Where is the iPhone 4?

[Radium]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg&feature=player_embedded

[Masamune]

I hate it when people call those little wireless bluetooth headsets "bluetooths".

[jerome]

I just heard someone watching that earlier today, and here it is. Funny. There's also one of the HTC EVO being the one that's mocked by iPhone 4 person. It's not near as funny though.

[Orion]

http://www.startribune.com/business/97681864.html

Heh. Woops.

[AtmaWeapon]

The only thing I hate more than "crappy nerd voice acting" is "oh I'll just use computer text to speech". Crappy voice acting can be redeemed if the quality of everything else is decent. If you're going to use text to speech just post the transcript so I can read your knock-knock jokes in 1 minute instead of wasting 4 to watch the video.

To make too many analogies, it's as if they felt the animation was poor so they just posted blank video with audio. I hate it.

I've tried to watch this video twice and I just can't stand it more than 30 seconds.

[Orion]

*shrugs* I had an iPhone for two years and liked it well enough, but being laid-off took it's toll. Now I have a Razr. It makes phone calls, which at the moment, is good enough for me.

[moocow]

*shrugs* I had an iPhone for two years and liked it well enough, but being laid-off took it's toll. Now I have a Razr. It makes phone calls, which at the moment, is good enough for me.

Funny. I had a Motorola Q (not that great of a phone, but I loved it) for over a year, and then not having a job for 3 months got my phone shut off. Now I have a purple Razr that my mom loaned me, and it's pretty much useless unless it's plugged in because the battery is shit.

[jerome]

http://www.startribune.com/business/97681864.html
Heh. Woops.
Seems only things happen back home when I'm gone.

[Starkist]

Funny. I had a Motorola Q (not that great of a phone, but I loved it) for over a year, and then not having a job for 3 months got my phone shut off.

I just upgraded from the Moto Q to the iPhone 4. I liked my Q, it did its job well for two years. But it just cannot compare to the versatility and feature set of the new iPhone.

[MottZilla]

Funny. I had a Motorola Q (not that great of a phone, but I loved it) for over a year, and then not having a job for 3 months got my phone shut off. Now I have a purple Razr that my mom loaned me, and it's pretty much useless unless it's plugged in because the battery is shit.

You can always buy a new battery. After so many charges they tend to fissle out. Just often this happens after you've gotten a new phone so most people never replace it.

[Mercy]

You can always buy a new battery. After so many charges they tend to fissle out.
Possibly, but with a Razr, it could be the notoriously faulty contacts. There are a couple of "known issues" regarding the battery contacts/wiring and none worth the cost of repairing unless the device is insured. They are cheap devices with a few more bells and whistles than other cheap devices but what you gain in ringtone and image-capturing capabilities you lose in physical quality. I kept track of my device trouble calls for two months and I averaged four Razr physical device issues for every one of all other devices we (AT&T) carried.

-m.

[Alex1411]

I have iPhone 2G, very very like iPhone 4 but not enough money to buy!

[SUCCESSOR]

I have iPhone 2G, very very like iPhone 4 but not enough money to buy!

Steve Jobs is sucking out your brain. Get a real phone.

@Starkist too bad one of those features isn't the ability to reliably make calls. Zing!

[Orion]

Steve Jobs is sucking out your brain. Get a real phone.

I had a chance to use (see also: fix) an Android-powered phone for the first time. I have to say, even though the iPhone is a very locked down system, the usability is bar-none. The UI is well thought out, and I'm a fan of that (Google can't seem to make a good UI to save it's live, on any platform). Settings are easy to find, and you know that if a feature is present on the iPhone, it will generally work and be well supported (signal issues non-withstanding).

I can't say the same for the Android phone, which had trouble setting up something as simple as an Exchange account.

[SUCCESSOR]

Awww! I'm sorry. Did you want someone to hold your hand for you?

So you tried an Android powered device so now you are magically able to say the iPhone shits rainbows? What UI are you meaning? The OS is basically a launcher. Crappy Android UI aside I'd still take an Android over a phone that can't really make calls by a company that can't admit they fucked up their prized achievement.

And I know something about bad UI. I use a WinMo device. But even WinMo kicks iOS ass in my book. Why? Because I am not a senior citizen or a tween girl. I can put in a little effort to learn how to use a *SMART* device and customize the way I like. Because it doesnt matter if there is a few perfect apps for me. My device does what I want it to, how I want it to, in the way I want it to, and looks the way I like it to at any given time I choose. WinMo UI sucks ASS! So I changed it. Today CHT, Tomorrow maybe MaxSense, maybe someday SPB Shell, maybe somewhere along the way stock HTC Sense, maybe mod my own version of Titanium or Sense if I have time, Maybe i'll donate a dollar and beta test TouchXperience should i feel incline. Can you choose from 6+ UIs on an iPhone?

WebOS UI is second to none!

But you know all that free time you have from using a UI that a Downie can master in a hour will allow you to stroke off Steve Jobs while he rubs his Nazi nipples with your invalid money.

Did I mention i'm posting this from a Notebook tethered to my phone's 3G? That's right my phone and my network can handle that.

[AtmaWeapon]

SUCCESSOR has done a better job indicating why I don't want an Android than anyone else here.

Every time I see the argument I'm reminded of the Windows/Linux debate. "I like X because it's easy to use and it does everything I want." "NO! You can do so much MORE with Y! Last night I spent 4 hours configuring my omnifraptor and now I can framilize!" "Uhh... that's cool I guess but I don't want that." "It's because you're a slave! I can rebuild my kernel and make it play fart noises when I touch the screen!" "Um... OK".

People don't care about some features as much as you think. Tethering is the one big thing Android has over iPhone, and I don't care. I live in Austin. There's probably WiFi in my church. The only place tethering makes sense is in my car, and there are no circumstances in which I should be using my laptop while driving down the road. If I wanted that kind of connectivity, I'd have Clear and then I'd be double tethered all the way (so intense!).

My opinion is that it makes sense for a phone to be a more limited device than a PC. On my PC, I keep dozens of windows open because I'm getting real work done. On my phone, I am either reading an email, browsing a forum, or playing a game. I don't need to have Twitter, Pandora, a stock ticker, a browser, and chatroulette running when I'm dropping feces in the toilet. I am human being and I can only reasonably handle one task at a time. Until the screen is large enough to fit two iPad-sized apps at a time, the notion of multitasking is completely useless to me compared to the app switching I do on my Blackberry (and how it works on iPhone.) Even then, do you think I'm going to carry something bigger than an iPad around as an everyday device?

So when you waggle features like "videos for wallpaper" and "tethering" around, you're doing little more than showing me your phone has features I don't want. I'm a software engineer and I know what "more features" means: "more complexity". My phone is a device that I don't want to think about; configuration is for the machines I do real work on. Same thing for grandma: she doesn't even know what "wallpaper" is so all your bullet points do is convince her your phone was made for nerds. Which is an apt conclusion. Microsoft designs by committee. Apple designs for the experience. Google designs with engineers. Engineers aren't good designers.

TL;DR:
Can I choose 6 UIs on an iPhone? No. Do I want 6 UIs on an iPhone? No. I want to walk out of the AT&T store and check my email. To me (and millions of other people), it is not a wet dream to drop $200 on a device then take it home and spend the next 4 hours reflashing it and installing software. We already put up with that on PCs, and Apple's marketshare is growing because people are tired of it. A phone is even less of a computer than a computer, so touting "you can spend days tinkering with it" as a feature is counter-productive.

Here's the dealbreaker that would tip the scales: describe how you would use Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and any other web service on an Android in a way that gets someone laid faster and easier than an iPhone could do it. If the phone looks like it'll get someone laid easier, they'll buy it. Right now, I don't think your choice of 6 UIs is wetting the kind of panties that people want to get into.

[Beldaran]

My phone was free. It doesn't really do anything except make phone calls and send text messages, but I don't read or send text messages and I hate talking on the phone and thus minimize that activity.

I do not understand everyone's obsession with their phones. If I am not in a location with a PC, it's because I'm busy doing something that requires my attention. If I'm sitting around at a bus station or something, frankly I'd rather read a book than some ass hole's tweets.

[SUCCESSOR]

@Atma

I'm impressed. That was a wonderful argument for lack of functionality. You are right. I am sure devices like BlackBerry Storm wet your whistle but there is actually a LARGE number of people who care about more then basic functionality. Which is why the market has moved to smartphones anyway. Which is Android is clawing it's way up market share. Why Palm survived by making a OS that can multitask like a champ, provide easy user experience, and still supports the superuser. Something google needs to learn.

But I agree with Google's method. They took care of the superuser and let companies produce things like HTC Sense, Touchwhiz, Motoblur, etc to take care of the Joe Blow user. As if Android is hard to figure out anyway. And it's paid off for them. Now we will see an updated UI and other significant features Android has been lacking to improve the desirability of Android to the everyday user. It might not be a walk in the park but I'm not spending thousands of dollars on a device tries doing ballet in a body cast. And it is thousand of dollars considering the actual cost of the device, the services it requires to function, and maintenance and repairs, etc. Android might not always dance but I'd rather have an ugly Yacht than a shiny tugboat for the same cost. (Though Androids are generally cheaper.)

Why do I like having 6 UIs? Because my preference is not the same as everyone elses and the simple fact that an OS supports that is a one up in my book.

If iPhone users didn't care anything about wallpaper it wouldn't be one of iOS's hot new features. oh and congrats on getting folders! welcome to 1984.

You may live in an Area with wifi at every corner but I don't. And since my internet got shut off tethering has been a lifesaver. Internet wherever i go is amazing. It's not necessary for you but we all aren't so lucky.

And the people who like to rebuild the kernal so the phone makes fart noises are awesome. They work their tales off so that all of us who like fart noises can sideload it in a matter of minutes and enjoy all fartin' off without asking Jobs' permission. 4 hours to flash the device? lol. I'm guessing you have no experience with flashing. But good job slighting people who support users when a company wont.

[AtmaWeapon]

More like good job reading my argument wrong.

My Blackberry Curve 8330 is pretty much the dumbest, least functional "smartphone" I could have purchased. At the time, Android was in its infancy and I was on the "too cool for iPhone" bandwagon. Lesson learned.

The screen is actually the only good feature; I don't have much vertical real estate but the width is good enough for reading random pages. The BB browser is a piece of garbage. Opera Mini 4 is great; when I upgraded to 5 it taught me that my phone is too slow for it and I had to downgrade back. Gmail... works. As do the scant few other apps that people bother to write for Blackberry phones. Some, like Gowalla, work great on iPhone but kick Blackberry users to the web. Woe is me, my phone's OS version is wonky with the GPS and won't work until the next version. Oh yeah, and RIM has locked the next OS version from installing on this phone so within a few months I'll be totally obsolete. Boo hoo, I should have done more research I guess. At the time, I had a bunch of friends happy with their Blackberry phones and wasn't using the internet the same way so it looked like a good deal. The phone cost as much as an iPhone, so I guess screw me for thinking that price had anything to do with functionality. I *do* have experience with flashing, but perhaps Android is better at it than Blackberry. Keep in mind this is the lens through which I view the world; a one where an OS upgrade is a multi-hour ordeal and roughly every month I have to reset the phone for some reason or another. Forget app store, Blackberry's an app ghetto. It satisfies my minimum requirements but I could be getting more functionality for the same price.

5 days a week I spend 8+ hours a day wrestling with a ridiculously byzantine software setup so I can build the software I'm writing. I quit playing bleeding-edge PC games in favor of older games and consoles because for 4 or 5 games in a row I had to spend more than an hour hunting for patches or workarounds for my specific hardware configuration. I'm not going to live long enough to want to deal with this kind of struggle if I don't have to. My home PC was only researched for price; I don't care if there's some motherboard/CPU combo that's 10% faster because it's orders of magnitude faster than I need. It's configured like it's for a tech illiterate user and I rarely touch default settings in programs.

If I'm going to drop $200 and sign up for 2 years of $130/month then I want the extent of my worries about the phone to be "How do I turn it on?". I use GMail, Twitter, and a web browser constantly and don't really care about much else. I like the iPhone because I've fooled with an iPod Touch and I know it'll take me 10 minutes to get it how I want it and then I'll never have to touch it again. I don't like the Android because I don't know this for certain, there's not an easy way for me to demo it*, and regardless of whether I can get a refund on the phone if I don't like it I can't get a refund on the termination fee that my Blackberry has incited me to want to incur. Every bullet point feature you wave in my face feels like another knob I have to worry about turning on the phone.

The iPhone fits the feature set I want and has a bunch of bells and whistles I won't ever use or care about. The Android fits the feature set I want and has even more bells and whistles I won't ever use or care about. Right now, the thing that drives me to an iPhone is the release treadmill. New iPhone annually, every 2 years your model gets obsolete enough you'll want to upgrade. That's easy to budget. Google needs to clamp down a bit on Android. Nexus One released last year and it was "the one that would kill the iPhone". A few months after that, Droid was even better, a sure-fire iPhone killer. It's been what, 6 months and now the EVO is the best -- except there's another Droid coming out too, right? I wouldn't be surprised if 6 months from now we see "this is the year of Android" again. I'm pretty sure one day they'll be right, but right now there's too much instability for me to buy in. The kinds of apps I like tend to follow the curve and integrate new features; on the Android platform I have a bad feeling that before my contract is up I'll have a phone as useless as my Blackberry.

There's some irrationality to that argument, but it's how it sits. In my eyes, by my criteria, iPhone and Android are equal and I just like the iPhone better. If you set up the feature matrix Android knocks the socks off of iPhone and I think it's going to proceed to knock off the pants, the underwear, and forcibly take iPhone's anal virginity. At the moment, it strikes me as if it were in its adolescence and not quite sure of its identity. My guess is when my contract for the iPhone's up I'll be trading in to an Android and it'll be Apple's turn to play catchup.

It may confuse you, but sometimes lack of functionality is a feature. An adage in software engineering: "The product is not finished when there is nothing left to add. The product is finished when there is nothing you can remove."

* Yes, I could download the SDK and set up an environment. Why should I waste a couple of hours if I think an equivalent solution exists?

[Pineconn]

My phone was free. It doesn't really do anything except make phone calls and send text messages, but I don't read or send text messages and I hate talking on the phone and thus minimize that activity.

I do not understand everyone's obsession with their phones. If I am not in a location with a PC, it's because I'm busy doing something that requires my attention. If I'm sitting around at a bus station or something, frankly I'd rather read a book than some ass hole's tweets.

Now in my Facebook quotations. You basically summed up cell phones, ever.

[Orion]

Awww! I'm sorry. Did you want someone to hold your hand for you?

Calm down there, buddy.

I'm not saying Apple's approach is right for everyone. But clearly, their approach to having a phone that "just works" (most of the time) without a lot of customization or digging into the phone's OS seems to hit with a lot of people. Before the iPhone, not a lot of people were throwing $200 at a phone, unless you were using it for business. Now you see them everywhere. There's a reason for that.

I think it's great that Google is putting every feature the can think of into Android, but sometimes they do it at the sake of performance. And like I think Atma touched on, the bottom line is, it's a phone, and if the battery is dead before I can even get home from work, it doesn't do me a lot of good. Especially for the majority of the people buying a phone, they aren't going to be happy if they need to spend time figuring out how something works, they just want it *to* work. If they're happy with what Steve Jobs gives them, well then, what's wrong with that?

This is pure speculation, but I think the fact that Android is gobbling up more market share is more so due to the fact that it's available on more networks and much cheaper in many cases, and it's the closest thing that you can get to an iPhone outside of AT&T.

And how well are Palm and Windows Mobile doing?

[SUCCESSOR]

@Atma the original Android, the G1, is still going strong for many people who haven't decided to upgrade yet. It just got a few updates to 2.2(not official ofcourse, but if you have a g1 still and haven't rooted you gotta be pretty happy with stock). It is very outdated but that's the way things are going right now. The market is hot and things are getting better faster. Just because there is something better out there does't mean what you have sucks. My Touch Pro2 looks like an old man now-a-days but I still love the fat thing.

@Orion Palm was making a slow comeback and HP bought them out. Hot news is WebOS Tablets (if Tablets are your thing) supposedly on the way. WinMo is a dying old man. Windows Phone 7 is the new OS that is lauching end of this year. Product are supposed to be top notch but the OS better be spectacular because they have catching up to do.

(had a lot to say but i don't feel up to it tonight. maybe tomorrow.)

[AtmaWeapon]

I guess what I see here is a lot of "I use a phone this way thus everyone needs a phone that works this way".

Take Beldaran's answer. No one's really jumping on him or calling him smug for being all "my phone is a phone and I don't pay for fancy features". He looked at his list of wants and needs then decided that a smartphone wasn't justified.

That's how I did my iPhone/Android comparison. When I enumerate my wants and needs, both phones address them. The cost of ownership for either phone is roughly the same (I think in the long run the EVO would be more expensive based on this chart (http://www.billshrink.com/blog/9032/iphone-4g-vs-evo-4g/) but $20/month seems negligible if I liked the phone better.) All of the "bonus" features of the Android are things I just don't care about. I have lots of real-life friends that have had great experiences with their iPhones, and none that have tried an Android. I've already had a good experience with an iPod Touch. That's the core of my decision: I don't care what else Android brings to the table because the iPhone is perfectly adequate and I already know I'll like it.

I'm sorry that hurts your feelings, but I have the freedom to choose a different phone if I want.

[SUCCESSOR]

LOL i love it when people reply to an imaginary issue. You hurt my feelings. that's hilarious. You want to put words in my mouth to keep an argument going that never really started then by all means. FYI noone jumped on you or called you smug for using your iPhone the way you like.

The info on that chart is misleading and in some places inaccurate. And while it may be true AT&T offers lower price plans for it's smartphone(not true for all types of users) plans but the actual value of what you get through sprint for 5$ more a month is significant: unlimited voice to any cellphone, unlimited data (no cap in many areas), and if you have a 4G phone this includes a 10$ charge from supporting 4G to more places(Also significantly higher data speed to 4G areas). This also doesn't mention anything about charges for exceeding AT&T's data cap or voice minutes something a sprint customer has a lot less to worry about.

My only grief with Sprint is the mandatory 4G charge. Because I am not a in an area that supports it and I think it should be optional. But I understand why they do it and considering with it their prices are still competitive it's not that much to ask. You want the best you shouldn't mind paying to make it happen. I would pay sprint 10$ extra a month if they would bring 3G here. Would be better than the 40$ extra i pay T-Mobile to suck.

Aditionally you have to consider most iPhone and Android customers buy these phones because they want Apps! Let's say a iphone user buys one app a month at an average of 2.99 an app(I assume from what i've read). An Android users who has access to a lot of the same apps iPhone has but for free, this users takes advantage of the frees apps and only pays for apps he really wants every month. This alone has essential tied AT&T in price from a theoretic point of view with Sprint. Keep in mind I am not trying to say the average iPhone user spends 2.99 a month on apps. It's hypothetical, I really have no idea.

[AtmaWeapon]

Well I meant to point out in the parenthesis the difference between the costs of each phone is negligible to me when spread over 24 months.

My plan actually works out a good bit higher than the chart for a couple of reasons. I save money on the voice because I don't need unlimited; I've peaked at about 370 minutes in 3 years and average 250. However, I make that cost back up by a need for unlimited (more like "you get this much then we charge you") data. It'd be silly to buy myself a fancy phone and give my wife a crappy one, so I need to pay for 2 lines. I'm on Sprint right now, and in the end I think AT&T is maybe $5 cheaper, and that's interesting considering I already have a 10% discount with Sprint. Regardless, $5 is a trivial amount and nothing I'd switch carriers over unless I were in a state where I'd be selling my iPhone anyway.

My area's had 4G for a while, but I'm not sure how much it matters to me. Unless I suddenly decide to start watching movies while driving 3G speeds are satisfactory. (I spend more time waiting on my pitiful Blackberry to process and render the page than downloading it.)

The app argument is harder for me to counter. I haven't done much research into Android's app market further than "does this thing I want to use work on Android? Most of the must-haves for me are free on iPhone. The ones that aren't will cost me less than $5 to install in total and saving $5 doesn't seem like a good reason to choose one phone over the other. Unfortunately, some of the apps I'm really excited about are "use the mobile web site" on Android so far.

I found this today (http://lifehacker.com/5587260/how-to-test-drive-android-on-your-pc-without-buying-a-phone) and I'm thinking about giving it a go for the heck of it. I'm still 3-4 months from a decision, so maybe I'll find the time to do it. I knew this was possible but I'm too lazy to do it without a step-by-step guide. Will it change my mind? Not likely, but it's worth a shot. Familiarity's the main reason the iPhone is tipping the scales right now.

[SUCCESSOR]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/28/samsungs-epic-4g-for-sprint-seems-to-live-up-to-its-name/

I don't know if anyone cares but this is what makin' me drool currently. 4" Super AMOLED display, Hummingbird processor, and landscape qwerty slider. They should port WoW to this (heh). Release sometime this month. I played with a live Vibrant today which is T-Mobile's version: Same phone minus the keyboard, 4g and front facing camera. It really blew me away. If Samsung can spark up some hot mobile gaming this device could dirty some shorts.