iPhone 4 reviews praise phone, slam AT&T

The first few reviews of the iPhone 4 have arrived this evening and are largely positive on the phone but critical of the network. USA Today's Ed Baig describes the phone as "the one to beat" despite Android and said that most of the limitations were now down to AT&T, whose network still drops calls in congested areas. He considers FaceTime one of its best selling points and, in spite of the limitation to Wi-Fi and (currently) other iPhone 4s, a worthwhile feature. It's extremely simple and produces high quality, he said.

Camera quality and voice quality have also gone up significantly through the five-megapixel, 720p-capable camera and the noise canceling microphone, Baig added.

In an alternative take, Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin repeated the compliments but took a more practical look at the iPhone 4's performance. The 960x640 display's sharpness and improved color accuracy make it easier to read, especially in bright or dark situations. Jardin also went into high detail regarding the camera and noted that it's now much faster at shooting action scenes; exposure is also better and can compensate for much wider ranges of light. Video produced a "squee" as it was both higher higher resolution and higher quality at the same time. Battery life is about 20 to 25 percent longer, Jardin said.

Reception has improved, adding roughly an extra bar of signal strength, but AT&T is still considered at fault by Jardin as dropped calls aren't entirely gone. "Even where signal strength was terrific, dropped or garbly calls did still occur sometimes with this new iPhone," she said. "As we're now four hardware iterations in, I believe that has everything, or nearly everything, to do with the carrier."

The New York Times' David Pogue was actually one of the more critical reviewers and noted that the iPhone is "no longer the undisputed king" of smartphones, as Android may please those who want more control and features in apps as well as choices like removable batteries, he said. Apple, however, was still better at the form factor, battery life and the level of OS refinement.

For him, the focuses were on the speed of the phone, whose A4 is noticeably faster than the iPhone 3GS' Samsung chip, and the ease of movie editing with the optional iMovie app. "The way life goes, some iPhone production will win at Cannes next year," Pogue commented. AT&T was still a problem, but the columnist did notice fewer dropped calls.

A review counteracting all the above from Engadget's Joshua Topolsky did note that there were "far, far fewer" dropped calls and that the phone largely seemed to address the problem as a whole, although there were still occasional trouble spots. One of those may have been created by calling an iPhone 3GS owner.

Apple chief Steve Jobs' frequent favorite reviewer, the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, was gentler in terms of OS comparisons and suggested that the iPhone 4 kept Apple "in the lead in the smartphone wars." He cited FaceTime as an example of the strength of making both the OS and hardware, and gave a pragmatic view of battery life, as he never saw it go to critical battery levels in day-to-day use.

However, Mossberg was the harshest of all in his treatment of AT&T and likened Apple to being "shackled" to its lone US carrier. He did reveal that Apple has not only made the shell part of the antenna, as mentioned at the WWDC keynote, but that Apple had changed the priority of the phone to get the highest quality signal rather than just the strongest. AT&T has also purportedly adapted specifically to the network, but in some cases was actually worse; some of this was due to a bug with reported reception, but others aren't yet explained.

"[AT&T] not only still operates a network that has trouble connecting and maintaining calls in many cities, but now has abandoned unlimited, flat-rate data plans," Mossberg wrote. "Apple needs a second network."

By Electronista Staff