After returning the HTC EVO 30 days ago, I decided to pick up the iPhone 4. I returned the EVO due to the front glass coming off of the phone and dust was getting underneath the glass. Heres my thoughts on the iPhone 4.
- The OS is very refined. It feels complete and elegant. Everything from the smooth swipe transition (luckily the fps is not capped like the EVO is), the beautiful glass icons and the simple controls and adjustments. Android's UI isn't bad, but in no way is it as refined as the iOS. Maybe Android 3 will be able to blow iOS out of the water, but Android 2.x has a long way to go. I also never had to shut off my iPhone 4. On the EVO, I had to reset the phone every few days because the OS felt slow. I didn't mind doing this, and once I rebooted the EVO, it felt quick and snappy again. But its just cumbersome to do so. Luckily I didn't have anything critical to do when I needed to restart the phone.
- Love the screen! I can't stop looking at it. The colors are rich. And the graphics looks like your looking at a magazine. You can't see any of the pixels which is absolutely amazing. The EVO's screen was large which is a real pleasure web browsing and being able to see the whole webpage vertically. But the colors looked bland and washed out. On the EVO, the touch screen was definately slightly laggy. Its probably miliseconds laggy, but its enough to notice when your swiping webpages or trying to type fast. Its annoying on the EVO because mis-typing is so easy because the screen doesn't register your fingers everytime. On the iPhone, I can type perfectly with very little errors. Heck, even my 1st gen iPod touch I could type more accurately then the EVO.
- Apps on iPhone are better then the Android. There are a more variety of apps, and they actually worked on my phone! Good luck trying to get all of the apps in the Android market to work with the EVO. Out of the 10 apps I downloaded for the EVO, maybe 4 of them worked. The apps on the iPhone were high quality compared with the Android apps. I downloaded some of the same apps that were on the EVO on my iPhone. I liked the first person shooter game, NOVA. On the EVO it ran okay, but once you get 3 players on the screen, frame rate would drop to almost unplayable frame rates. On the iPhone, the frame rate never dropped. Everything was smooth as butter.
- Battery life is great. I could go a whole day without charging. Actually, I went 2 full days without charging. I probably used the iPhone 4 more during those days when compared with the EVO and I still had at least 20% charge left. On the EVO, my phone would be at 20% within 10 hours. With all of the bloatware running in the background, my phone can drop 5%-10% overnight without even touching it. On the iPhone, battery life is showing at either at 100% or 99% when I wake up!!!
- I don't miss the widgets all that much because I couldn't even use them. I had to turn off all of my widgets for the exception of the clock so I could squeeze a few more minutes on the phone. Widgets are cool, but boy do some of them drain your battery out. So effectively I didn't have any use for the widgets because I couldn't even use them without killing my battery.
- "Death grip" was true. I could grip my phone in my left hand and make the signal go to "no-signal" fairly quickly. However, in certain areas (probably strong signal), I couldn't make the bars go down at all. I use a full body BodyGuardz shield on my phone. It came with 2 sets, so I simply cut a small piece covering the antenna and voila! Problem solved. I can still make the bars decrease, but it doesn't go to nothing.
- I never noticed the proximity sensor issue because I always avoid the screen touching my face on any phone i've ever owned. I don't like the screen getting oily due to the contact to my skin. While talking, I hold the phone angled with the speaker firmly touching my ear.
- Signal coverage is excellent, but then again, i'm coming from Sprint. Anything is better then Sprint.
- 3G speeds are quick. I get about 1.5 to 2 meg speed with the iPhone. However, I do miss the 4G speeds on my EVO. I averaged about 4 meg speeds on it. However, Sprint 4G coverage is very limited. And when you do use 4G, it kills battery life even more. Because of this, I shut off 4G most of the time. I didn't get much use out of 4G because it was either unavailable where I was or I had to conserve battery life because I had low battery life at the time.
- The phone feels solid and well built. Its built like a BMW. The fit and finish are high quality. Its something thats hard to describe. People need to go to the store and hold it in their hand to know what I mean. The EVO didn't feel cheap at all, but with the whole body being plastic, it felt 2nd rate to the iPhone.
- Customer support is world class. I'm new to the iPhone, but not to iOS (I've owned the 1st gen iPod touch). Whenever I had a question or needed support, I simply walked into the Apple store or called them toll-free and got my answer. When I had the screen lift off of my EVO, I had to deal with Sprint instead of HTC directly. The Sprint store (It was a corporate owned store) were useless. Only 1 of the employees knew about the phone. The rest of them were just looking out for their commissions. Sure some of the Apple store employees I run into are a little smug and sometimes can be annoying (No, I don't want to buy AppleCare, please shut up!) but they know their stuff and know what their talking about it. For those of you who have interacted with Apple Store employees, you know what i'm talking about. They are all fanboys/fangirls that know the product inside and out. I get a sense they are passionate about helping people, love the products and enjoy working for Apple. I'm guessing they like telling people, "I work for Apple". Try getting someone to actually know something about cell phones at other stores. Good luck dealing with the spikey haired, over tanned, bad attitude teens at BestBuy (I appreciate overhearing stories of how you drank until you passed out on your friends lawn last night or how you just put $2000 rims on your 95' Honda). I'm probably like the majority of the forums users here who are technically savvy and probably rarely call customer support anyway. But its good to know when you do need assistance, you got great people who can help you.
So now what?
I'm keeping it. Its the best phone out there.
- The OS is very refined. It feels complete and elegant. Everything from the smooth swipe transition (luckily the fps is not capped like the EVO is), the beautiful glass icons and the simple controls and adjustments. Android's UI isn't bad, but in no way is it as refined as the iOS. Maybe Android 3 will be able to blow iOS out of the water, but Android 2.x has a long way to go. I also never had to shut off my iPhone 4. On the EVO, I had to reset the phone every few days because the OS felt slow. I didn't mind doing this, and once I rebooted the EVO, it felt quick and snappy again. But its just cumbersome to do so. Luckily I didn't have anything critical to do when I needed to restart the phone.
- Love the screen! I can't stop looking at it. The colors are rich. And the graphics looks like your looking at a magazine. You can't see any of the pixels which is absolutely amazing. The EVO's screen was large which is a real pleasure web browsing and being able to see the whole webpage vertically. But the colors looked bland and washed out. On the EVO, the touch screen was definately slightly laggy. Its probably miliseconds laggy, but its enough to notice when your swiping webpages or trying to type fast. Its annoying on the EVO because mis-typing is so easy because the screen doesn't register your fingers everytime. On the iPhone, I can type perfectly with very little errors. Heck, even my 1st gen iPod touch I could type more accurately then the EVO.
- Apps on iPhone are better then the Android. There are a more variety of apps, and they actually worked on my phone! Good luck trying to get all of the apps in the Android market to work with the EVO. Out of the 10 apps I downloaded for the EVO, maybe 4 of them worked. The apps on the iPhone were high quality compared with the Android apps. I downloaded some of the same apps that were on the EVO on my iPhone. I liked the first person shooter game, NOVA. On the EVO it ran okay, but once you get 3 players on the screen, frame rate would drop to almost unplayable frame rates. On the iPhone, the frame rate never dropped. Everything was smooth as butter.
- Battery life is great. I could go a whole day without charging. Actually, I went 2 full days without charging. I probably used the iPhone 4 more during those days when compared with the EVO and I still had at least 20% charge left. On the EVO, my phone would be at 20% within 10 hours. With all of the bloatware running in the background, my phone can drop 5%-10% overnight without even touching it. On the iPhone, battery life is showing at either at 100% or 99% when I wake up!!!
- I don't miss the widgets all that much because I couldn't even use them. I had to turn off all of my widgets for the exception of the clock so I could squeeze a few more minutes on the phone. Widgets are cool, but boy do some of them drain your battery out. So effectively I didn't have any use for the widgets because I couldn't even use them without killing my battery.
- "Death grip" was true. I could grip my phone in my left hand and make the signal go to "no-signal" fairly quickly. However, in certain areas (probably strong signal), I couldn't make the bars go down at all. I use a full body BodyGuardz shield on my phone. It came with 2 sets, so I simply cut a small piece covering the antenna and voila! Problem solved. I can still make the bars decrease, but it doesn't go to nothing.
- I never noticed the proximity sensor issue because I always avoid the screen touching my face on any phone i've ever owned. I don't like the screen getting oily due to the contact to my skin. While talking, I hold the phone angled with the speaker firmly touching my ear.
- Signal coverage is excellent, but then again, i'm coming from Sprint. Anything is better then Sprint.
- 3G speeds are quick. I get about 1.5 to 2 meg speed with the iPhone. However, I do miss the 4G speeds on my EVO. I averaged about 4 meg speeds on it. However, Sprint 4G coverage is very limited. And when you do use 4G, it kills battery life even more. Because of this, I shut off 4G most of the time. I didn't get much use out of 4G because it was either unavailable where I was or I had to conserve battery life because I had low battery life at the time.
- The phone feels solid and well built. Its built like a BMW. The fit and finish are high quality. Its something thats hard to describe. People need to go to the store and hold it in their hand to know what I mean. The EVO didn't feel cheap at all, but with the whole body being plastic, it felt 2nd rate to the iPhone.
- Customer support is world class. I'm new to the iPhone, but not to iOS (I've owned the 1st gen iPod touch). Whenever I had a question or needed support, I simply walked into the Apple store or called them toll-free and got my answer. When I had the screen lift off of my EVO, I had to deal with Sprint instead of HTC directly. The Sprint store (It was a corporate owned store) were useless. Only 1 of the employees knew about the phone. The rest of them were just looking out for their commissions. Sure some of the Apple store employees I run into are a little smug and sometimes can be annoying (No, I don't want to buy AppleCare, please shut up!) but they know their stuff and know what their talking about it. For those of you who have interacted with Apple Store employees, you know what i'm talking about. They are all fanboys/fangirls that know the product inside and out. I get a sense they are passionate about helping people, love the products and enjoy working for Apple. I'm guessing they like telling people, "I work for Apple". Try getting someone to actually know something about cell phones at other stores. Good luck dealing with the spikey haired, over tanned, bad attitude teens at BestBuy (I appreciate overhearing stories of how you drank until you passed out on your friends lawn last night or how you just put $2000 rims on your 95' Honda). I'm probably like the majority of the forums users here who are technically savvy and probably rarely call customer support anyway. But its good to know when you do need assistance, you got great people who can help you.
So now what?
I'm keeping it. Its the best phone out there.
