem ... but overall, don't
worry about it.
A Golden Age Of iPhone Wireless

It's an unfair issue to dwell on because the iPhone 4's wireless abilities
represent some of the true superstar features of the device.

Even on AT&T's 3G network, this phone is an utter scorcher compared to the
iPhone 3GS.

After running the
SpeedTest<https://edit.stngweb.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://SpeedTest.net%E2%80%9D>app
on both an iPhone 4 and a 3GS eight times in the same location ten
minutes apart and throwing out the highest and lowest test results, I
discovered that the iPhone 4's average download speed was 15 percent faster
than the 3GS.

Nice. But that's not the big news:

The iPhone 4 is 4.4 *times* faster than its predecessor when uploading.
That's a high enough increase that I insisted that the iPhone 4 submit to an
immediate drug test.

It's due to the iPhone 4's improved implementation of
HSDPA<https://edit.stngweb.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access%E2%80%9D>(which
arrived with last year's iPhone 3GS) and its brand-new support for
HSUPA<https://edit.stngweb.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Uplink_Packet_Access%E2%80%9D>.
Yes, take a guess at what the "D" (download speed) and the "U" (upload
speed) stand for in those respective acronyms. The upshot: the iPhone 4 can
make better use of all of the improvements that AT&T has been making to its
network, and it shows immediately.

Raw speed aside, the iPhone 4 is noticeably better at acquiring and
maintaining a cell signal than its predecessor. I carried both my 3GS and
the iPhone 4 around every day. Every time I noticed fewer than the full five
bars of reception on the 3GS, I checked the iPhone 4 ... and it
*always*showed a stronger signal. I made a side-trip to a location
known for its
spotty AT&T coverage and my experience there also pointed to some serious
improvements to the iPhone's signal reception.

And the hits keep coming. Thanks to an upgraded GPS chip, the iPhone 4 locks
onto a GPS signal much more quickly than the 3GS. I also noticed greater
accuracy. My location has a far lesser tendency to "drift" than it does on
the 3GS, too. Which is a bit of a letdown because I was sort of enjoying
looking down at my phone during my morning constitutional and seeing that a
sudden leap 70 yards to the right and then back again within one second had
increased my average walking speed to about 90 miles per hour.

You can also expect far greater WiFi speeds in certain locations. The iPhone
3GS and most other phones on the market today only support 802.11b and g.
The iPhone 4 adds the much-faster 802.11n
standard<https://edit.stngweb.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11%E2%80%9D>to
its gunbelt.
And Now, Let's Bring Out Your Headliner: Retina Display

The iPhone 4's signature feature, the one that appears above the title on
the movie poster, is the Retina Display.

It's not enough to simply say that the iPhone 4's new display offers "higher
resolution" than the iPhone 3GS. It contains four times the number of pixels
in the same screen size, so, yes ... quite right.

But that doesn't quite cut it. The Droid X and the HTC Incredible and the
Sprint HTC EVO are much higher resolution than the 3GS. You look at any of
these three phones you think "Wow! That's a super-high-resolution display!"

Sometimes when you look at the iPhone 4's screen, you don't know
*what*you're looking at. The dots aren't "barely perceptible" ...
they're
*imperceptible*.

That's *physics*, son. You can argue with the man, but you can't, I say, you
can't argue with the *physics*, courtesy of Discover
Magazine<https://edit.stngweb.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/%E2%80%9D>,
boy!

Well, at any rate, you'll hurt your eyes trying to see individual pixels

And the intense dot pitch (326 dpi on a 960x640 3.5" display) is only half
the story. The phenomenal impact of the display owes at least as much to its
800:1 contrast ratio as to its resolution. It can display an enormous range
of light and color values.

In an optimal environment, looking at a photo — or even a paused frame from
Pixar's "Up" — is eerily like looking like a large film transparency on a
light table ... an illusion that's enhanced by the fact that the surface of
the screen is laminated directly to the underside of the iPhone's front
glass. There's hardly any gap between the pixels and the surface. I keep
looking for faults and weaknesses in the image. I can only find them when I
go into full-on Nitpick mode.

As a comparison test, I displayed an image of Holstein cows on the iPhone 4
and the Droid X. The Droid has an excellent screen (854x480 at 4.3"), but
the superiority of the iPhone's display was clear. There's a point at which
the Droid screen gives up and says "Okay. Let's just say that the *rest* of
this dark blotch on this cow's hide is solid black, all the way down."

The iPhone begs to differ: it wants to show you the texture of coarse, black
hair on the side of the cow all the way through the shadow.

What's the real impact of this superior display? Does it truly enhance your
day-to-day use of the phone?

It depends on the kind of user you are. During the simple, dull process of
tapping your way through application buttons and drilling down through
hierarchical menus ... no, you won't really appreciate the difference.

But when you're browsing the Web, you'll do a lot less zooming in to read
pages. When you read an ebook, the higher resolution and the higher contrast
between the "print" and the "page" makes for a more comfortable reading
experience.

Obviously, watching movies and viewing pictures on the iPhone 4 is up on a
whole separate level. In fact, during my camera tests of the iPhone 4 versus
three other phones and a camera, I initially scored the Droid X and the
other phones a little worse than they deserved. Only when I got home and
dumped my pictures to my desktop display did I realize that the other
phones' cameras were significantly better than I'd thought ... particularly
that of the Droid X. On the train ride home, I'd previewed my shots right on
their devices. The Droid X's screen wasn't presenting its own photos with
nearly the kind of care and fidelity that the iPhone's was.

Obviously, many games will get a profound upgraded experience thanks to this
display. But even a simple app like aSmart
HUD<https://edit.stngweb.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://itunes.apple.com/us/app/asmart-hud-speedcams/id304564168?mt=8%E2%80%9D>,
my favorite dashboard-mount speedometer app for my iPhone, is reinvented on
an iPhone. On the 3GS, the speed and compass and other onscreen indicators
look like a computer-generated display. On the iPhone 4, they look like
human-generated artwork. Once again, you get the "medium-format color slide"
effect.

All existing iPhone apps get higher definition text and standard UI elements
"for free"; the iPhone's OS automatically renders those things at 4x
resolution. Only bitmapped artwork needs to be re-rendered by the developers
to take advantage of the 326-dpi screen resolution.
I Take That Back: The Camera Is The True Headliner

The upgraded display is one of the features that redefines the iPhone for
me. The camera is the other.

This will read as a backhanded compliment, but I'll hold my nose and forge
ahead anyway: the iPhone 4 is the first cameraphone that earns the honor of
being thought of as "a real camera, with some limitations" as opposed to "a
great cameraphone."
My mental attitude is different when I shoot with the iPhone 4 cam. I'm not
thinking "Gee, I wish I'd brought my real camera ... but I guess this
cameraphone is better than nothing."

When I'm shooting with the iPhone 4, my goal is to make real photos. And
it's an eminently attainable one.

Apple made a very smart decision: they upgraded the iPhone 4's camera to
just 5 megapixels instead of 8, which is what you'll get with all of the
"hot" Android phones that are arriving in 2010. Those cameras are slapping
down more pixels but are they creating better *photos?*

Not according to my tests. I walked around with the iPhone 4, an iPhone 3GS,
the Google Nexus One, and the Verizon Droid X, plus my Nikon P6000
point-and-shoot as a control. In nearly every shot, the iPhone 4 was the
champ among the cameraphones.

The iPhone 4 camera has a wide dynamic range and it performs superbly in
low-light situations thanks to its backside illumination image sensor (it
scatters less light than the frontside illumination sensors; waste not, want
not). The iPhone is perfectly happy to shoot in available light in most
situations. Even in daylight, you see the benefits of the larger sensor
pixels and the backside illumination. On the 8-megapixel Droid X, a clump of
trees in the background is a spray of green static. On the iPhone 4, they
have detail and vibrance.

It also has a new (for the iPhone) LED illuminator, serving as a primary
light source or a bit of fill light to nearby subjects.

I love the iPhone 4's camera. That said, it has two consistent and sometimes
annoying foibles. First, when you give it a challenging scene in which the
camera needs to either underexpose slightly and lose some shadow detail or
overexpose and blow out a highlight, it'll blow out a highlight nearly every
time. But you can easily work around this problem, thanks to the iPhone's
simple "tap an area to set the exposure and focus zone" feature. If this
were a real photo and not a "see how well the camera handles this" test, I'd
just recompose the photo, and tap the area that was being overexposed. The
Camera app would base its exposure settings on that hightlight.

The bigger problem is the iPhone 4's easily-bamboozled automatic white
balance system.

The camera appears to have great difficulty dealing with two competing light
sources when they're of different colors. It's nothing that can't be fixed
with one mouse click in any desktop photo editor, but it's still annoying
... particularly when it even messed up the white balance on a photo whose
main illumination was the iPhone's own flash. The Android-based phones
tended to excel here, thanks in part to their manual override settings.

But I'll defend the iPhone's camera from two directions. First, I noticed a
curious phenomenon: when the iPhone 4 "screwed up" a shot, the Nikon P6000
(the "real" camera) tended to make the same mistake with a blown highlight
or a bad color setting. So the iPhone is in good company.

And secondly: the iPhone's camera software is about a thousand miles ahead
of either the camera app you get with the Droid X or the stock app that's
built into Android 2.2. The Android camera apps were a colossal pain in the
butt to use. Non-responsive buttons, key features buried inside submenus,
huge shutter lag ... on the whole, they aren't apps that encourage you to
take pictures for pleasure.

The iPhone's Camera app is lightning-fast: I could take a sequence of
rapid-fire shots just by twitching the button. It launches quickly, you can
switch in and out of the app efficiently, it's streamlined and elegant.
Bottom line: it *helps you to take pictures*. It wants you to succeed.

Another keen feature of the iPhone 4: its new front-facing camera makes
self-portraiture (and self-portraits-with-friends) a breeze. It's just VGA
resolution, but when you absolutely, positively, must get a picture of
yourself with a friend, it'll do.

The iPhone 4 camera, although a huge leap forward, won't take the place of
your pocket point-and-shoot. The real win is that for the first time, the
camera that you happen to have with you wherever you go is now a very
credible, "real" camera capable of taking printable, enlargeable, and
frameable photos.

In fact, every photo of the iPhone that you see in this article was, in
fact, shot with a second iPhone 4. I could have walked into the other room
and grabbed one of my "real" cameras, but I had the other phone right here
next to me and I knew it'd do a spiffy enough job.
Video, Video

The iPhone 4's rear-facing camera also shoots 720P HD video at a full 30
frames per second. This feature isn't quite the same sort of breakthrough as
the phone's still camera. It shoots terrific video, but you still need to
append the suffix "... considering that it's a cameraphone."

It has the problems you may have come to expect from phone video. You can
blame the software, blame the hardware, or blame your shaky grip ...
whatever the reason, iPhone 4 video tends to be very jittery unless you take
pains to keep the camera steady while you shoot and you try very hard not to
move around. Some digital video stabilization would have come in handy here.

You'll also experience the famous CMOS-censor "rubber shutter" effect as you
pan across a scene. And don't expect miracles from the audio, either. It can
handle a nearby, centered subject very well, but any background room noise
will quickly collapse into an annoying waterfall of vuvuzuela-like buzzing
in the recording.

The iPhone's new HD video feature *certainly* doesn't signal a death knell
for conventional video cameras ... not even for the popular Flip cameras. In
side-by-side tests, the Flip Utra HD consistently produced steadier and more
attractive video, with much better sound. That said, the video camera can
shoot some astonishingly clear and sharp images, with punchy colors. See the
photo gallery for a couple of still frames I grabbed from iPhone HD video.

And when the camera app is in video mode, it lets you use some of the still
camera's most useful features. The LED illuminator works in video mode (you
can even turn it on and off in mid-recording), as does tap-to-focus. That
means you can start a shot on your family in the foreground, and then tap on
the Statue of Liberty to shift focus to the background. That's a pretty cool
trick for a cameraphone.

As with the still camera, you can tap a button and shoot video from the
iPhone's front-facing camera ... again, limited to VGA resololution. Hey,
how's anyone going to believe that you *actually* met the guy who played the
dad on "My Two Dads" (no, the other one) unless you get some video of the
two of you together?
iMovie for iPhone

Apple released an iPhone edition of their iMovie video editor. It's a $4.99
download from the App Store and well worth the price of a "People" magazine.

iMovie allows you to assemble a fairly sophisticated video from all of the
clips you've shot with the iPhone. Transitions, inserting photos from your
camera roll, themes, titles, and background music are all supported. It
isn't the full edition of the desktop iMovie, but bloody hell! It's a
remarkable thing to be cutting a video together on a smartphone.

In fact, it *might* even be a more useful editor than the desktop edition. I
often shoot video when I travel, but I almost *never* get around to editing
it together. Producing a video always seems like such ... a *production*.
But on the iPhone 4, it's almost like playing a game on your handset.
Editing video is exceptionally-well suited to a multitouch OS; it's a snap
to just drag in clips from your video library and push and pull them
together like lumps of clay. The iPhone's processor can keep up for you,
move for move. It's made me very, *very* keen to see a version of this app
on the iPad.

The results can be uploaded directly to YouTube or MobileMe, or saved as an
HD movie back into your video library. You can then email it to friends or
copy it onto your desktop.
FaceTime

A forward-facing camera isn't a new thing ... nor is the ability to video
chat via a phone. But with the iPhone's FaceTime feature, mobile video chat
isn't a stunt feature that you'll play with once or twice and then
completely ignore. And for a simple reason: unlike the rest of the video
chat systems out there, it isn't more trouble than it's worth. If the desire
strikes you, you can dial a number and be video chatting with someone
seconds later.

Video chatting via FaceTime is almost anticlimactic. You place a phone call
to another iPhone, or any device that supports FaceTime (more on this
later). You have a phone conversation. At any point, you can press the
onscreen FaceTime button. A second or three later, you're seeing and hearing
the person you were just talking to.

You don't need to hang up and call a new number, you don't need to set up an
account on an intermediary service, and you certainly don't need to have a
long and detailed conversation ahead of time with this person to explain how
to get everything set up properly.

All you need is a WiFi connection (FaceTime doesn't work on the 3G network
yet). The phone invisibly moves the call from the cell network to the WiFi
network, negotiates with the other device, and starts everything spinning.
Use of the WiFi doesn't eat into any of your voice or data minutes.

Video is smooth and fluid; audio is crisp and clear. You can use the
front-facing camera or shoot with the back cam, operating it like a
camcorder.

It just plain works ... so long as your friends and relatives have iPhone
4's, that is. But soon, thousands of non-Apple devices might be compatible
with FaceTime: Apple is promoting it as an open standard.

(You are about to witness one of the greatest similes that will be published
in any medium in 2010. Call in the kids and read this next bit aloud to
them. It'll be a cherished family memory for decades to come.)

It turns out that FaceTime is like an Egg McMuffin and not like Coca-Cola.
Coke is a combination of many readily-available ingredients plus the
mysterious, top-secret, and proprietary Merchandise "X" that turns a Cola
into a Coke. When Apple created the FaceTime standard, they combined
existing, open, off-the-shelf standards for network communication,
handshaking, and media streaming into a new recipe, creating a technique
that practically anybody can replicate.

So it's certainly possible that by this time next year, FaceTime will be
available on multiple handsets from multiple carriers, running on multiple
operating systems ... possibly even including desktops. For now, it's an
iPhone 4-only club.

I'll believe it when I see it. Apple has a couple of things going for it,
though: they've had success promoting open standards that fit in with its
business strategy in the past. And which when you think of it, FaceTime
represents the strongest of all possible strong-arm tactics in family
marketing.

"Well, sure, Dad ... I suppose you *could* buy an Android-based phone, if
that's what you really *want*," a seven-months-pregnant daughter will say
via email. "I guess I assumed you'd be buying an iPhone 4, like the one I
have. Because, you know, I thought you might be *interested* in seeing your
new grandson's first steps and his first word and all of those other little
milestones. Oh, well, no worries ... his *other* grandpa is buying an
iPhone. I suppose little Tralfaz will just form an unseverable lifelong bond
with *him* instead…"
iPhone 4 Potpourri

Let's go around the horn and pick up a few bits and pieces that didn't merit
the full operatic presentation:

*The iPhone 4's battery life is just fine*. The insides of a disassembled
iPhone 4 appear to be at least 50 percent battery. The iPhone's definitely
up to the challenge of powering that power-hungry screen. Precise
measurements of battery life are fairly meaningless but in the past five
days of testing, the battery proved to be easily capable of powering the
iPhone 4 through a day of conventional, intermittent use, or four hours of
heavy use (walking around the city taking lots of photos).

It's still a good idea to pay close attention to battery charge status. Many
of the iPhone 4's operations, such as recording HD video, are highly
processor-intensive. It might take you a few days to figure out how many
miles you can go on a single tank of gas.

*Audio quality*. The new iPhone adds a noise-canceling mic that has a
definite positive impact on sound quality. Alas, it doesn't kick in when
recording video ... and there's been no upgrade to the iPhone's built-in
speakers. But it seems to be a help when issuing voice commands in a car.

Volume and clarity are Adequate when using the iPhone's speakerphone, but
it's still about one click or two too soft.

*And Now There's A Gyroscope*. An internal digital gyroscope allows apps to
sense the minutest changes in the iPhone's pitch, roll, and yaw. A game like
Ngmoco's "Eliminate: Gun Range" shows off the level of precision possible
with the new hardware. When you swing the sight of your gun through
Eliminate's gun range, it feels more like you're operating the iPhone's
video camera; the slightest movement of the phone translates to an
instantaneous
and precise shift in your point of view. In accelerometer-based gaming, it's
more like twitching a joystick and indicating a vague direction.

There are obvious uses for this precision in augmented reality apps. But
clearly, the primary beneficiary of this new gyroscope will be the iPhone's
game library.
iOS 4 and the Coming of the iPad Nano

I said at the top of this review that the iPhone 4 felt like a "new" iPhone
as opposed to an "improved" one.

Clearly that's because of the new display, which truly dazzles. And the
still camera. If you're more of a "snapshot" photographer, it won't make
much of an impression on you but anybody who values the ability to capture a
great image at any moment will be pretty thrilled with the iPhone 4's camera
capabilities.

But the new iPhone 4 hardware coupled with the new features of iOS 4 elevate
the iPhone's game considerably. It shares so much DNA with the iPad —
including its actual CPU, Apple's own A4 — that at times, it feels like a
mini-iPad.

At times, you can even *use* it like a mini-iPad. Many of the iPad's most
convenient and powerful features, like the mechanism for moving your
documents into and off of the device via iTunes or the cloud, are part of
iOS 4. I actually wrote last week's print edition of this
review<https://edit.stngweb.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2431262,CST-NWS-ihnatko25.article%E2%80%9D>(a
merciful 600 words) on the iPhone 4, using a Bluetooth keyboard.
Writing
and editing operations were responsive and zippy, a notable improvement over
the 3GS.

Yeah, yeah ... big deal. "That kind of thing has been possible on Nokia and
other kinds of phones for years." If you'll scroll back, you'll see that I
went ahead and made that very point right at the top.

Much of the strength of a piece of technology comes not via the features
that it presents, but by the perceptions and expectations it inspires. Is
this thing in my shirt pocket a phone? Is it a content-consumption device?
Is it a palmtop computer?

On that basis, what happens when my ebook reader has a rudimentary web
browser?

Should I be disappointed that it does such a poor job of reformatting every
page? Or should I be delighted that it even has that feature to begin with?

It's overreaching to say that the iPhone 4 defines a whole new class of
phone ... much less a whole new class of computing. No. It's just superb
next iteration of a phone that was pretty fab to begin with. It doesn't even
complicate consumers' buying decision. Out with the old models, in with the
new ones: the 16 gig model is $199; double the amount of storage for another
$100. But it sharpens the distinction between the iPhone and 2010's
impressive graduating class of Android devices. A month ago, I think you
could have said that the differences between an iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS
3 and those of a Nexus One running the new edition of the Android OS were
largely philosophical and political. Today, iPhone and Android are once
again two very different beasts. Declaring one to be the winner over the
other is like betting on a fight between a hippo and a giant octopus. Each
will have its fans and its supporters, but these are clearly two beasts with
two very different ideas about how to stay on Darwin's good side.

The iPhone 4 isn't a revolution. But damn, it's interesting. It's that first
little turn of the focusing knob that makes the line between "phone" and
"computer" a little tougher to make out. It seems to beg for high
expectations.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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