iPhone 4 review: Apps and Maps

Maps and Application review for iPhone 4 ~

What's one of the main things Apple is famous for other than all the other things you're probably thinking like Macs and iPods and Macbooks? Yes, that's right: applications. Not the Newton.
The iPhone 4 is only the start here - the phone really comes alive when you start filling it with simple to find applications.
For app-naive, the App Store has over 200,000 mini programs in the App Store portal - some are free, some cost as little as 59p, and some over £50. But the sheer range of options on offer is dizzying.

For instance, you can get a BBC iPlayer application, a camera manipulator to improve the quality of your photos, iMovie, addictive games like Angry Birds and RSS readers - all for next to nothing.
We can't really tell you how to use the application store, but go and have a nose around - the addition of iAds (which are advertising applications discreetly hidden within the apps themselves) will mean more money coming in, and therefore more applications in the future.

iBooks
One of the big ones is the addition of iBooks - this turns your iPhone 4 into an eBook reader with hundreds of titles to work with.
Oddly this was one of the few areas of the phone that struggled to process quickly, as you often had to wait for the tomes to load if you want to see what's in your library.

But turning the pages is easy as pie and you can bookmark and annotate your pages as you wish - with all these features copies over the iPad and iPod touch range, so if you start reading Sherlock Holmes on your iPhone 4 you can finish it off on the larger iPad later.
Although you sound like you're probably rich enough to hire someone to read to you if you have both an iPhone 4 and iPad.
The other applications that come bundled with the iPhone 4 are pretty basic to be honest, with the Clock offering alarms and countdown timers, the compass pointing at things and the voice recorder making recordings of voices, and allowing you to share them as MMS files easily.

The Weather and Stock applications could do with being updated, if we're honest, as having to open up the application every time you want to see what's going on is a bit of a pain - that's what widgets are for.
The iPhone is only part phone, and the rest of the experience is application based - if you don't make use of all the cool things on offer, which will only grow larger as things like a higher-res camera and location-based services that can run in the background become more prevalent.

Maps
As we mentioned, the iPhone comes equipped with a compass as well as the second best representation of Google Maps we've seen on a smartphone anywhere. The phone is able to locate you via cellular towers or the GPS chip in a very quick time, meaning it becomes much harder to get lost when the compass is pointing your direction too.
Google Maps on the iPhone doesn't have the impressive feature list it does on Android, like free sat nav with Google Maps Navigation and transit maps, but it does work quickly and use pinch to zoom to move closer to the text or picture, which is a nice touch.

One of the more recent features in Google Maps for iPhone is the ability to assign a contact an address, and then direct you to their location.
You can't use Google Latitude natively on the iPhone 4, which is a shame as that kind of market penetration for a service like this could really help it take off.
You can share locations with someone via text or email though - this is really useful, and something we've used a couple of times already when trying to explain to someone where we were in London.
If only Google Maps Navigation would come to the iPhone 4, it would become an even better device - perhaps Apple has something of its own in the pipeline, as Google has said it would consider licensing the technology.

iPhone 4 Review : Camera

Camera : Upgraded Sensors


The world grumbled about the cameras on the iPhone and iPhone 3G: 2MP with no flash simply wasn't going to cut it.
Last year the iPhone 3GS brought a 3.2MP camera when the world was readying itself for the first 12MP cameraphones – again, Apple seemed to be lagging behind.
So thankfully the iPhone 4 brings not only a 5MP camera, but also an LED flash and significantly upgraded sensors to improve picture quality.


And what a leap – this is so, so much better in terms of cameraphone quality. Any budding mo-phos out there (mobile photographers, in case you're wondering) will be very impressed with the quality of the camera on the iPhone 4.
For starters, Apple's overhaul of the sensor has done wonders for extending the light range of the snapper – now it can take excellent pictures in both low and strong light, even without the LED flash.
The options to mess around with are minimal – for instance there's no option to play with white balance or colour saturation, like that offered on the HTC Legend.
It's a shame because these little tweaks can really improve picture quality with little input.
But there is one ace up the iPhone 4's sleeve, in touch to focus.
Tapping an area of the screen not only brings it into focus, but also adjusts white balance and brightness very well, making the subject clear in any picture.
The LED flash is good, if not awe inspiring... it has a mid range throw that's perfectly fine for night pictures of your pals.
The digital zoom is silky smooth too, and it's dumbfounding how clear the pictures are at 5x zoom – take a look below to see how well they came out:


CONTRAST: The first image is taken with the focus on the leaves, and the second on the sun


DARKER CONTRAST: The same as above, but this time from a darker scene, which leads to a slightly less pure picture


DIGITAL ZOOM: The iPhone 4's digital zoom is top notch - at 5x closer the detail is preserved incredibly well

AUTO MACRO: There's no macro mode on offer here, but the iPhone manages to intelligently find the right level

TOO BRIGHT: However, if there's too much surrounding light it struggles to focus on the foreground

iPhone 4 review: Internet

Using Your Browser like Laptop

Another thing Apple has always excelled at is the internet experience on its phone – it used to be the leader in this area without a shadow of a doubt.
Then Android got its WebKit-browser together and with it came a real rival to the throne of best mobile phone browser – and we're not sure that Apple comes up trumps this time.
The Apple A4 processor under the hood certainly has sped things up though – the internet browsing experience is markedly improved from the iPhone 3GS, with web sites loading a shade quicker and scrolling through them a much more pleasant experience.

We're still 'limited' to eight open pages at once though – any more than that and you're not allowed to start up another window.

We can't see that being a problem though, seeing as nobody can need that much information on their mobile phone at once – plus the impressive thing is there's no slowdown in the operation either.
However, the same gripe is still there: no Flash video. Yes, we know the myriad reasons Jobs has for not putting Adobe Flash on the iPhone or iPad, but it leaves iPhone 4 users in something of a limbo state.
Jobs has stated that he believed HTML5 and other standards will take over from Flash video and be a better experience – which is a fine stance to take.
But in the meantime we're left heading to the official BBC site and being constantly exposed to the 'Flash not detected' messages strewn everywhere, which makes us feel like we've got an ancient device, not something that's supposed to change everything. Again.

On the plus side, embedded YouTube works on most sites, jumping straight into the dedicated iPhone client and playing back with minimal loss in quality.
Other little internet tweaks we like are the ability to turn a bookmarked web page into a home screen icon, offering easy access from the start, and the ability to easily email a link to your friends.
However, when you look at the browser on the HTC Desire, you can see it's probably ahead in the overall functionality stakes.
Firstly, when you zoom into text on the iPhone 4, there's only one size that fits all the text on the screen. It's perfectly visible, but if you want to head in further (using the excellent pinch and zoom) some of the text moves off the screen.

The HTC range will constantly resize text no matter how close you get, which gives you far more options, especially for the short sighted.
The Android browser also allows shipping links to Twitter, Facebook and SMS, as well as deploying the latest version of mobile Flash in version 10.1 – and doing it fairly well.

In fairness, the iPhone probably does copy and paste that little bit better, as the little green pins are very easy to grab and drag with the magnifying glass around to help out.
We never thought we'd say it, but the iPhone is no longer top dog when it comes to web browsing on your phone.

iPhone 4 review : Interface part 2

Good Way of Improving

Wallpaper
Legacy iPhone users will be used to the plain old black background – so now being allowed to customise however they see fit is going to be a real treat.
There's no reason Apple hasn't allowed this so far, and it feels a little childish that this has only popped up (unless you were one of the unruly kids and jailbroke your iPhone – perfectly acceptable then).

However, being able to have it as both the lock screen image and the background is a nice touch, or to have two separate images if that's your bag.
Folders
The only other new and interesting feature to the interface is the addition of folders – if you're fed up of being forced to see row after row of icons you're going to find life just got a lot simpler.
Simply long press an icon, and rather than moving that little picture to a new place, dump it on top of another one, automatically creating a folder with the two applications in there.

You can even name it whatever you want – Apple is really letting you go nuts here.
Of course, there are older elements from previous iPhones on offer as well swiping left to access Spotlight search for instance.
This offers the chance to simply type in a search term, and Spotlight will search out messages, applications, contacts or media files containing that name.

If it can't find them then it will offer the chance to hit up the likes of Google or Wikipedia to get more information – but you can probably work out how to do that yourself.
It's not the most intuitive search – other platforms will let you perform functions like sending a message reply from the search results, but it's still jolly handy for things like finding a certain song.
Voice control is also on offer too – hold down the home button and a little blue screen pops up.

The idea is saying things like 'Play Album Immersion' or 'Dial Marc's Mum' will do such a thing – in reality, it was useless.
We swear it's worse at working out what we're trying to say than the iPhone 3GS – so many times it decided to dial a random number instead of playing a song.
But the schizophrenic robot voice control aside, iPhone 4 interface is simply immense – from the super-smooth and responsive swiping to the instant opening of applications and animations, the reasons so many people like the iPhone is evident under the touch.
It doesn't have the instant zip of the Desire or Samsung Galaxy S, but that's more to do with the animated transitions than any kind of judder.
We're still gutted that elements like widgets aren't present – you don't hang a picture of a fridge in your kitchen to keep your milk cold, so why should you have to open an icon to access information from an application?

Facts u need to know about iphone 4

Here's my thought about Iphone 4

find out whether i think the iPhone 4 is the best phone in the world.

Apple's launch of the iPhone 4 has seen the greatest excitement for a new phone ever - and with HD video recording, a super high-res screen and ridiculously slim dimensions, it's not hard to see why.

But things are a little different now - not only was the iPhone 3GS something of a non-update to the iPhone range, but there are finally decent alternatives in the smartphone market, with the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S leading the Android fight right to Apple's door.

You can check out iPhone 4 video review:

Add to that the first major leak of an Apple product a couple of months before launch, and suddenly the iPhone 4 has a lot to do to impress.

At least Apple has unleashed the big guns for this effort - before we get into the headline specs, the design itself is a massive talking point on its own.

Jobs' chats on stage to unveil a new iPhone might have got a little repetitive (best this, magical that etc) but this is the first time since the first iPhone way back in January 2007 that we've seen a variation on the standard iPhone design.

Gone is the traditional curved back and plastic exterior with slightly chunky dimensions; in is a chassis that's only 9.3mm thin at its thickest point and a new stainless steel and glass industrial design.

If you're an iPhone fan, there's a good chance you won't like the look of the iPhone the first time you pick it up - it's the same weight as the iPhone 3GS at 137g, but it's a lot smaller, with dimensions of 115.2mm x58.6 mm x 9.3mm, so it feels like a much weightier and compact model.

The edges are stainless steel, apparently forged by winged unicorns in an iceberg (or something) to be 10 times stronger than 'normal' steel.

The front and back of the phone are made of glass, which has also been treated to be a lot stronger than the normal variety we're used to seeing through and drinking out of.

This claim holds up - not only did we feel the need to drop the phone onto the floor a few times to test, someone nameless of the TechRadar team also knocked it out (an admittedly low level) window onto concrete - and not a scratch.

If you're the protective type, then you can buy an official 'Bumper' for the iPhone 4, which encases it in a small ring of rubber, if you haven't bought the handset only for its slim lines.

The chassis shape isn't the only different thing with the iPhone 4 - the whole ethos has been tweaked. For instance, no longer is there a slightly plasticky rocker switch to control volume on the left-hand side, as it's now two discrete metal buttons with '+' and '-' written on.

The volume silencer rocker switch is above too, but that has also undergone the uber-metallic treatment.

The top of the phone still holds the headphone jack, and the power/lock key. However, the 3.5mm port is now flush to the chassis, and the power button feels much nicer to hit than before.

There's also a separate microphone for noise cancelling next to this as well - we imagine a few people will be pushing paperclips in there before they realise that it's not for the SIM card slot.

The right-hand side of the chassis is still blank - no camera button sadly, which would have been nice given the extra effort Apple has clearly put into overhauling the photography system.

Still, sleek is clearly still 'in' at the Cupertino HQ, and we can't say we blame the designers when you look at the lines.

Actually, that's not true - the micro-SIM slot is hidden away here, rather than on the top. It's the same pokey key thing/slot system as before, but this time the SIM card is much smaller - Apple says to make more room for stuff inside, we say it's just to shake things up a little bit. Either way, we bet micro-SIMs become the norm before very long in all phones.

The bottom of the phone has the familiar Apple connector for charging and connecting and docking etc, and is flanked by another more microphone-y looking microphone slot and the speaker.

The front still has that one iconic button, which is much nicer to press in the new chassis, it has to be said.

Overall, the design might not impress some people the first time they pick up the phone - a number of people we showed the phone to grimaced a little bit the first time they handled it.

It's a sharp and weighty-feeling phone, make no mistake - and it doesn't sit as comfortably in the hand as well as other iPhones of the past have.

But it feels premium, and at up to £600, it had better - that's a lot to pay when you consider you could get a 42-inch 1080p LCD for £200 less these days.

In the box

At least Apple has remained consistent when it comes to the packaging - apart from a new graphic on the front to make the new iPhone 4 look more mysterious, there's not a lot different to the older iPhones.

So that means: a simple Apple USB cable, a three-pin plug adaptor and some headphones. The latter is the same old set from the year before: hands free and a function button on the cord, but slightly poor quality compared to a range of other buds on the market.

Oh, you also get that little tool for removing the micro-SIM card as well - but Apple should just save itself some money and stick a paperclip in there, as 99.99% of people will lose that little thing, panic, then improvise anyway. Well, i have. Twice.