Everyone who reads this knows that I love gadgets, and that my relatively old iPhone 3G is with me at all times. Even when I forget my wallet, my iPhone is in my pocket (and all my pocket T-shirt necks now droop permanently to the lower left). But my 3G's battery was losing steam and my screen was cracked. And I made the mistake of upgrading my 3G to iOS4. Mind you, it has some nifty features, but it sure wasn't designed with the 3G in mind -- slow, slow, slow! So, I just had to have my own iPhone 4 that was released yesterday. My son Henry's phone was in about the same shape as mine, so family members all chipped in to buy him a new one for his birthday, and the release date is just close enough to that day to make it count as a birthday gift!
Getting our hands on two of these devices wasn't easy. It took a day intermittently wasted trying to break through AT&T's and Apple's overwhelmed servers on the day they opened the product up for pre-order sales, to place an order for 2 (and no, you can't purchase 2 in one transaction -- you have to return for more torture). Then there was the wait yesterday at the Pentagon City Mall's Apple Store (with Henry as great company) from 5:15 to 9:15. We were 100th in the pre-ordered line and I would guess there were 400 or more behind us, and another 400 in the "hope they have some to sell off the shelf" line. The wait actually wasn't so bad, in part because we were expecting the worst (and it moved quite well when the doors opened at 7:00). It was also a fun, light-hearted and relaxed group, and Apple employees worked their way down the line with Starbucks coffee, donut holes, and water. Everyone was excited.
So, was it worth it? Yes! The iPhone 4 is really an incredible little device. It is fast. It has two good cameras and takes real HD video that you can edit right there on the device. Voice commands work great without a software training session. The screen resolution is awesome, really awesome. This is what iOS4 was designed for and it works great. And the apps; tons of very useful (and not so useful, but fun) apps that run so much better on this model than my old one. FaceTime, Apple's video conferencing feature works very well and is, ah, very very cool. Here's hoping that Skype will add the video calling feature to its iPhone app so that calls are not limited to those with an iPhone 4.
But, there is one major problem that has me in a tither with Steve Jobs and Apple. The damned cellular antennae, which is built into the steel band that wraps around the phone's edge and holds it together, does not work when you hold it in your hand like anyone holds a phone. Your water-filled, and maybe sweaty, hand blocks the cell signal. The only way I have found to use the phone in my house (that normally has 3-4 bars of signal strength with the help of a signal extender) is to lay it flat on a table and use the speaker phone. This problem has gotten a lot of press between yesterday and today, and Steve Jobs finally responded to the problem by saying it is a "non-issue;" just hold the phone differently, he says, or buy a rubber bumper to cover the band. Well, his first suggestion is ridiculous -- iPhones will be falling to the floor ten times a day. And if it needs a rubber bumper around the band to make the phone work, why wasn't it either built into the iPhone 4 to start with or at least -- realizing that they'd really screwed up this wonderful piece of technology -- hand out free bumpers with every sale until they get the problem fixed! C'mon Jobs, get off your egotistical horse and do what's right for all those who have forked over a good bit of money, not to mention time, to get their sweaty palms on a magical device whose cell phone doesn't work right out of the box!
