The iPhone has landed, earlier than expected as I didn’t order a 4S on day one nor day two; I waited a little while before pulling the trigger. I currently own a Nexus S 4G on Sprint and a Samsung 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot on Verizon. I will keep using both of those, and ordered the iPhone from Verizon due to much better 3G coverage in my area.
Verizon quoted me a delivery by Oct. 21 which I figured was due to the number of orders in the system prior to mine. I was delighted when I received the notification that my shiny new iPhone 4S would be delivered on launch day (yesterday). Having spent a full day with the iPhone it’s worth sharing my thoughts so far, given my heavy investment in Android.
Activation experience
Verizon did a great job with simple, clear instructions for getting the iPhone activated and ready to go. The whole process of activation and setup took only 20 minutes, which contrasts sharply with online reports from AT&T buyers who spent hours due to the carrier’s servers being slammed.
Activation of the iPhone was the first step of the process, followed by copying all of my existing information (apps, music, photos, videos) from iTunes to the phone. My stuff totaled almost 20 GB, and given the entire first sync/activation took only 20 minutes was nicely done.
My last iPhone was a 3G on AT&T which I gave up years ago in favor of webOS and Android phones. The abysmal service I got from AT&T back then was the primary reason I switched from the iPhone. I also owned the original iPad which I sold way back when, and currently have an iPod Touch. I wasn’t a newbie to the iPhone/iTunes ecosystem by any means.
Before the iPhone was delivered, I took some simple steps to get ready for it that I hoped would streamline the setup of the new iPhone 4S. I updated OS X Lion on the MacBook and iTunes to get ready for iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S. I also updated iPhoto and iMovie on the Mac which I had put off since I didn’t need it, but the iPhoto update was required to support Photo Stream on iOS 5.
I then turned my attention to the new kid on the block, iCloud. The appeal of using iCloud with the Mac and iPhone is broad, but I was concerned how well this would work given my entrenchment in the Google cloud.
I use Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts extensively, and that has worked flawlessly with my Android phone and tablets. I have iCal on the Mac set to sync with my Google calendars, and that has worked great. AddressBook on the Mac works with Google Contacts, and Mail with my Gmail account.
The first thing I did to test iCloud was sign up on the Mac, and then play around with the iCloud settings. It took several iterations of cycling iCloud syncing before I saw my contacts and calendar stuff in iCloud through a browser. I don’t know why it didn’t take the first time, but it finally did.
I heard a nasty rumor that some new iCloud users that sync with Google Calendar have seen years of Google Calendar events deleted by iCloud. I haven’t verified that is the case, but I didn’t want to take a chance with my vital information so I carefully chose a setup on the iPhone that avoids the issue for now.
On the iPhone 4S I set up my Gmail account to work with Mail, my Google Calendar to sync with the iPhone directly, and the same for my contacts. I did this by initially turning off iCloud on the phone until I made sure all of my information came over from the Mac via iTunes. Once I verified everything was there as expected I turned iCloud on for everything but calendar. I’ll turn that on once I am confident the rumors I’ve heard are not valid or that the problem has been addressed by Apple.
First impressions of hardware
My iPhone 4S is a white model with 32GB of memory. I went with that as my music collection (iTunes and Amazon MP3 combined) is 16GB and I wanted to get it all local on the iPhone. The first thing that hit me when I took the phone out of the box was how heavy it is. I am used to testing many Android phones, and the iPhone 4S is the heaviest of the lot. It’s not so heavy to be uncomfortable, but it is noticeable.
The handset is typical Apple design, sleek and nicely constructed. While I would like to see an iPhone with a slightly larger screen, the phone fits perfectly in the hand. It is a very nice piece of kit.
I was curious to see how the updated processor in the iPhone 4S would affect the performance. I was especially curious how that performance would compare to all of the Android superphones I have owned and tested. Let me state for the record that the iPhone 4S is very fast. Things happen immediately when triggered by the user, noticeably faster than any Android phone I have tested.
It’s not just the processor speed, it’s the graphics system, and both of those optimized tightly with the apps. Opening a complicated web site in the browser results in the complete page appearing almost instantly, far faster than any Android browser I have used on any Android phone. It is impressive.
The camera of the iPhone 4S has been improved over previous models, and it is sweet. I am no photographer, but capturing nice images on the iPhone 4S is as simple as pointing and clicking. I’ve noticed the autofocus logic is extremely fast when framing a complex shot, and the software seems to pick the proper object in those shots to center the focus on it. It’s uncanny to watch the focus brackets figure this out much like a human would.
Software, impressions of Siri, and should Android be worried? »
