Avant-garde mobile
As per the custom, Apple hits the market with another evolutionary handset, iPhone 4; but it fails to deliver its best this time…

By Ayan Sinha
The Earth’s crust shuddered and the skies above darkened. A final assault from the Droids was imminent and it threatened to wipe out the existence of any cellular species other than them. The fierce and spirited tribes of Symbian, Windows Mobile, Ubuntu and Nokia OS had fought valiantly but submitted unwillingly to the might of the voracious Droids. All hope was lost when the Jedi from the Apple Empire – iPhone 3G, rode bravely against the raging army of Nexus, Incredible, EVO 4G, Galaxy S and their new, fearless leader Droid X, but was forced to kneel before the awesomeness of the Droids.

This might sound like a good story line for the next sequel of George Lucas’ Star Wars phenomena but the truth is – this is the story that has unfolded so far in the much anticipated and closely watched cellular evolution! You might even consider this as a cellular version of the War of the Worlds! And when rest of the mobile manufacturers either surrendered to the supremacy of the Android phones or just joined their alliance, Apple refused to give up its fight and unleashed a new warrior in the form of Apple’s iPhone 4.

Exterior
iPhone 4 has undergone a major overhaul in design. Curves are out for iPhone as this piece of sophisticated machine now dons a more cornered look unlike its predecessor iPhone 3G, which had a curvaceous back. As I have always emphasised in my earlier reviews on Apple products – the company always stays a step ahead of its competitors, be it technology or fashion. Two pieces of smooth, strengthened glass held together by a stainless steel band – which itself forms the edges running around the slick body of iPhone 4 gives a stunning look to the phone and leaves the owners of iPhone 3G feeling despicable because of their plastic bodied phones! The volume rocker was out-fashioned and replaced by two small, circular, metallic buttons labeled ‘+’ and ‘-’. Though the glass face and back provide charming looks to the phone, it loses a point against iPhone 3G as it becomes difficult to handle and sometimes slippery.

The display on the iPhone 4 screen is a razzle-dazzle, fun-filled celebration of colours and high resolution optics. iPhone 4 has doubled the resolution in the same 3.5 inch screen of 3G. A 960 by 640 IPS display boasts of 326 pixels per inch, which are the highest in a phone till date. The almost featureless 3 MP camera of iPhone 3G has been replaced by a 5 MP camera with an integrated 5x zoom. The grumble about iPhone’s inability to shoot videos has been taken too seriously by the manufacturers as the new 5 MP camera can now shoot in High-def at 720p and 30 frames per second! A LED flash has also been integrated with the camera.

Interior
iPhone 4 is powered by the same A4 processor which is used in Apple iPad and the OS used is the newly renamed iOS 4. What this new OS has delivered is something that the iPhone fans have awaited since long. One of the many capabilities of the iOS4 is multitasking – A quick double tap on the home button will show you all the open applications and from there you can swipe horizontally to locate an application of your choice and resume the activity which you had suspended before. To say the least – the time to re-access an open application and the precision of resuming where you left off could be termed as superbly accurate.

Though there are many doubts about the performance of iPhone 4 because of the recent issues reported about bad reception because of the poorly placed antenna and dropped data speeds if the phone is held in a certain way and iPhone 4 will be a good buy once Apple addresses these concerns.