There's a lot of press at the moment about the problems on the new Iphone and the associated poor PR handling by Apple as they've scrambled to deal with the problem that either, they genuinely didn't know about or rather arrogantly chose to first ignore and then belittle.
There is now an emergency press conference scheduled for tomorrow and the likely result seems to be Apple announcing a free case to 4G owners affected by the signal drop - this is going to cost them around $1 dollar per unit sold (1.7 million approx in the first few days) compared to the $1.5 billion spend if they needed to do a full recall. Put it this way, with their quarter year financials due in the next couple of weeks I wouldn't really want to be Steve Jobs or his PR company right at the minute.
The above bit of housekeeping out of the way I wanted to quickly talk about my new IPhone 4G. I've had it for over two weeks now and although it 'doesn't change everything' in the way that for example my Ipad does - it is a game changer in a few key areas.
Firstly can I put the antenna issue to bed. Yep, if you're a leftie like me, then it is theoretically possible to hold the iphone in such a way that after about 20 seconds of quite firm pressing in the bottom left corner the signal will fall away to zero - it's quite hard to do that during a phone call and if like me you hold the top speaker to your ear and the mike a bit away from your mouth during conversations to prevent feedback then you're forced to hold the body of the phone in such a way that blocking the aerials or shorting them is hard to do - I've used it for hours of conversation and the worst I've done is manage to mute a call by tapping the onscreen icon accidentally.
Having used Mrs Localventures 3G a bit I can confirm that as a phone it performs better and the Ipadesque processor makes it fairly whiz along when safari - ing and itunesying - in fact all on-line apps work much better than say my old 8gb touch 1st generation - the two exceptions being the Telegraph and Independent Apps which both crash and I know an OS4 patch for both has been released today which I'm hoping will fix the problems. There have even been occasions when the 3G coverage has proved better than public wifi and I've used the Iphone in preference to my trusty Ipad - on the East Coast mainline for example yesterday and Monday where the words 'free broadband wifi for all customers' should read 'slow assed connection with frequent crashes and it would be faster with a dial up modem'.
As I have now passed on my ipod touch to Miz Localvee (aged 10) and consigned my Nokia E71 to that great mobile phone graveyard called my loft I'm working with only one instead of two or three mobile devices and this is certainly a revelation - the 16gb iphone more than meets my podcast and audiobook storage requirements and as I mention above the phone works well.
Battery life is still a little challenging - anything beyond a 7 or 8 hour working day will tend to leave me fairly close to 10% to zero power especially if you're on-line a lot, I tend to save e-mail checking and surfing until my return journey but in terms of phone call and standby its about equal to my old E71.
The e-mail client including support for Hotmail (why not on Ipad I wonder) is a vast improvement on previous iterations and with the new improved camera/video I'm also nearly at the point of abandoning my 2 cameras as well.
So the iphone is a vast improvement on the Nokia, Blackberry and Ipod Touch combo that used to make nasty bulges in my jeans and coat pocket and as the old clich goes ... is like having an office in your pocket. As well as being practical and fun, Apple have also in my opinion knocked over one of the main problems with mobile phones - even the good ones and I count the E71 in that camp were/are pretty ugly contraptions. The iphone which I would describe as an industrial aesthetic victory is lovely to look at (shiny new screen tech etc) and feels wonderful in your hand. Even the addition of (really cheap £3.99) plastic bumper doesn't hide the powerful beauty of the phone as it hunches ready to pounce from where ever you left it - I always thought putting the 3G and 3GS in one of those plastic cases really did make them just like any other phone - not their big brother though.
In short, the Iphone 4G whilst not a game changer in the way that Apple (despite the bad press) might want it is proving to be more than the simple logical evolution beyond the 3GS. Let's all spare a thought though to all those other smart phone manufactuers (RIM included, as a regular Blackberry user their handsets and apps aren't even close to Apple) who aren't getting any coverage for their hardware or innovations. Maybe Steve Jobs really does think that any publicity is good publicity especially if it drowns out all of your competitors.
One last word of warning though - definitely invest in a cover that protects the glassware. All the metal bits are quite tough but the design does leave the edges of the screen a little vulnerable - I dropped mine only a couple of inches onto the ground while ferreting around in pockets and it bounced on the metal band - no damage but then just flicked itself over and ran its glass edge along the ground resulting in a tiny chip off the very edge of the screen. Not a big deal - phone still fully functional just not quite perfect anymore and with one year and fifty weeks to run on my Orange contract I need to be careful - ironically my £3.99 cover from Amazon (from the QUBits range if you're interested) got lost en route and I had to order a new one that very day and the cover totally protects the edge that was damaged and would have prevented it had the Royal Mail not managed to snafu the first order. Anyway - 4 quid protects it from most idiot slip ups - definitely worth it.
