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
Camera Usability
It still takes almost two seconds to activate the camera on the 4, which is enough time to miss whatever it is you’re trying to grab a photo of. Thanks to the iOS 4 update however, the shutter is almost instantaneous. The difference appears to be that the photo is committed to memory but not fully written to NAND, whereas before the photo would be written to the Flash before you could take another picture. Power loss in the middle of snapping photos seems pretty rare on a smartphone so the tradeoff, if I’m correct, makes sense.
Apple opted for a lower noise rather than higher resolution sensor in the iPhone 4 and it did pay off. The main camera shoots photos at 2592 x 1936 compared to the EVO 4G’s 3264 x 1952, but the resulting images are far less noisy - particularly in low light situations:
HTC EVO 4G - Low Light
Apple iPhone 4 - Low Light
The 4’s main camera, like the HTC Incredible and EVO 4G, is a decent replacement for a point and shoot if you’re primarily outdoors. You’re still going to get better image quality out of a good point and shoot, but the tradeoff is convenience. The limitations are significant.
Because you rely on the iPhone 4’s software controlled aperture and shutter speed you don’t have the ability to properly expose the image. You have to rely on Apple’s algorithms, which tend to either overexpose outdoors or miscalculate white balance with non-halogen light sources.
This is an example of a photo taken outdoors that’s more washed out than it needs to be:
And many of you picked up on the white balance issue I snuck into our EVO 4G review yesterday:
Regardless of where I tapped to focus, I could not get the iPhone 4 to set a proper white balance in our photo box.
While I was watching the screen, the iPhone 4 would alternate between yellow and white for the background color. It seemed to be trying to calculate the white point but was just being thrown off by the type of light. If I timed the shot right I could snag the photo while the iPhone was switching between white balance points:
I also had this problem in my office which uses LED can lights.
This is far more yellow than it should be
While Brian didn't have the same problems I did, Brandon Hill (DailyTech Editor in Chief) did. It seems to be very dependent on the type of lighting you have and even then it seems to vary based on the type of CFLs. And unlike the EVO 4G, there’s no way to manually set a white balance on the 4.
For overall image quality though I have to hand it to Apple, the iPhone 4 does do a better job than the EVO 4G or other phones I’ve used. Take a look at this shot inside my house:
The colors in the iPhone 4 shot are on point. The green is correct, the wooden floor is right and the black is, well, black. The EVO 4G didn’t do so well on this test by comparison:
The 4’s camera isn’t perfect, but it does appear to handle colors better than the EVO (with the exception of my white balance issue) and delivers lower noise photos.
Compared to other phones the 4 does similarly well, besting the 5 megapixel camera in the Motorola Droid easily in terms of color reproduction and sharpness. Though the HTC Incredible previously was a top performer alongside the N900, the iPhone 4 makes the Incredible look a bit oversharpened and artificial. Compared to the 3GS, the iPhone 4's improvement is obviously dramatic, as shown in the gallery below.
Video is recorded at 1280x720, in H.264 with AAC mono audio. We measured a bitrate of 1.35 MBps, outclassing all the other smartphones we've tested.
iPhone 4
HTC Droid Incredible
Motorola Droid
Nokia N900
What's interesting is that the iPhone 4 appears to crop the sensor down for video recording, taking the center most 1280x720 pixels instead of scaling down the entire image size. The result is that the focal length for video recording is notably longer than when taking photos.
You can see the difference is quite notable standing in the same place. Perhaps the A4 SoC lacks the compute power to apply a scale and encode at the same time, necessitating this crop. Whatever the case, video shot with the iPhone 4 still looks very good at the promised and delivered 30 FPS. Move the camera around enough, and there's still screen door effect from the rolling shutter like any CMOS sensor is going to give you - it's a fundamental problem no phones are going to get around soon. Its also right there in the specifications page for the camera SoC; rolling shutter.
Similarly, iPhone 4 does give you 5x digital zoom, though we still maintain you're better off taking photos at native resolution and messing with them later with better interpolation algorithms.
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strikeback03 - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link
How does international work? Are other parts of Europe covered by that as well or are they all additional?B3an - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Theres way WAY less options for network and internet providers in the U.S, especially compared to here in the U.K..So less competition means higher prices. And of course the size of the U.S/Canada is a problem.
strikeback03 - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Some friends who have been living in England say that cell usage over there is way more expensive. They claim the only affordable way to do it is with pay as you go SIMs and just not use them much.But yes more competition would be nice. For me Verizon is the only carrier that offers the kind of coverage I need. So between the fact that I can't go anywhere and that they don't offer an off-contract rate I have no reason not to take the subsidized phones and contract extensions.
Chissel - Sunday, July 4, 2010 - link
I'm an American living in the UK. iPhone 4 rates here are much lower. The best I have seen is from Tesco (o2 network). Low cost no frills service. 750 minutes + unlimited texts + 1gb of data per month. Also, incoming calls do not charge minutes. 1 yr. contract 32gb iPhone 4 = £299/$450 + £35/$50 per month (all tax included). After 1 yr. they have to unlock your phone. After you unlock the phone you can drop down to £20/$30 per month.This means the 2 year cost of the phone + service in the UK is £959/$1,438. In the US the 2 year cost is $299 + tax and $105/mo + tax. Total cost over 2 years is $2,819 without tax.
As you can see the UK has much lower price over the 2 years. Plus, after 1 year you 'own' your phone and can resell and buy iPhone 5.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link
I think the unlock on AT&T can be requested after 3 months, definitely after a year as I had a friend do that.StormyParis - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link
I've abandonned data plans, and switched back to plain voice, on my HD2. I get Wifi most everywhere (at home and at work for sure, and most places in between). I was simply not using data that much, it's not worth the monthly 30 euros they want for it.99.5% of the time, there's no difference at all. 0.5% of the time... i can survive...
vol7ron - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
I agree, but..."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..."
Apple would just see this as another selling point for the bumper.
Anand/Brian-
I'm curious if you've had a chance to test with the microfilm covers like Bodyguardz or Zagg.
I use these because of how thin they are and how great they are at protecting the device (scratch free even when dropping on concrete). They cover all points of the phone rather effectively. I'm curious if they would be beneficial to your testing.
vol7ron
Brian Klug - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
vol7ron,You're totally right, I need to test with a thin film or some heavy duty tape/invisible shield. I originally thought of doing that, but somehow it got lost in all that frenzied testing. I'll whip something up and see if anything changes. I mean that's a good point too, it might not do very much.
I mean, ultimately there's a thickness you do need to achieve, and to be fair a lot of the benefit the case adds is that extra couple mm or two from the antenna. If the film is too thin, it might not do much. What makes me uneasy about saying anything definitively is that this is so near field - literally on top of the radiative surface. I'll admit I have only a basic level of understanding about what kind of interference happens in the very near field. I mean even at 1.8 GHz, one wavelength is 16 cm - the case and your hands on the phone is way inside near field.
-Brian
rainydays - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
Agree. Outstanding review. The detailed analysis and level headed tone is excellent. Keep up the great work.Antenna section was illuminating. Good point about using SNR. I wonder if that number by itself is sufficient though. I guess signal power in dbm along with SNR would give the most complete picture of reception.
At any rate, as is abundantly clear in the article, you never really know where you are till you see the numbers.
John Sawyer - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Yes, the numbers, details, etc. are more important than a lot of people realize. It often annoys me when I see people commenting about issues that involve actual measurement, technical facts, etc., without referring to any of those, and thus winding up with all kinds of conspiracy theories, bogus suggestions, etc. As applied to hardware problems from any manufacturer, generally many such commenters, in their understandable desire to just see a fix for a problem, wind up suggesting the only important thing is for the manufacturer to set up a return exchange program, which would be nice if it were always that easy, but it doesn't address the details of the problem that are often quite interesting, and can be very useful for people trying to learn from the situation.