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iPhone 4

Apple announced the iPhone 4 in June 6th 2010, and what a great announcement it was. It was way beyond my expectation at that time.

I was hoping to get a high resolution screen, but Apple delivered a stunning super high resolution retina display which was the highest resolution ever on a smart phone of its time. I wanted a faster performance, and Apple delivered a big speed bump. Finally, I wanted an improved camera, and Apple not only delivered a much better camera but also added and additional front facing camera.

iPhone 4 comes in white and black Buy an iPhone 4  in white or black

 

The iPhone Retina display:

Retina display is impressive on iPhone 4

The retina display gives four times the number of pixels of the iPhone 3GS in the same 3.5" diagonal display. That is 326 Pixels per inch. It is so sharp and fine that you would feel like you were looking at a magazine or text printed on a piece of paper. If you can't read something, just bring a magnifying glass to magnify the fine texts.

 

The iPhone Camera:

Take amazing pictures with the iPhone 4 camera

The iPhone 4 came with an improved 5 mega pixel camera. Apple also added a backside illumination sensor, and an LED flash light. The sensor allows more light through the lens which is specially helpful in low light while the LED flash light helped in a really dark area. The results of all of this is a superb picture quality.

You can also add some iPhone camera accessories to enhance the still pictures even further with the addition of some lens and filters.

 

720P HD Video Recording:

The 5 mega pixel camera in the iPhone-4 could also record HD video at 720P and 30 frame per second. With the quality of this camera in both video and still images, you could easily give up both your dedicated camcorder and digital still camera.

 

Front Facing Camera:

This is one of the coolest iPhone-4 features with lots of potential applications in the App store. With the front facing camera you can take portrait pictures and videos of yourself. The main purpose of this front facing camera was really to allow iPhone video chat with FaceTime, and that is why it has a lower quality capture than the rear camera.

FaceTime to video call on iPhone 4

Facetime for iPhone is Apple's way of video conferences with other iOS devices, and even Mac OSX users. It works by simply dialing a phone number to call another iPhone4 or iPhone 4S or simply by contacting an email address. The only drawback is that you must be on wifi to use Facetime which makes this iPhone-4 feature a little limited.

With Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Tango and other VoIP applications supporting the front facing camera over 3G, Facetime is left behind in the dark with almost no use.

You can switch between rear and front facing camera on your iPhone 4The only way to use Facetime to its full is to jailbreak your iPhone and install a hack called 3GUnrestrictor from Cydia.

Then you will be able to video chat with the front facing camera using Facetime over 3G network.

You could always switch between the front and rear camera at any time.

For example, while you are in a video call, you can switch to the rear camera and show your party what you see instead of showing them yourself with the front facing camera.

Simply tap the camera picture shown at the top right to switch between the two cameras.

Moreover, with the front facing camera you could also capture video. Although the quality of the front facing camera is not that great, it is still nice to be able to capture a video of your self and your friend with no help from others.

 

The Gyroscope:

The iPhone 3GS had a digital compass and an accelerometer which gave three axis rotation. The iPhone 4 came with a Gyroscope which gave an additional axis of rotation and added more accuracy to the other axis.

For example, you could hold the iPhone and turn around your self, the picture on the iPhone will rotate.

 

801.11n Wifi Support:

Previous generation iPhones including the iPhone 3GS supported up to 801.11g standard. With the iPhone4 support of 801.11n standard, your internet browsing speed improve dramatically over wifi.

Of course, to take advantage of this iPhone4 feature, you must have 801.11n wifi connection. Once you are connected to this fast network, you will notice speed boost in all the iPhone network capabilities.

The improved power consumption of the iPhone A4 processor, and its bigger battery were the key behind the addition of 801.11n connectivity.

 

The iPhone 4 Software:

The iPhone 4 came with iOS 4.0 which was a major iPhone software release with many features and improvement to the previous iOS3.0. iOS 4 multitasking capability was one of the biggest additions to the iPhone software. For example, you were able to run many iPhone applications at the same time, and be able to access the task switcher to quickly switch between those running applications.

The ability to organize your applications and categorize them into iPhone folders was also a cool feature.

 

iPhone-4 Problems:

Apple sold about 1.7 million iPhone 4 in the first 3 days. You could imagine the intense sale and production of this new iPhone. With this huge scale of production, there must be some issues. One of the biggest issues with the iPhone 4 was its antenna.

Holding the iPhone 4 to create the antenna problem.iPhone-4 Antenna Issue:

When the iPhone was held in a certain way, cellular signal would drop and sometimes causing a loss of connection. The problem could be resolved by adding a case or bumper to the iPhone.

Although the antenna issue existed on the iPhone 3GS, and many other smart phones, it was more obvious on the the iPhone4 when it came out because there was no iPhone cases available for it yet at launch.

The problem wasn't visible on the iPhone 3GS before because iPhone cases for the 3GS were the same as iPhone 3G cases, so most people already had cases when they bought their new iPhone 3GS at that time.

iPhone 4 Antenna Solution:

iPhone 4 bumpers by AppleTo make people happy, Apple offered a free iPhone bumper for all customers who just bought their iPhone 4, and also allowed its customers to return their iPhones for a full refund to the Apple store if they are unhappy.

The iPhone bumpers cost $29 to buy from the Apple store, so it was a good deal.

Any iPhone case will solve the antenna issue you might have. Just make sure that the case or Apple bumper you get will fit your iPhone accessories docking.

With many iPhone 4 cases out after that issue, the iPhone 4 antenna problem disappeared, and no one talked about it ever since. Apple then released a new CDMA iPhone 4 for Verizon network and they physically improved the iPhone 4 antenna design.

 

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