iPhone 4 Review

6 months ago Apple released the 4th iteration of the iPhone. Apple’s industry changing iconic handsets latest incarnation brought with it a redesign of the hardware and a new name and update to its software. Having purchased the iPhone 3G 30 months ago it was time for me to upgrade my handset, my 3G had served me well, however it limitations were becoming frustrating. The opportunity came up to upgrade to the iphone 4 for a good price so i took it, this review is based on 4 days of use. I will be comparing the latest iPhone to my 3G and i hope this comparison is useful for people looking to upgrade.

Hardware

The iPhone 4 represents the first major facelift of the Apple’s phone platform since it was launched in 2007. The 3G tweaked the designs of the original iPhone, then the 3GS the following year only made minor changes and performance improvements. For the iPhone 4 Apple changed the look and the feel of the iPhone completely. While it retains much of its original size, the new phone is a few mm thinner, the way its built has been completely changed. The iPhone 4 has a steel band around the outside, with all the other components secured internally to it. This band also acts as the antennae for the radios inside the phone.

Apart form the new shape, the two other main changes are the screen and the processor. The new screen (named the retina display) has twice the resolution of the older iPhones. This means that where there use to be a single pixel, there are now 4 pixels with the associated increase in image quality. The new screen is stunning, from the look of the icons through the to rendering of text. The new clarity greatly improves the visual experience of using the phone. Compared to the 3G the new screen makes a huge difference in day to day use. I feel less eyestrain when reading in bed and photos looks much sharper than before.

Another huge change in the iPhone 4 is a new generation of processors. The iPhone 4 shares the same A4 CPU as the iPad. This quicker CPU matched with a huge increase in system memory has had an astonishing effect on performance. Switching applications, moving around the phone and manipulating web pages is seamless. This added grunt also contributes towards the smooth experience when running multiple applications. Compared to the 3G this performance increase has made the largest difference day to day. Where as the 3G had started feeling slow (waiting for form elements to focus, items to load, the phone to unlock etc) the iPhone feels instantaneous. I intend for the iPhone to last as long as my last phone so future proofing is important to me, i expect the iphone 4 to last this period admirably.

Other changes to the hardware from the 3G include a much improved camera, a digital compass and quicker GPS. These hardware changes have had no effect for me so far, but its nice to see progress in these areas.

Software

With the iPhone 4 comes a new name for the iPhone OS. Now renamed iOS its the 4th version of the iphone software. The biggest most noticeable change in iOS 4 on the iPhone 4 is the introduction of multitasking. I have used multitasking before on my iPad, but it was new to have it on my phone. The way it works is that applications join a bar along the bottom of the phone screen pulled up with a double tap of the homepage. This tray then shows a list of all your recent applications. Aside from the bar apps also retain their states, such as you can open one app, switch to another, then switch back to the first app to see it finish what it was doing. Im using the wonderful reeder application and im very happy with how i can load Reeder, switch to my email, then switch back to see my new feeds reading for my perusal.

So how does the multitasking effect the day to day usage of the phone and how does this compare to the 3G? In the first case it makes the phone feel more fluid, compared to the 3G its a welcome change. The multi tasking is very useful for applications dealing with communication, for example, IRC and text messaging. The ability to hold a conversation while dipping in and out of IRC is very useful.

The 3G’s in then out approach was fast, but not as quick as the switching on the iPhone 4, this small difference is appreciated but the saving of app states is a more readily useful feature. While the speed helps to keep the experience seamless, being able to pick up where you left of makes the experience a single action. A subtle but important difference.

Living With the iPhone 4:

So, after all those changes what is the iPhone 4 like to live with? In short, more of the same, only faster, and with more polish. While others have had problems with reception i have seen a marked improvement in call quality with the iPhone 4 in my lo-signal flat. Day to day the phone is much quicker to use and feels more solid in my hand. It a pleasure to use the phone and in my opinion Apple have kept ther lead in the smartphone game.

Published: 1 January 2011 | Categories: , Reviews Permalink

Macbook Air Day 2: First Impressions & Benchmarks

(note, this post was suppose to go online yesterday, but i did not have an internet connection so its going up a day behind schedule!)

Yesterday i posted the first in this series of posts about the Macbook Air, this post today is the first of the follow up posts. Today i’m going to talk about my first impressions of the Macbook Air (2010) and look at a few early benchmarks.

So, lets get started! Im going to look at what i love about the Air.

Unsurprisingly, the first major things about the air which has impressed me is its size and weight. It really is tiny and very light. Its a good comparison to the weight of the iPad, its light enough to pop into your travel bag without thinking. Next week i will be using it in uni for the day, so i will get a better idea of its portability then, but so far its very impressive. I have recently been carrying the iPad around with me, and i can swap the Air into its place easily. I will comment on its portability some more a little later in the week after a few days at uni and a train trip, but first impressions are good.

The next thing which is striking about the Air is its speed. While word processing, web surfing, emailing etc the Air has kept up easily. Applications load very quickly and the machine feel responsive. To see how the machine performs under some load, i will be testing it while it recording HDTV (on of the things i need it for) later in the week, but so far i have been very impressed with the performance.

Other areas which have impressed include the quite and cool running (its never even got remotely warm!), the battery life (i got 4.5 hours from the first charge!) and the sharp screen. The familiar macbook keyboard is as good as it always is and the multitouch trackpad does its thing very well.

However, all is not perfect with the Macbook Air, during my testing yesterday and after playing with the machine a bit i have found a few areas of weakness.

Hardware wise, the areas of weakness result from the compromises made to get the macbook so small, the machine is missing Gigabit Ethernet and a IR sensor. Part of how i would like to use this machine is as a media centre / server when its not in use. The requirement for an external IR system or to use a wifi remote and the lack of a hardwire port make the macbook less effective for this. Though, its not a killer loss, the inbuilt wifi is very fast for file transferring and streaming video.

In general use the only time i felt the macbook was overwhelmed was when reading a large (230mb) PDF. The PDF loaded very quickly, but scrolling was choppy. A quick look in activity monitored revealed that the machine was out of RAM. The paltry 2gb or RAM for a machine of this cost is disappointing.

The very limited hard drive space has led to a bit of space paranoia! Deleting install DMGs, managing media carefully is very important when you only have 45gb of storage space to play with. I have so far been living out of my dropbox, but if this machine is to work as a media center it will be relying on networked storage and external disks.

Talking of performance, i have run the first benchmark on the machine. I started with the simplest to run a benchmark called geek bench. Geekbench only measures the performance of the CPU and ram and it came out with a modest score of 1898. This is not very impressive (my current 13” MBP score 3,700 or so) however it does not look at hard drive speed or graphics performance.

Compared to the Mac Mini this will be replacing its around 300 points slower, compared to the new Mac Mini (2010) which is the other contender to replace the Mac Mini is a large performance drop with the 2010 mac mini putting in a score 45% higher than the Macbook Air.

As a final note, light weight is not always an advantage! One of the issues with the light weight is that when on my meta desk the laptop bounces up and down as i type!

Today i will be running the Macbook Air as a media center, and benchmarking its video converting, and TV recording powers.

Published: 13 December 2010 | Categories: Reviews , Mac Permalink

Macbook Air (2010)

Purchasing a Mac (or any computer) is never an easy decision. Comparing models and identifying needs is part of the process for most people. This is a the first post in a series about the 2010 MacBook Air, rather than simply review the unit and give my impressions. Im going to share my thoughts over the first week. If the Macbook Air has not impressed me after the first week then it will be returned.

When walking into the Apple store today purchasing a new computer was on my mind, though i was mostly looking at the Mac Mini. I have run a Mac Mini as a home media server now for many years, however the recent upgrade of TV (now with integrated HD freeview) has led to a huge reduction is how much we were using the Mac Mini to watch live TV. As i’m rather obsessed with power usage, so this reduction has been greatly received. Around the house there are 3 main devices which get regular use.

In the house there are 3 MacBooks of various ages; my work machine, jimmy’s (my flat mates) personal computer, and an older white MacBook which i use as my home machine (trying to separate work computing and home computing). There are also a couple of iPhones and an iPad.

The Mac Mini was the central hub, we collated our media libraries there, used it as a backup location for time machine and then had it for Live TV (using an elgato stick and their excellent software).

The future for the Mac Mini was to either replace it with something capable of recording live HDTV, or to to put the White Macbook in its place. The driving force behind reducing the number of computers in the house is 3 things, power usage, maintenance (i don’t want to have to backup and look after so many machines!), and simplicity. With both the Mac Mini and the White Macbook spending 60%-90% of thier time idle they were simply not required. The white Macbook was to be taking over the media and TV recording duties of the mac mini and all was well.

So, i found myself in the Apple Store, getting the screen adaptor to plug the mac mini in the TV and pricing up a new Mac Mini when i got speaking to the Apple store staff.

To replace the Mac Mini was going to cost around £550, for a machine which would spend so much time idle this seems a little steep. While discussing the old mac mini with the Apple store staff, they suggested that the new Macbook Air (the 11 inch) would be faster.

So with this in mind i picked one up (an 11inch base model Macbook Air) and will spend the next week testing the system to see if it fulfils my needs. I will be blogging about the process here, with my thoughts as the week goes on.

The genius in the apple store confirmed, that i have 14 days to return the product for any reason, and it not being fast enough (while they contented it would be) would be a valid reason to return the MBA for a refund.

So, in summery my requirements of the machine are as follows:

• Will spend much of its time sat on the side running my TV system and serving media.
• Will be used for university work, managing my personal photo collection and for web browsing and email.
• Will be used for chatting on MSN and Colloqy
• Will be the base station for my iPad.

I hope that this post is of interest to others, if the MacBook air proves to have the power i require, then the sale of the White MacBook and the Mac Mini will more than cover the cost of the Air.

If you have any questions about the macbook air, or would like to ask me to run a specific benchmark, then let me know in the comments.

Published: 11 December 2010 | Categories: Reviews , Apple Permalink