Apple's iPhone 4: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on June 30, 2010 4:06 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- iPhone 4
- Gadgets
- Mobile
Final Words
The iPhone 4 is a tremendous improvement over the previous phones from Apple. Battery life alone is enough to sell a brand new notebook, there's no reason the same shouldn't apply for a smartphone. Being able to deliver real world battery life use of between 5.5 and 10 hours on a single charge is quite impressive. And if you aren't using the phone nonstop? Expect even longer battery life.
On top of the battery life improvements Apple finally plays catch up and surpasses the technological advancements in its Android competitors. The 4's camera is as good as it gets today and the screen is a beauty. I don't believe this advantage will last for the lifetime of the iPhone 4. The phones that are in development today at least surpass the 4's specs in terms of raw CPU speed. Given that Apple's retina display is in high volume production already I'd expect other manufacturers to pick it up in due time.
And believe it or not, even if you upgrade to the iPhone 4 today in another 12 months it'll most likely be replaced by a dual core version that you'll want even more.
HTC EVO 4G (back) vs. iPhone 4 (front)
The main downside to the iPhone 4 is the obvious lapse in Apple's engineering judgment. The fact that Apple didn't have the foresight to coat the stainless steel antenna band with even a fraction of an ounce worth of non-conductive material either tells us that Apple doesn't care or that it simply doesn't test thoroughly enough. The latter is a message we've seen a few times before with OS X issues, the iPhone 4 simply reinforces it. At the bare minimum Apple should give away its bumper case with every iPhone 4 sold. The best scenario is for Apple to coat the antenna and replace all existing phones with a revised model.The ideal situation is very costly for Apple but it is the right thing to do. Plus it's not like Apple doesn't have the resources to take care of its customers.
As for the iPhone vs. Android debate, the 4 doesn't really change much. If you're not a fan of iOS 4 or Apple then the 4th generation iPhone isn't going to change your opinion. If you're an existing iPhone user you'll want to upgrade. It's worth it. The 4 simply makes the iPhone 3GS feel dated, which it is. It's a mild update to three year old phone vs. the significant redesign that is the iPhone 4. If you're married to Android, in the next 6 - 12 months we should see feature parity from the competition. And if you're a fan of Palm, let's just see what happens when the HP deal closes.
There's another category of users who are interested in the iPhone but simply put off by AT&T. While enabling HSUPA and the improved baseband make the iPhone 4 more attractive from a network standpoint, if you hate AT&T's coverage there's nothing Apple can do about it. I do get the feeling that the AT&T exclusivity will be over sooner rather than later. The iPhone and iOS are soon to be a mobile advertising platform, which means Apple needs as many users as possible. This is in direct contrast to the Mac strategy which purposefully didn't focus on volume to maintain high profit margins. Ultimately it means that AT&T either has to grow to be much larger than Verizon, or Apple has to embrace both carriers in order to fend off Android.
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scarnie - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
See my article here: http://bit.ly/5pxjgkBasically, the iPhone 4 is about 33% faster than the 3GS (600MHz) and 25% slower than iPad (1GHz) putting it squarely at 800MHz.
Cheers,
Stu
heri16 - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Since it has been confirmed that Apple would not be able to beat physics, the best way for them is to issue a firmware update to hide the signal loss in terms of bars (GASP!) . Since after-all, calls won't be dropped at one bar, why make us all worry?From my tests, attenuation by water-containing bodies is always a problem to RF. My best way around has been using micro-strip circular polarized antennas to reduce the effect. I've been using such antennas to cut 2.4Ghz signals through dense trees, which have "waterly" leaves. It also works better in rainy conditions compared to linear antennas.
(My tests shows reduction in attenuation by 70% in dbm units for my modded 2.4Ghz enterprise router through those same trees.) This will work since our hands/bodies are "waterly" too.
My suggestion to Apple to is have both thin circular-polarized micro-strip antennas embedded in the back surface, and linear polarized antennas at the sides, and diversity-RF controllers to get improved best-case and worst-case performance.
I'm not sure whether an iphone accessory maker can create the same fix through a paper-thin antenna plugged in.
heri16 - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Here are some links to help understand the iphone RF fix.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_polarization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstrip_antenna
NordicNINE - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
I finished up work & school for the day and just popped down to relax. Brought up my favorite tech news site and started the recorded DVR shows. I pulled up this article and then the recording of the new Futurama started up.Xeeros - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
Not to nitpick but The Incredible has 8GB internal PLUS the microSD which Verizon gives you a 2GB stick so it would be 10GB stock as they now package the SD card in the phone. Had a Launch unit and the refresher that says Droid on the box versuses the HTC incredible box. ONly difference was my store gave me a card for the 2GB and now its pre-packaged. To be honest most review sites that have it listed in comparison have it labeled this way, so probably not your fault.sporadic - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
A question though:When you ran your PDF download tests were you using any encryption or was this on an open network?
dhvanii - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
This is a great article on i4 antenna and DL reception. I have a few questions.1. if you take 1.5 MHz channel bandwidth, then the lowest signal strength measurable should be around -112 dBm. But this WCDMA and so if it is 4.5 MHz the lowest RSSI should be -107 dBm. Add to that a 4-6 dB noise figure and the lowest RSSI should be around -100 dBm. How is the device reporting -113 dBm for 3G ? Is that only for GSM reception where it is 200 KHz channel bandwidth and so theoretical lowest is around -120 dBm ?
2. How about UL ? What is the Max Tx Power of this device ? 23 dBm ? How is that affected by this antenna glitch. Radio link protocols requiring UL acks for DL packets will definitely get affected by this poor antenna performance if UL is also affected.
Thanks again for your detailed analysis.
navderek - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
Well I'm glad we agree...to be honest I did not read the entire article, but only the section about the antenna issues with the handset.I did not see you bring up the point of CQI, nor did I see you mention that RSSI is really not a good measure for network coverage / quality (when used alone). Perhaps you've mentioned it in other articles, and if so a link to those would have been warranted for charities sake.
Have you ever considered writing up an article about how the air interface works? I think everyone would be much further ahead if they had a good basic understanding of the air interface and how the handset communicates with the BTS...especially now with so many networks competing it would put a little more power into the consumers hands to judge the quality of the network rather than rely on their silly marketing adds and crappy signal strength bar displays.
Finally, you said that at -107dB the iPhone4 "deals just fine" with it. Do you have data to back that up? What kind of data rates were you getting? I'd be surprised if you could even hit 1MB/s.
Just so you know, I work for TELUS Mobility in Canada. We have the first TRUE "all IP" network running in North America. We launched back at the end of 2009 with a 3.5G network. In my area we use NSN equipment and in practical use you can easily get sustained data rates greater than 10MB/s (downlink, theoretical = 21MB/s). We are also talking latencies of less than 50ms and almost no jitter....how did we do this? Well we are the only company in North America to have built the network from the ground up using IP transport all the way to the radios. We have fiber going to every single tower which serves only this 1 network (we have 2 others to manage as well, PCS / iDEN). :-) I'm not trying to prop-up my company or anything, but just giving a hint as to why other carriers such as AT&T have so many problems with their "patchwork" network which still most likely uses legacy copper circuits multiplexed and converted into IP packets...this puts significant strain on the core to keep up with the demands.
If people understood the air interface protocols in a general and basic sense at least they could judge the quality of this part of the network and then focus on looking into the other parts...I just find it frustrating that most people who don't understand how it works tend to give the network a "basket" rating based on simple RSSI measurements which does not really give much insight except as to how much radiation your standing in.
zmslink - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
So the net effect is that iPhone 4 drops fewer calls then the 3GS despite losing as much as 24dB when held "incorrectly," but does that signal loss affect battery life much?davidcjones - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
It is amazing how someone can do such detailed research to get to the bottom of this!Thanks for your hard work. Of course, I am distressed that people are so inclined to run to the courts to file class action suits before they actually investigate the issue in detail...
David Jones
Jericho, VT