They won't make you appear unwilling to make eye contact, either, because the camera is close enough to the screen to ensure that participants appear to be looking at each other rather than the top of the display.
A light, at last, but only LED
It's clearly a work in progress - if the other guy rotates his iPhone, his picture rotates on your screen too, and it's limited to Wi-Fi connections - but it's impressive nonetheless because it's implemented as generically as voice communications are. You don't need to set up an account, you don't need a 'buddy' list, you don't have to know anything about networks and firewalls.
It's classic Apple 'ease of use hiding complex technology' and if it's of no use yet to man or beast, that's simply because world+dog hasn't caught up and bought enough iPhone 4s yet.
The addition of a front-facing camera hasn't precluded an upgrade to the one on the back of the iPhone, now with a whole five megapixels and equipped with a digital zoom and an LED flash.
An LED light may not be as photo-pro as CEO Steve Jobs' allusion to the iPhone 4's Leica-like look might suggest, but it improves the handset's low-light photography. The zoom makes a grainy image even more grainy, and there are no EV, white-balance adjustments and so forth.
Sample Shots
Click for full-size images
But then who ever uses these on cameraphones that have them? And who examines the pictures they take at full size? If you do you'll see images that gain grain as soon as the light dips below California levels and are as vaguely smudged as only a camera with no physical shutter can make them.
COMMENTS
Apple OneCell
Apparently the next generation of iPhone is called the Apple OneCell. Apple commented on the proposed name stating:
"We flatly reject any claims that the new OneCell name is any way reflects the number of un-banned applications, or the fact that users are in any way locked-in, and that OneCell in no way refers to either the battery life or average intelligence of Apple users."
:-)
Nokia...
Have really gone down hill lately. Time was you could chuck your nokia around and it'd survive no worries.
I remember back in the day dropping my 3210 in a river, could see the screen lit up and working at the bottom with full signal. Fished it out, dried it - worked first time.
This is the sort of thing I expect to see in a phone test.
no fixin' required
@Mr Burns and AC (assuming Smithers)
No fixin' required, just needs a s/w update apparently.
It does amaze me the amount of negative press Apple gets her at El Reg, or even the amount of vitriol spewed by people who have no clue in the comments, but at least one of you had the balls to sign their name against it.
It's a bloody good phone, but if it didn't exist, then I doubt the current crop of phones would be anywhere near the current state of technology.
Android wouldn't be a competitor, WebOS might actually have saved palm, and Windows 7 would be out in 2011 (oh wait, the last is probably still true)
Re: Innacuracies
"I experience zero signal degradation when i deliberately cover up the bottom left of mine."
Oh well then they must all be fine.
Panic over everyone; someone tell His Illustrious Steveness.
A fair review
It's nice to see a fair review of the iPhone 4 instead of the usual "ZOMG teh phonez doesnt wurkz when you hold teh bottum left". I can re-create the problem on my phone, but in general use I never hold it in the way that interferes with the antenna. That's not a conscious choice, it's just the way I naturally want to hold it.
I've had mine since launch now and I've been generally quite pleased, and the speed boost over my old 3G is brilliant. It used to take over a minute to load a web page on the 3G, the iPhone 4 does it in seconds. The camera also is really excellent compared to what was on the 3G. All in all though, it's actually more of the same, which is fine, but it's not as revolutionary as the 3G was for me after years of Windows Mobile.
I agree with the reviewer about the lack of need for multi-tasking most of the time. After Windows Mobile's way of handling things, I thought the elegance of only allowing one app to run at a time was a smart solution to limited resources, a small screen, ease of use and ensuring the running app is able to use the full power of the system.
As to whether it's a better choice than an Android device, I'm not sure. I've got quite a large array of games and apps on my iPhone now and I generally think iOS is a nicer interface to use. I am however very jealous that Android has Flash, as that's probably my biggest bug-bear with the new iPhone. I'd have preferred a 64GB model too as I've already filled the 32GB... If Android starts to get more games and the platform fragmentation problems are sorted out, my next phone might not be from Apple...
