This is not so much a review, as a collection of random thoughts that occur to me as I get used to my iPhone4. As such, you may well see it change over the month ahead as I get used to it.
Firstly, the shiny glass back cover means I cannot just put the new iPhone on the arm of my chair. The old iPhone (a 3G) sits quite happily there, but the new one is far too keen to slide off. Worth bearing in mind if you’re used to a “sticky” iPhone – wouldn’t want you to have an accident with a brand new phone!
Next is the special coating the glass gets to prevent fingerprints. Nice try, but they can still appear. Of course today my fingers are especially sweaty and greasy so although some prints are showing up, the screen is a good deal better than older iPhones would have been.
Finally (for now), and this one is hardly Apple’s faulty, but there are some applications out there that lose data when you go through a backup old phone and restore to new phone. This is definitely a bug in those applications, and I’m sure they know who they are, because better written applications didn’t lose a bit of data. Apple itself does in fact lose passwords, but I would guess this is a security measure to ensure that stored passwords can’t be “hacked” by restoring a stolen phone backup onto another phone.
The new iPhone does not give an initial impression of being significantly smaller than the old iPhone – even though for the first weekend I was shuffling between old and new phones. But it does seem a lot smaller as soon as you start carrying it around – it feels quite a bit smaller in the pocket.
The known problems with the aerial are obviously a serious issue for those effected, but I suspect the number of sufferers is smaller than the impression given online. After all complaints are louder than the sounds of satisfaction. Certainly I have not seen the issue myself.