Overview of Apple iPhone 4

    image

    iPhone 4 is not an easy thing to review. Most readers know that in the world of gadgets, any new device from Apple is a big event, preceded by numerous rumors, speculation, and then days, weeks, or even months of anticipation. Most definitely, the iPhone 4 is no exception. Perhaps even for Apple it was the most successful launch of the product. We have already seen how the servers of Apple and AT&T were overloaded on the first day of pre-orders, and how the date of the next batch of pre-orders was postponed due to huge demand. We also saw ardent fans not far from Apple stores, who had spread their tents a week before the phone went on sale.

    And the iPhone 4 didn’t seem to let us down - with all the new features, like a super-fast A4 processor, a new camera on the front side and a five megapixel rear, a completely new industrial design, and this crazy screen - Retina Display. No one dares say that Apple was relaxing.

    In general, the question arises - does the iPhone 4 really deserve all this advertising hype? Will he be able to fulfill the promise of Steve Jobs made at WWDC, and strengthen Apple's market position in the face of opponents like Google and Microsoft?

    We have answers to these - and many more - questions. In this review.

    Iron


    image

    Perhaps the most significant change in the new iPhone was the revision of the design in favor of a radically industrial one - it seems that Apple has completely changed its mind about how the phone should look and feel, and the result, as it were softer to say, is amazing.

    Industrial design

    image

    In his presentation at WWDC, Steve Jobs compared the design of the iPhone 4 to the “good old Leica beautiful camera,” and that's not far from the truth. Instead of working on a streamlined, plastic appearance (as in the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS), the company decided to make the device’s case much more complex and detailed. The iPhone 4 is made of three main parts: two pieces of polished reinforced glass, and a stainless steel frame between them. Plus, all sorts of small details, such as volume buttons, and seams on a metal frame (more on that below). The phone is noticeably thinner than the same iPhone 3GS (.37 inches versus .48), but weighs the same, so it feels more “knocked down”, solid and solid. In his hand he lies just fine, though it will take a little time to get used to the sharp edges, if you previously had 3G or 3GS.

    image

    It seems difficult to praise how cool the design of the iPhone 4 looks. After it, the 3GS looks plump and cheap, and even a phone like the HTC Droid Incredible - which just came out - looks like the “previous generation”.

    So, as mentioned above, the phone consists of three main parts. The front side of the device is made of very durable glass, which Johnny Ive described as “comparable in strength to a sapphire crystal, and 30 times harder than plastic”. A small cut in the glass on top is for the speaker, and the already familiar Home button is still there, below the screen. On the left side of the phone are updated volume buttons and a new silent mode switch. On the right side there is a slot for Micro SIM, on the top there is a power / standby button, a headphone jack and an additional microphone for noise reduction. Bottom - speaker, microphone and 30-pin connector. The back side of the phone is made of the same ultra-durable glass, it has only a new five-megapixel camera with LED flash, and, of course, the Apple logo.

    image

    Summing up, we can say that the iPhone 4 is superior to any other smartphone from those that are now on the market, if we talk about design. It looks like a much more expensive device than it really is, something like Mobiado or Vertu - only the design is even better. And the matter is not only how he looks; materials are very pleasantly felt in the hands - this is clearly a premium class. The first few days that we had this phone, I simply did not want to let it out of our hands, and this says a lot about how really beautiful and pleasant it is to use.

    Insides

    image

    Not only the outside has undergone changes - iPhone4 is completely redesigned inside. To begin with, Apple replaced Samsung’s previous processor, based on the ARM Cortex-A8, which was used in the iPhone 3GS, with its own A4 chip (the same as that inserted into the iPad), which is quite funny in itself, because it is ... again same ARM-based Cortex-A8 processor. The company does not say what clock frequency it has, but we assume it is something like 1GHz. The phone has definitely become faster than 3GS, in particular, the graphics are processed faster, and the overall responsiveness of the device is higher. It is clearly faster than 3GS, but since 3GS itself was pretty fast, the difference is not as noticeable as it was when switching from 3G to 3GS.

    iPhone 4 has 512 megabytes of RAM on board, which is a serious step compared to 256 megabytes in previous models and on the iPad. And as for the memory for user data - now you can buy an iPhone with 16 or 32 gigabytes of memory - which is not bad, but since the company has just introduced the ability to record 720p video with 30 frames per second, this reserve may quickly be exhausted. It's a little strange that the company has not doubled its maximum memory capacity (up to 64 gigabytes), as was recently done with iPod touch. Well, as for wireless communications, the iPhone 4 has support for Wi-Fi 802.11n, four-standard HSUPA and, of course, Bluetooth 2.1.

    image

    The redesigned internal layout made it possible to put a larger capacity lithium-ion battery into the phone than before. In addition, the new phone has two built-in cameras (VGA on the front panel, and a five megapixel camera with LED flash on the back), a new additional microphone for noise reduction (similar to what is in the Nexus One), a gyroscope in addition to the standard accelerometer, light sensor and sensor proximity. Like 3GS, the AGPS chip is built in here.

    And a few words about antennas. Apple made the steel frame around the phone a sort of large antenna for all wireless interfaces. The big question is - will this help fix endless dropped calls in an AT&T network? Well, according to our tests, we got significantly, significantly fewer drop calls than on 3GS. That is, we repeat: yes, the iPhone 4 seems to have really overcome the problem of dropping calls on the AT&T network. Nevertheless, we had several problems, in the center of New York, in particular, but it is difficult to say whether the problem was in our phone, or in the surrounding buildings, or in our subscribers who had 3GS.

    Screen

    image

    Most likely, at the moment you already know that a completely new screen has appeared in the iPhone 4. Apple calls its 960x640 IPS display with LED backlighting “Retina Display” due to its high pixel density. On the same 3.5-inches as on the previous screens, the new display offers an incredible 326ppi density and 800: 1 contrast ratio. Steve made a loud statement at the conference about the scientific side of technology, saying that screen resolution exceeds the resolution of the human eye. There was a lot of controversy about this statement, but what can we say for sure: our eyes have never seen a more detailed and clear screen on any mobile device.

    image

    Not only have the colors become deep and rich, but we really cannot distinguish between pixels on the screen. Yes, if you take a macro camera, you can distinguish everything, but in real life there are no “steps” visible on the screen. The text is rendered surprisingly clearly and cleanly - web pages that used to be just a string of pixels (on 3GS) are absolutely readable without magnification on the new phone, although the font looks microscopic. This is impressive. And even more impressive when you view hi-res photos or watch 720p video on your phone - all the details are simply amazing. And what’s very good - the text in all applications, even if the authors do not bother to update them, will look excellent, because their interface uses a single font display system.

    image

    To summarize, we can say that you simply won’t find a display better on any phone, and these are not empty words.

    Cameras

    image

    The cameras in the new iPhone will obviously cause a lot of discussion, because this is an area in which Apple was in no hurry to progress earlier. The 3GS had a three megapixel camera without flash, which was good for quick shots, but no more. But the company seems to have finally listened to users, and added a five-megapixel camera on the back and a VGA camera on the front.

    First we’ll deal with the one that’s better. At WWDC, Jobs said that in order to take great pictures, it’s not enough just to increase the number of megapixels. To make the photos look better, you need to increase the amount of light - so that more light falls on the matrix. In short, Apple uses the new backside-illuminated sensor, which is significantly more sensitive to light. Well, more megapixels have done too. And what can we say? Photos from the iPhone 4 look stunning! In addition, the phone is able to take absolutely suitable (and sometimes even cool) pictures in low light conditions without a flash. It seems that everything that was said about the “amount of light” really played a role. Autofocus works well in most cases. Overall,

    As for shooting video in 720p mode, in short: everything we shot looked very clear and (in most cases) without any artifacts.

    The camera that’s in front ... well, this is a VGA camera. She shoots your face well during video calls, and works surprisingly well in low light conditions, but, of course, she won’t get any prize in the competition of the best cameras. In general, with a small camera everything is fine, nothing special.

    Speakers

    We never had any problems with the speakers on previous generations of the iPhone (although, we can say that the speaker was always not as loud as we would like), but it is obvious that Apple did its work here too, raising the quality of the speaker for talking and speaker calls. In addition to the increased volume of both speakers, the clarity of their sound has been noticeably improved. Maybe you already know that so far the Motorola Droid has one of the best audio circuits of all the phones that we heard, and so, the new iPhone definitely gives him a head start. When we first called from him, we walked through one of the noisiest places in New York - along Fifth Avenue, and even then it was noticeable that an additional microphone for noise cancellation was doing its job - even the sound of sirens surrounding us did not interfere with hearing each other perfectly .

    Software


    image

    As with previous updates to the Apple phone, hardware is only half the battle. Along with iPhone 4 comes iOS 4 - a new version of the operating system with a huge number of new features, the largest of which are multitasking, video calls, folders, an improved Mail application, and so on. In addition, Apple ported the iBooks app from iPad to the small screen and even made a new version of its popular iMovie app for iPhone 4. In general, the operating system is still much the same as it was before, but it received several major changes. about which it is necessary to tell.

    Multitasking

    This is a great topic of conversation. Since the inception of applications on the iPhone (remember 2008?), People have been indignant at the lack of multitasking (for third-party applications). Of course, you could keep Mail, Safari, iPod and several other programs from Apple itself in the photo, but other developers were not worthy of these privileges. The company's arguments were that multitasking always has a bad effect on the phone’s battery life. And in the end, Apple presented with its own peculiar manner -
    “how it really should be” - multitasking. But the programs were not allowed to completely hang in the background, but were limited to several services, such as receiving GPS signals, playing music, communicating with VoIP, and organized quick switching between tasks.

    And what came of it? Will this help with normal multitasking? If you answer in one word, then: yes.

    The bottom line is that it may not be the most “real” multitasking, but for the vast majority of us this is enough. Everything looks and feels as if it is “real” multitasking.

    (From a translator: I have to apologize, the text has been trimmed here. I would not want to turn the phone’s review into another review of iOS 4 features)

    Battery

    image

    For many people, this item is very important, and we have a couple of surprises. The battery in the new iPhone 4 exceeded our expectations. The phone lasted 38 hours - yes, 38 hours - in the mode of (our) real life, when we made calls, played games, received a lot of emails (via push notifications) and calendar invitations, played music via a Bluetooth connection in the car, and conducted endless tests (downloaded new applications, moved icons, changed settings). A new battery was installed in a new phone with a larger capacity, and paired with an A4 processor, this gave a good increase.

    As soon as we have the opportunity to test the battery better, we will do it, but we think that the iPhone 4 has left behind the phones of previous generations.

    Conclusion

    image

    We will not beat around the bush - in our opinion, the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone for today. This phone is a combination of a great new hardware, this amazing display, updated cameras, and major improvements to the operating system. Yes, there are still some nuances that we would like Apple to fix, and yes, there are some good alternatives to the iPhone. But when you see this product in assembled form - complete, complete software and hardware, its performance, a huge selection of applications, and many other small details - we think this is the cream of everything that exists. We will not argue about the taste - some people simply prefer the style of work of Android or Sybmian - but the overall picture looks like it is very difficult to deny that Apple has left one step behind all its competitors with this phone. But,

    Original article Engadget .

    Also popular now: