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iPhone Review:

Many of my friends have asked me about the new iPhone 4! They needed to know if all the fuss about the reception problems and proximity sensor issues was real! I get asked at least once every day, whether or not the new iPhone 4 is worth the money and a 2 year AT&T contract. My answer to this question, surprisingly, wasn’t a straight yes.

I’ll try to pen down the positives and negatives of buying an iPhone 4. Please keep in mind that this is only my personal take on the new phone. Most of the points I will make in this article are the results of my personal experience with the toy for about 20 days now.

Let’s get started with some positive points. I’ll jump on to the negative factors later.

Reasons to buy the iPhone 4:

The Retina Display:

The high resolution screen on the new iPhone is sensational. Just as advertised, you’ll feel like you’re reading from a printed paper. I’ve used the iPhone 3G before, but never realized that a higher resolution screen will make the phone so beautiful. You will absolutely love the display, especially when reading text from web pages or watching a movie. The text and pictures display crispier than ever before. Retina Display definitely gives you one good reason to buy the new iPhone.

Faster A4 Processor:

Apple said that the iPhone  4 will feature the new A4 processor, the same processor-family that is used in the iPads. But what Apple hasn’t mentioned is the clock speeds of the new A4 processors used in the iPhones. iPad runs on a 1 GHz processor and a 256 MB RAM for high performance. But don’t expect your new phone to run as fast as an iPad, as I realized in a hands-on test, that the iPads run much faster than the new iPhones (perhaps, due to the processor clocking). However, the RAM in the new phone is increased to 512MB. The new phone is incredibly fast with sleek user interface (for a smartphone). The fast and improved performance of the phone will give you another good reason to buy this phone.

** (iPhone does not feature the full-multitasking yet, which might be the reason why this device has high performance without a 1 GHz processor).

Reasons not to buy the new iPhone:

There’s more than one reason to NOT buy iPhone 4. The first and the foremost is the most familiar issue! Apple wants you to take responsibility for the failure of a product that was not properly tested. They need the consumer to spend an extra $30 on a bumper, rewarding the company with more profits for not living up to the standards!

Reception Problems:

iPhone 4 has attenuation of reception when held in certain ways. I’ve seen them first hand and was able to reproduce this problem on every iPhone 4 I got my hands on. I bought a bumper from the Apple store, hoping that it’d solve my problems. In my further tests, I realized that the bumper will “significantly” reduce the problem but will not eliminate it. There are still times when my calls drop when I, perhaps, hold my phone “the wrong way”. Apple has come up with a “Dumb” answer that the problem’s always been there with signal bars since the Original iPhone. Well, I’m not buying this story!  If you live in an area where AT&T’s signal is weak, then iPhone 4 is definitely not for you! Oh, unless you’re an Apple Fanboy.

Proximity Sensor Issues:

iPhone 4 has got a ton of other problems than the reception issues. Guess what, you can no longer support your phone with your shoulder when both your hands are busy. If you try to do so, you’ll start dialing with your face. I had many calls muted, terminated or placed on hold due to this problem. Just google it, and you’ll find thousands of users reporting this issue. And Apple is busy deleting posts on its forums that report the issues.

Yellow Spots on Screens:

Also, be aware that there are issues with screens on these phones. Though I’ve never seen a phone with this type of damage yet, many users are reporting this type of problems. Make sure that you set a pure white background on the home page and check for any such problems before you run out of the 30-day-return period.

One last reason why you shouldn’t buy iPhone 4 (If you already have 3Gs or another Smart Phone)

Verizon and AT&T are planning on rolling out their 4G services later this year in the US. Provided that 4G speeds are 10 times faster than the 3G, next year, the market will be flooded with 4G phones and your 3G phones will be outdated in a year! I guess that’s the reason why most companies are giving early upgrade options this year. So, if you already have a nice smart phone that you’re fairly happy with, waiting might be the best option for you!

For those who’d like to buy the Apple’s bumper:

Before you get a bumper, you should know it does not connect with some old chargers and many AUX cables don’t work with it. I had to buy a new Aux cable to connect my phone to the music system in my car.

Huff! I really wish Steve Jobs had spent some time testing this product rather than trashing Flash! Don’t you?

Leave a comment on what you think about this article!

Droid Incredible - running Android OS.

Apple previewed iPhone OS 4.0 on April 2010. It will be available to iPhone and iPod touch users on June 7^th during Apple WWDC. Steve Jobs talked about some significant “tentpole” groups of features out of 100 changes to the new OS feature set!

Android has also announced its next generation operating system, Froyo (2.2). With significant improvements in performance and added features, Froyo is all set to hit the market this summer.

With all the new features in the iPhone OS 4.0 release, will iPhone be able to catch up to its counterparts in both technology and innovation areas?

 Well, here’s what I think, NO!  

Apple’s iPhone does well without being the best (This is exactly the reason why I’m still on Apple)! It was never in the limelight for having the cutting edge technology! In fact, most features of iPhone were used by Black Berry for years before iPhone’s first generation phone even showed up (except for the multi touch). Apple is good at one thing tho, “The implementation”. Apple doesn’t do different things, it does things differently!

Android is coming up with its latest OS 2.2 this summer! Code named Froyo, Android’s latest operating system is said to have significantly improved its performance. Froyo also supports standard flash (10.1) and features USB tethering and WiFi hotspot functionality, which I think is a cool feature. Yeah right, Apple will take another 3 years to give us features like this in 20 different upgrades by when Android will… Uh, never mind!

A huge advantage for iPhone is its App Store. I think iPhone would have been just another smart phone in the market if it wasn’t for its app store. When you buy an iPhone, you don’t just buy a phone that you know what it does; you buy a potential, which may surprise you each day with innovative applications. I’m certainly a fan of this concept. But again the bad part is that all your investment on these applications will be thrown out of the window once you choose to leave the iPhone platform! This is not the case with Android! Even if you plan to abandon a phone, you can still keep all your apps on your new phone as long as its one of the wide range of phones that runs Android OS.

 While Android has applications that just do the job, they’re not yet equivalent to the iPhone apps. Google needs to work on closing this gap, making Android an Open Source OS with most number of applications.

Quibids is a new bidding website that I’d stumbled upon last week. This bidding website is no different than any other major competitors except for its brilliant internal concept that will yield the company a 10 to 500 fold price on any product it sells. Yes, you’ve heard that right, 10 – 500 times the original price of the product! The very concept of bidding on this website is a bit different as you pay for each bid you make.

Quibids Website

How it works for the customer:

The website sells bids  in $30, $45 and $100 “packages”. In other words, every bid you make on the website costs you ¢60 regardless of whether or not you buy the product. The original cost of the product starts at $0.00 and each bid raises the price of the product by ¢1/¢2/¢5/¢10. The website doesn’t mention why the value raised per bid is variant on different products. When you place, say, about 100 bids on an iPod touch and loose it to another customer, you’ll have spent 60$ bidding for nothing.

The website “claims” that it’ll sell you the product for its original price (which is set by Quibids) Minus the amount you’ve spent on bidding it if you choose to buy no later than two hours after the winning bid. In the above case, you’ll be able to buy a product that costs, say, $250  for $190.

I bought a “bid package” worth $45 and tried bidding on different products on the website trying to figure out if the website works exactly the way it claims to work! Not until burning half my bids did I learn that the website fails to keep track of the number of bids I placed on a product. For example, if I’ve placed 100 bids on  a product and lost to the winning bid, the website offers me a discount of $30 (just an example) instead of $60.

My super fast-math brain then tries to calculate the profit-margin that the company makes from the products sold on its website, and the numbers are phenomenal. You’re wildest guess with an outrageous profit-margin would still be low!  

How it works for the Company:

The company makes $60 from every dollar worth of bids placed by customers (100 x ¢60). When the iPad was put on auction, each bid rose by a cent and the product sold for an astounding $240. The company has just then made $14400.00 on a freaking iPad! At this rate, even a $15 subway card sold on the website for 3 dollars will make the company enormous profits ($180.00). Putting these numbers through my brain, I soon realized that it’s not even a huge win for the customer. Yeah, a $499.00 worth iPad sold at $240.00 plus “don’t know how many” bids and killing about 20 hours in front of a computer and paying an additional “Processing Fee”. Not a great win, huh?

The concept of this website is just too amazing and the numbers will keep you appalled for a moment!

For me, this is just too expensive! I’d rather buy the product at an Apple store and save the time for something else!

 PS: I managed to get a $50 Kohls Card for the money I spent on buying bids on this website. I’ll never again even try to bid on this website.