Apple iPhone 4 - Eye Candy

Eye Candy

While the previous iPhone 3GS didn’t bring much of a design change to the iPhone 3G, Apple’s iPhone 4 has undergone a decidedly new look that’s very different from the previous generation. Most readers would already be aware of the changes, seeing as how the phone has been available in the US for just over a month, so it’s about time the phone was launched in Singapore.

We got ourselves a review unit at last and our initial impressions of the unit seemed to bode well for us. The iPhone 4 felt and looked sleek and gorgeous compared to the iPhone 3GS. Furthermore it comes with new features and upgrades, that we’ll be touching on in the next few pages. While the reports of an antenna issue with the iPhone 4 have been making the rounds, we’re hoping that our better network coverage will offset this problem. We’ll do a little more testing in the next page; for now though, let’s take a closer look at the exterior.

Performance and Features

The iPhone 4 comes with plenty of internal changes, and now sports Apple’s A4 processor, which is what the iPad uses. We are expecting much faster performance compared to the iPhone 3GS, and we’ll be testing this below. Other hardware changes include a gyroscope on top of the accelerometer, so the phone will now detect your phone's movement on a three-dimensional axis, allowing for more interactivity for games that make use of this feature.

One of the biggest and most visible changes to the phone has to be its new Retina Display - the iPhone 4 gets a major upgrade with a 960 x 640 pixels resolution screen with a pixel density of 326 ppi. While it’s still an LCD screem, Apple uses IPS technology for the display, which means you get great viewing angles no matter where you are looking from at the phone. The only problem is a loss of privacy, since anyone can easily see what you are doing from any angles.

Back to the Retina Display, the new screen is crisp and clear, much like phones with AMOLED or Super AMOLED displays, and having a huge ppi count works wonders with small text. They appear crisp and clear on the eyes even when shrunk down. That said, the phone’s display doesn’t do very well in direct, bright sunlight, but that’s mostly the case for phones with LCD displays.

Antenna Gate

During our review time with the phone, we’ve basically tested it with and without the casing while using the phone in areas around town. While we never did have a problem with dropped calls, losing the 3G data signal was a big problem when the phone was used without the casing. Unless you want to use hold the phone in a really silly looking way to avoid the antenna death grip, your best bet would be to get a case. As we found that with Apple's Bumper case, the signal bars don’t drop when you hold it the same way.

We mentioned earlier that we didn’t encounter any dropped calls while testing our phone’s reception and the iPhone 4 also does well here. Similar to how the Google Nexus One works, the iPhone 4 sports dual microphones, one at the usual bottom spot and one just next to the headphone jack. The one on top acts as a noise cancelling device, resulting in you sounding very clear even in a noisy place.

FaceTime

While video calling isn’t anything new, Apple’s inclusion of FaceTime, their new video calling feature may actually help start making it a much more common feature in most phones. Our tests on the iPhone 4 didn’t quite impress us, as we found the experience to be laggy while video quality was grainy. Still it’s a cool gimmick to have, and who knows, maybe FaceTime will actually become common enough that people will use it. For that to happen though, Apple will need to allow it to work on 3G networks and for more folks to own the iPhone 4. Otherwise, video calling as a feature will probably remain gimmicky and niche.

Performance

The iPhone 4 is much faster compared to the previous phones - even the iPhone 3GS which is known for its speed, and to test, we loaded an iPhone 3G, an iPhone 3GS, an iPad and the iPhone 4 with Plants versus Zombies for the iPhone. The reason for this speed is simple, of course. Apple is using its new A4 processor, and according to iFixit, the iPhone 4 has 512MB RAM, which is twice what the iPhone 3GS and iPad have. More RAM means apps have more to play with, and multi-tasking won’t actually slow down the phone as it tries to free up memory for the app to run.

Well, the result is pretty interesting as you can see from the above video - the iPad and iPhone 4 both finished loading at around the same time though the iPhone 4 was just a little bit slower. The 3GS too wasn’t that far behind but the real kicker is the 3G, as it took an eternity to finish. This is all tested on iOS4, so you can see just how bad the iPhone 3G is these days.

The New Camera

The iPhone 4 introduces a brand new camera, increasing the resolution from the previous 3GS' 3MP sensor to a 5MP sensor. Video recording has also gone up in resolution to 1280 x 720 pixels (720p) from the previous 640 x 480 pixels. An LED flash has been added to the rear camera and a new front facing camera has been added for FaceTime. This front facing camera can also be used to snap photos at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels.

The challenge with increasing resolution while keeping more or less the same sensor size is image noise. You see this happening in compact cameras; to keep up with marketing, manufacturers increase this year's megapixel rating while keeping last year's sensor, when the megapixel count really has nothing much to do with better image quality. At the extremes, you end up with either overly aggressive noise reduction giving you weird artifacts, or too much noise in your photos. Somewhere down the middle, a pleasant trade-off is sometimes achieved. So where does the iPhone 4 sit?

We took an iPhone 3G (2MP), an iPhone 3GS (3MP) and the iPhone (5MP) out into the field for some challenging subjects, and we have to say we came back impressed. It's worth remembering that these cameras don't come with any manual controls for ISO or white balance, and only the iPhone 3GS and 4's cameras come with manual tap to focus (it's purely up to luck on the 3G). Since we can't lock down the controls, you might get different results from the same scene if the iPhone decides to change exposure or white balance settings for some reason. Okay, caveat over.

While the 3G and 3GS' colors look more neutral, the iPhone 4 bumps up the contrast and saturation for richer photos. Whichever you prefer is up to you, but for us we'd prefer the richer hues of the iPhone 4, since we'll likely be using these photos 'out of the box' for simple situations like Facebook, tweaking saturation/contrast for the 3GS would be an added step.

The iPhone 4 is the first iPhone to not feel like a mobile phone camera. It gets exposure and focus settings more accurately and faster than previous iPhones, and the results look like they were shot with a simple compact camera rather than a mobile phone. While upgraders from iPhone 3GS will be pleasantly surprised by the difference, iPhone 3G users will be astounded! This isn't a camera you're using to make do, it's a camera you can reasonably trust to take some decent photographs.

Leaves are a nightmare for any camera to capture, due to their fine detail and complexity. In this comparison between the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4, we see that the iPhone 4 captures more detail than the 3GS - where some leaves have been reduced to a muddy mess with the 3GS, the iPhone 4 retains their fine edges.

Digital zoom has been improved on the iPhone 4, although like digital zooms everywhere, the result is horrid and we'd advise against using it (if you must, zooming halfway gets a better result than zooming all the way in). Digital zooms, unlike optical zooms, don't involve lenses moving to get a closer picture, they're just crops performed on the photo by your iPhone in-camera. To be fair, we couldn't get much better results cropping and scaling ourselves in Photoshop CS4.

Low-light performance has improved with the iPhone 4. You won't beat a capable compact camera, but you'll get better results than the iPhone 3GS, with finer grain. The LED flash (which can be turned on and off) is an added advantage in those places where there just isn't enough light.

Video has been improved as well. The higher, more filmic resolution is welcome as you see more with the larger sized videos, while details that were fuzzy with the 3GS are clear with the iPhone 4. Sound is noticeably better, louder and more distinct. Unfortunately, the rolling shutter effect is still apparent, where things seem to tilt if the camera moves while shooting.

Compare and contrast this video shot with the iPhone 3GS (click here for the full resolution video):

And this video shot with the iPhone 4 (click here for the full resolution video):

It's not just about the better image quality though, the experience of shooting with the iPhone 4 and the earlier iPhones is a difference as clear as night and day. Not only are the colors richer in the JPEGs, they're richer on screen. The Retina display is so vivid and bright that you feel like you're looking right at the world when framing with the camera, and makes the 3GS' screen look dull in comparison (the 3G looks dull and blurred). It's not just for the sake of a better viewing experience, you take better pictures too because you're looking at the scene more accurately. Launching the camera app is almost immediate, auto-focus is faster, the shutter is much snappier, so is saving the shot, so there's a higher chance of getting the next shot sooner.

Battery Life

With the promise of a bigger battery thanks to the redesign of the iPhone 4, we're hoping that battery life would be good, as Apple has said it is much better than the iPhone 3GS (which lasted just 5 hours 50 minutes in our last review in our usual harsh testing). Using our standard battery life test, we played back in a continuous loop a test video encoded at 240 x 320 pixels resolution under the following conditions: 100% screen brightness and volume and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth active, with push email or data being pulled from the network at regular intervals. The iPhone 4 was then pitted against its current alternatives: the Samsung Galaxy S, the HTC Desire, the Motorola MIlestone, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and the Google Nexus One.

The results are quite impressive. The iPhone 4 does well here with a battery life of 443 minutes (or 7 hours 23 minutes). This beats its nearest competitor, the Samsung Galaxy S by around 25 minutes. Having a bigger battery thanks to a redesign and the use of a new processor that's supposed to be power efficient does help a lot with getting a longer lasting smartphone. Mind you, this is just battery life performance when tested in this harsh usage, so it's definitely going to last a lot longer in normal usage with more calls, texting and web usage.

An Apple Finish

While the Apple iPhone 4 looks and performs great on the whole, it’s not without its share of problems. The antenna problems, and the long time it took for Apple to acknowledge it, only made the situation worse thanks to the media blowing the issue up. While it made for great reading for most of us, the problem can be easily remedied by having a case on the phone.

To be fair though, the iPhone 4 feels better to hold without a case, but you really do need the case if you hold the phone mostly on your left hand, especially if you’re trying to surf the internet on your phone. You probably won’t have any issues with the 2G connection like we did, and if it’s covered by a case or when not touching the “death grip” area, the iPhone 4 does an admirable job in maintaining the signal.

The other features of the iPhone 4 too are worth mentioning, and the Retina Display is one that will catch your eyes in more ways than one. It looks crisp, clear and most of all, it’s a very big change when you compare it to the older 3GS and 3G. The camera too benefited from the snappier A4 processor, and we found ourselves amazed at the speed in which we could take photos of very decent quality.

Last but not least, is the general speed and responsiveness of the iPhone 4. Apple’s A4 processor delivers the goods, with the phone feeling extremely snappy in our hands. Apps loaded faster on the whole, and websites were also rendered faster. Multi-tasking is also not an issue, as the iPhone 4 has twice the RAM capacity of the iPhone 3GS and the iPad. Battery life has also improved greatly, and you’ll likely be able to get a full day’s use of the phone even with heavy 3G usage and gaming.

So is this a worthy upgrade? If you’re using the iPhone 3G, that’s a big resounding yes. iPhone 3GS users can probably afford to wait for the next version as long as you're using it with iOS 4. First time smartphone users will like the phone, while those thinking to make the switch from other smartphones will probably enjoy the iPhone 4, as long as they bear in mind to get a casing for the phone.

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