Having had my new phone for a week now, I thought it would be an interesting thing to round up my thoughts of it. I haven’t used it extensively to… well, for example, managed meetings and handle large amounts of files or something – I am just your average dumb phone user, I guess.

Setting Up:

When my phone first arrived, I wasn’t prepared for it, to be honest. Because of various factors – possible delayed shipping due to worldwide demand; thought my 3G worked off a Micro-Sim – I genuinely thought that my phone will arrive somewhere in November. Of course, I should have known… Apple often play safe in those situations and my phone actually arrived earlier than stated. It was, frankly, pleasant.

(that obviously didn’t stop me from refreshing TNT’s tracking page, or my account tracking page on a daily basis)

My old phone felt like it was cacking it and so, I didn’t back it up one last time, I didn’t even get a chance to activate the phone at home anyways, as I didn’t have the micro-sim. the 2nd easiest part of the whole thing, surprisingly, was getting Optus to give me a replacement micro-sim.

Then I had lunch. And I sat. And pondered. I was itching to set up my phone, see it work, play with it… but to set it up as a new phone sound like a bitch. I didn’t know what that could possibly entail. Then, Wade sent me a message, “I normally set it up as new each OS upgrade…” ok whatever, if Wade can do it, then I can. Boom, the easiest thing I ever did:

Contacts were transferred over. Calendar too. Music, not so much, but that’s bearable (until I came home to a dead seagate drive, fucker) and every app I have ever bought waiting for me to anoint it for this new phone – on the iCloud. I was hooked!

Camera:

3G was a downgrade in phone camera from my Nokia phone camera. It wasn’t a massive downgrade, in a way, but very clearly so. Therefore, when I viewed instagram over the last few months, whilst I am stupid, I kept thinking some of these <insert various insulting names> people must be cheating, downloading from their slr to their phones to hook up to instagram, etc etc, make it look all cool. I knew iPhone 4 was a camera upgrade from mine, I certainly wasn’t expecting some of the qualities of the photographs on instagram though.

And then, I got my 4s, and I was.. “oh.”

4S/Ixus 95is

Using the photos above, that day was actually an overcast day. Therefore…. actually…. 4s was the accurate depiction of my backyard where else my Ixus on Auto was over-exposed. That’s just a wide angle view though… it actually doesn’t do too bad in the darker areas either. For example, when I am having that lunch at the indian place – it took a wonderful shot of the area. Not going to show it here though.

More importantly, for me, were the Macro shots since I like to take pictures of food and of my nendos. they aren’t so macro that I need professional lenses on it. However, lately, a lot of the point and shoots left a lot to be desired. it is, as if, with the increasing prices, the also decided to dumb down their cameras. rather disappointing, really.

4s/Ixus

The level of details on both pictures looks very astounding to me (I also had a better shot that I accidentally deleted on the 4s, oops). The warmth of the pictures here shows up really strongly too.

DSLR quality is always going to overtake that quality, especially when it comes to rendering later on and so on. However, for everyday walk around, food showing off photography, this is just a little above average imo. so now, I don’t need to bring phone + ipod + camera! it’s all just the iphone! :O

Having photo stream really makes that a wonderful thing too, just quietly

However, I have also found that while the phone can take pictures well in shadowy rooms and so on, where there are shadows under, say, bushes, it gets fuzzy. Considering how good this is though, it’s not that big a problem.

 

Siri:

Siri has been nothing but a pleasure to use. yes, it’s limited right now – but in it’s limitation, we learn to work around it and find out other things that it’s useful for. Besides running my music when I am lazy, I have managed to run shopping lists by it, get it to remind me things at X time, wake me up, write emails… stuff.

It’s not something I had use extensively right now, if only because I don’t drive and don’t have a massive amounts of “reminders” and “meetings” to really do. It is, however, a great thing to have for trivia and for trying to remind myself things for groceries. you know how it is, you remember things one at a time – well, Siri is awesome for that. if you walk around with your phone often enough, and suddenly have bright ideas (like for Nanowrimo)…. things that you randomly remember (e.g. me and suddenly remembering I need eggs)

e.g. note that I have walked into this ^#$%$#%#$ car coz I keep talking to you

Siri has also got a great sense of humour. Sometimes, I wonder how much of this is “fixed”. For example, I spent a large part of my first day with Miruku asking Siri if she would bend over for me. By the end of the first 10 minutes, she kept “misunderstanding” me, spelling all my words out phonetically. it was HILARIOUS.

 

Screen:

some people mentioned a yellow tint to the screen, due to poorer quality screens or something. Some people likened it to a type of jaundice only a phone can have. Frankly, I don’t know what to think of it. Initially, I couldn’t see the tint. Then, under white lights and all, in comparison to the white sides, I finally saw the faint yellow screen colour.

It didn’t bother me one bit, and it’s not as fanatically yellow as some people claimed it was. In fact, until I see at this table, which is under the aforesaid white light, I don’t see it. Which then makes me wonder if it’s a trick of the eye due to the whiteness around me.

That said, the screen is infinitely sharper and better than previous phone. also, I find the touch sensitivity has heightened. Where sometimes it wouldn’t feel me do some actions, the phone now detects it all. And, I hate to say this, it’s actually doing a better job than my first generation ipad sometimes. (and I can say that since I keep failing in a particular game which seems to not detect some gestures) (no, I didn’t fail in that game!)

 

Speed:

This is going to sound dumb, but I have no other comparison but the 3G. When I had 3G, the Bejewelled Blitz part of it started being a pain in the arse after the first upgrade. it started logging in to facebook slower and slower… then loading the app got just as bad. At times, I had finish taking a shower, and it’s still bloody trying to log in. I have figured out Popcap can’t program that stupid games, even though it’s quite addictive.

but seriously? few updates and shitty loading times? geez.

So, one of my own benchmarks was to use bejewelled. and god, it feels awesome to see it whizz past the loading screen. App is still a whore, but that is an entirely different issue.

Even internet on it seemed faster, albeit Optus still thinks my house is a blind spot. Safari loads up crazy quick, instagram popular pictures zips up… and the feeds…. wow!

Battery life:

now, I have heard about the battery issues prior to actually receiving the unit. I wasn’t concerned because, well, law of averages states that there will always be a few fuck ups. the first few days, I had no issues with regards to the battery. In fact, I managed to drain the shit out of it, and it still took about 8 hours before I *personally felt* I needed to charge it (something like 5%). this was inclusive of about 2 hours worth of music playing while playing scribblenauts, on silent mode with vibration on then chatting to a mate via texting for nearly 6 hours with all that vibration going crazy… more games in between… downloading new apps… reading emails.

It didn’t really see flat, I chose to charge it.

Then, one night, I went to bed charging my ipad because the phone was at 100%. 7 hours later, I woke up, and it was flat.

no idea why, randomly, just flat.

It hasn’t happened ever since, but that was just really odd.

 

One more thing

Right side of the phone… it heats up crazily. I am not sure why. a search on google and reading through articles claim that it is the antenna. however, seeing how the antenna is now 2 sided, I don’t know why it’s such a specific spot. infact, it feels like it’s the A5 chip that’s heating up. It gets real warm, like how the gfx card does after a few hours of hardcore gaming… except this can happen in, say, 15 minutes of heavy use (like when I was first setting it up).

I am not quite sure what to make of that other than to hope it’s not a faulty set. I am not so keen to return to Apple store to ask at this point, it doesn’t show up often enough. However, I know enough about overheating to wonder how it will affect the hardware.