I’ve been an iPhone 3GS owner for a little over a year.
What drew me to the iPhone originally was NOT the cool factor. I didn’t want one because it was “the” thing to get. I wanted one because I had actually used one before – in a professional setting. I’ve had several Windows Mobile phones before, and they were all crap. Battery life was crap, the interface was crap, the apps were crap, the stylus was crap, and the web browser was crap.
The iPhone had a slick interface that made sense. It was a pleasure to scroll though screens of apps instead of headache-inducing, brainless menu system of Windows Mobile. Things loaded and ran quick. Everything was just so snappy. And the web browser worked so well. Better than many Desktop web browsers!
And of course there was the app store. Hundreds/thousands of cheap and free apps, plus many very high-quality apps. Much better than anything I had used under Windows Mobile.
At first, I was all excited when I heard about the iPhone 4 and iOS 4. Multitasking, folders, wallpapers! Stuff that should have been there from the start was finally going to be there!
Well, iOS 4 came out. While it was neat seeing all the new stuff, the wow-factor was diminished by all the damned bugs. The wrong mail account acting as default as well as Notes being saved to the wrong account (and I never told it to save Notes to my email account in the first place). Slow application loads. Some apps not loading. Horrific rendering errors with Safari. Text jittering and jumping in the SMS app. Existing apps crashing and acting funny. And did I mention the slow performance? The horrid, molasses-slow performance?
Here is how iOS 4.0 performs on many 3G and even 3GS phones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdk2cJpSXLg
The video is of an iPhone 3G, but that is how iOS 4 performs on my 3GS. I’ve “Restored” the phone, several times – even back to the “New iPhone” setting. Factory-fresh formatted, and things still didn’t work right.
Think things are better with the new iPhone 4?
Well, after being out for just a few days, reports of the following started pouring in:
- Yellow screens (glue drying issue).
- The well-known Antenna problems (metal not coated / sealed).
- Incorrect volume buttons (+ / – reversed).
- Phone reports “No SIM” sometimes.
- White balance way off on photos.
Plus some other less-commonly reported issues such as the aluminum sides getting scuffed way too easily from cases and issues with the underside of the glass not painted correctly (pinholes of light show through the front of the phone).
Ouch.
Consumer Reports released their story on why they can’t recommend the iPhone 4, and major news sites like CNN made it their top story. Now people are calling for an iPhone 4 recall, guides on hacking your iPhone to roll back to iOS 3 are popping up all over, multiple class-action lawsuits have been filed, and Apple’s stock has taken a dive.
Apple claimed the antenna issue was a software problem. Yeah, right! Just today, those testing iOS 4.1 say it does not fix the antenna issue at all.
What the hell, Apple?
In short, I’d hold off on the iPhone 4 or iOS 4 if I were you.