In the end, we needn’t have worried. The Samsung Galaxy S II is a stonking smartphone, and it all starts with its most obvious asset: that huge 4.3in Super AMOLED Plus screen.

Samsung Galaxy S II 2 Review

We loved the 4in screen on the original Galaxy S but this truly takes it to the next level. It’s bright – we measured a full white screen at 300cd/m² at maximum brightness, and as OLED has no pervasive backlight (each pixel has its own light source), contrast is nigh-on perfect. A black screen registered as 0cd/m² on our colorimeter, which means it’s pure, deep, unsullied jet.

Photos and videos look incredible. Colours leap from the screen with such fury that you almost have to look away. Even the traditional complaint over OLED screens, that they’re “grainier” than their TFT equivalents, can’t be levelled at the S II’s display and the reason for this is its red, green and blue subpixels are arranged in the traditional RGB grid, as they are in standard TFT displays.

Previous smartphone OLED panels have used what’s known as the PenTile grid, which gives you two green pixels for every blue and red pair and a rather grainy effect as a result. Look closely at a PenTile AMOLED display, such as the one found on the original HTC Desire, and you’ll find you can see the individual pixels; you can’t with the Galaxy S II.

The only significant complaint we’d have is over the pixel count. It’s still “only” 480 x 800, which means small text on zoomed-out web pages is more difficult to make out than it is on the iPhone 4’s 3.5in 960 x 640 display.

If we were being really picky we’d also highlight the fact that the brightness of the S II’s display can’t match that of the iPhone 4, which tops out at a ludicrous 475cd/m².

We didn’t like the fact that the S II comes with its dynamic brightness setting turned on either. This dims the brightness depending on what’s onscreen, and when mostly white web pages load up, the brightness halves. Taken as a whole, however, these are relatively small considerations; the screen is at least as good as the iPhone’s, but in different ways.

Physical Design

If the screen is impressive, the physical make-up of the Samsung Galaxy S II is almost as noteworthy. At its thinnest point, it claims to be the slimmest smartphone yet, and we were able to confirm this: using a set of vernier calipers, we measured it at 8.7mm. A bulge at the bottom and around the camera means it isn’t this slim along its entire length, but it’s nonetheless a mighty feat of engineering, and coupled with its light weight of 116g, the Galaxy S II is as pocket-friendly as any 4.3in-screened smartphone has any right to be.

Samsung has retained its iPhone-alike front-panel design, so the single physical button is retained below the screen (flanked by a touch-sensitive menu and back controls), as is the all Gorilla Glass front. The latter is finished with an oleophobic coating and resists smudges from greasy digits remarkably well.

What Samsung hasn’t done is improve the build quality much, or at least the impression of it. The previous Galaxy S felt a little too cheap for a flagship phone, and our opinion hasn’t changed this time around. The Galaxy S II’s textured rear panel is made of wafer thin, flimsy plastic and the chassis, aside from the glass front, is plastic too. If you want a phone that feels a million dollars, as well as looking it, the Galaxy S II isn’t for you.

Performance and Galaxy S II Battery life

That may soon be forgotten once you start using the S II, however, because this is one powerhouse of a smartphone. Under its gossamer-thin shell, the new Galaxy sports a dual-core processor, based on the ARM Cortex A9 design. Most dual-core smartphones and tablets are doing the same, but the difference with the S II is the speed is up from 1GHz to 1.2GHz.

In terms of benchmark tests, the S II blows the competition out of the water. It loaded the full BBC homepage in four seconds dead, completed the SunSpider test in three seconds, and most impressive of all, gained a score of 3,460 points in the Android-specific Quadrant test. To put that last test into context, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc scored 1,378 (one of the fastest Android smartphones we’ve tested), a full 2,182 points behind.

It couples the processor with a staggering 1GB of RAM, and nothing that we could throw at the Mali-400MP graphics chip caused it to come close to breaking sweat. Everything from Angry Birds to Reckless Racing Play was dispatched with a slippery smooth frame rate that makes this as good a phone for gaming as any on the market.

As ever, there’s a caveat, and that concerns battery life. In our standard tests over 24 hours the Galaxy S II chewed up around 50% of its capacity – about the same result achieved by the Galaxy S, and a notch behind the iPhone 4. That’s despite having a bigger 1,650mAh battery.

The battery management options in the settings ameliorate this somewhat, however: switch on the dynamic-brightness tool and the ambient light monitor, and two days of moderate use is easily within reach. Just don’t expect Nokia-beating levels of stamina from the Samsung Galaxy S II battery life.

GPS and Camera

A critical failing of the first Galaxy was appalling GPS performance, and we’re happy to report that this has been addressed in the S II. Google Maps Navigation had no problem at all getting a quick satellite lock, and throughout our driving and walking tests it maintained a rock-steady position.

More notable is the huge improvement in the camera over the iffy effort of its predecessor. It’s absolutely stuffed with features, with image stabilisation, blink detection, ISO and metering adjustments, a macro mode and more. And it shoots at a decent resolution too: 8-megapixel stills and 1080p video at 30fps.

Quality is great. We took a series of shots with the iPhone 4’s camera and the Samsung Galaxy S II – indoors with a flash and without, outdoors in good light, scenes with high contrast and close-ups – and in every shot the S II’s camera won.

The automatic white balance worked flawlessly throughout our tests; where the iPhone tended to give shots under fluorescent light a slightly blue tinge, the S II’s shots looked natural. The macro mode is seriously impressive too.

Even 1080p footage in low light wasn’t dreadful. Noise was obvious, but footage didn’t look quite as muddy as the iPhone 4 in the same test, although we did notice one flaw. In low light, autofocus in video tended to hunt around, with our test footage swinging gently in and out of focus; annoying, but hardly a disaster.

Finally, it’s also worth pointing out that call qualityis excellent, with conversations coming through loud and clear on the earpiece, and even sounding pretty good on the single speaker at the rear.

Software

So the hardware is pretty good, but what about the software? Not surprisingly, the Galaxy S II runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), which among other things means the phone is fully Flash capable. But this isn’t Android in its purest form: Samsung has added its own UI tweaks (dubbed TouchWiz 4), and there’s plenty to like.

There’s the usual selection of flat, sideways scrolling multiple desktops we saw on the Galaxy S, with a persistent, customisable toolbar running along the bottom of the screen. And when you pull down on the notifications bar at the top, you’ll see switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Sound, plus a button for auto-rotate lock.

A rather pointless tilt-to-zoom feature lets you place two fingers on the screen, then tip the phone back and forth to zoom web pages and photos. More useful is the inclusion of Motorola-like resizable widgets, and you can pinch to zoom out on the main app launch grid in addition to the desktop.

However, topping our list of favourites is the addition of wireless synchronisation via the Kies Air app. This allows you to access and manage the contents of your phone using a browser without having to connect it to a PC.

Switch it on, type the IP address of the phone into your browser, and up pops a web page of small square content panels, with navigation links down the left-hand side. Using these panels you can edit and delete contacts, download and upload files, photos and videos, and even access the phone’s call and text logs. It’s a great system, and you can connect via your wireless network, or directly using the S II’s personal hotspot mode.

Verdict

There’s plenty more in terms of software we could go into, from the excellent contact linking to the integrated task killer and the dead-easy DLNA sharing software, AllShare, but what you really want to read is our final verdict on the Samsung Galaxy S II. If you hadn’t guessed from the tone of the review, we absolutely love it.

Its power is unrivalled, its 4.3in is wonderfully bright and colourful, call quality is great and the camera is simply superb. The only concern we have is over battery life, but with everything else so good, a small hit in terms of stamina is the least of our worries. Even the price is reasonable: you can get one free on a £29 per month contract, a price that undercuts the best you can currently swing an iPhone 4 for – £69 and then £30 per month.

In short, the Samsung Galaxy S II is good enough to elbow the iPhone 4 roughly aside and grab the crown of the best smartphone on the planet. We’d encourage anyone who’s currently upgrading to push it straight to the top of their shortlist.

LG Optimus 3d

The 4.3″ LCD capacitive screen on the Optimus 3D is not truly 3D in the strictest sense, and does not require the use of 3D glasses. This can only be deemed a good thing as there are undoubtedly not many people who would be willing to walk about with LG glasses glued to their face just to make use of a smartphone. Having said this, perhaps it is not that unlikely an outcome judging by how widely adopted the equally silly looking Bluetooth headsets have become. The screen on the Optimus 3D instead works by coming with a multi-layered set of filters. While the benefit of this design is that it does not require glasses, the drawback is that the 3D effect can only be felt from certain angles.

This is not the only area of the handset that incorporates 3D technology however. The Optimus 3D comes with dual 5 megapixel cameras on its rear that allow you to record 3D videos and capture stereoscopic images. The 3D videos can be recorded in a high 720p quality and adopt a true 3D rendering that can be fully enjoyed on home 3D televisions. To aid this feature the Optimus 3D comes with an HDMI port as well as DLNA enabled Wi-Fi so that you can easily stream content to your home TV. The cameras are also capable of recording 2 dimensional video at a higher quality of 1080p.

While the Optimus 3D can support 3D video playback not all entertainment is yet 3 dimensional, but the Optimus 3D does an excellent job of supporting 2 dimensional video content as well. There is a hefty 40GB of storage space available when using additional microSD cards and the handset can also provide video entertainment from online with a dedicated YouTube app and Adobe Flash support.

Like all the best smartphones the Optimus 3D comes with excellent messaging features as well. The phone supports threaded SMS, email and instant messaging and comes with fantastic integration for social networks like Facebook. While Facebook has yet to go 3D there is nothing stopping you from uploading your stereoscopic images to your profile, even if they may be somewhat confusing to your 2 dimensional friends.

While 3D phones have been on the cards for some time the LG Optimus 3D is the first such device to make it to the stores. While some people are eagerly anticipating this smartphone others are already dismissing it as a pointless gimmick. However, it should be remembered that people also said the same thing when music and cameras were first introduced to mobile phones – and they were wrong.

HTC’s Facebook phones follow on the heels of two launched by INQ before Mobile World Congress: the Android-based INQ Cloud Touch and INQ Cloud Q, which both have tight Facebook integration.

HTC Desire S

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a video message to HTC’s news conference to say users can expect many more phones with much deeper integration with Facebook to arrive this year.

The Salsa and the ChaCha will make it easier to use Facebook while on the go. For example, when users have taken a picture they can push the Facebook button, which is located at the bottom of the device, to automatically upload the image. The same can be done with songs and other types of information users may want to share with their Facebook contacts. The button will light up whenever there is an opportunity for users to share content or updates.

Other features include the ability to view a friend’s latest status and photos on the dialer screen when you make a call. The updates are also displayed when receiving a call from a Facebook friend, according to HTC.

The ChaCha has a 2.6-inch screen and a QWERTY keyboard, which will help HTC compete with BlackBerry for the youth market, according to CCS Insight. The Salsa has a 3.4-inch touchscreen and a 5-megapixel camera, and both phones run Android 2.3. They will be available customers in Europe and Asian during the second quarter. In the U.S., AT&T will have an exclusive deal to launch the phones later this year. Pricing was not announced.

HTC Flyer

HTC’s Flyer, unveiled at the show, is a 7-inch Android tablet with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera on the back, and a 1.3 megapixel one on the front. The tablet has 32GB of storage and can connect to 3G networks at up to 5.76Mbps (you might want to think about laptop insurance !).

The company also launched the HTC Desire S, Wildfire S and Incredible S, all upgrades of its existing models.

The Desire S has been made out of a solid piece of aluminium, and is equipped with a 3.7-inch screen. The smartphone offers HD recording and integrated video chat. More memory and a processor at 1.2GHz will make it run faster than the predecessor, according to HTC

The Wildfire S is the company’s “mass market smartphone”, vendor speak for a lower cost product. Its 3.2-inch screen has twice as many pixels as the existing model.

The Incredible S has a Super LCD 4-inch screen and surround sound, and an 8-megapixel camera that can record video in HD.

HTC Incredible S will start shipping in Europe in March. The HTC Desire S, HTC Wildfire S will be available to consumers across major European and Asian markets during the second quarter. Pricing was not announced.

New Mobile Phone

Your best mate gets a fancy new cellular telephone. You fantasise over its stealth exterior, high-tech touch display and substantial assortment of abilities. They say the cell phone has the capacity to get emails, have apps, they can social network and even make the odd mobile phone call. You glimpse at your own ‘so last year’ telephone and decide that it is socially unacceptable to use it any longer. You realise that they are really costly and your latest model is, after all, only 12 months old. What you need to have is a strategy to justify to your nearest and the dearest why you absolutely, positively have to have the finest mother flippin cell phone in the room!

You begin to casually point out how clunky your old cellphone is, how it never gets reception, how little time the battery power stays charged and how expensive batteries are to replace. You show them the scratches (assisted by the way you have taken to throwing it on the table/desk/ ground lately). You point out that it does not have the newest apps so you were not able to compare the cost of pork scratchings in the local pubs before you went out and so had to go into each and every one to be sure you got the very best deal. You begin to buy gadget magazines and casually leave them lying around open with the object of your desire circled and highlighted.

And then you wait.

Your birthday comes and goes and no one buys you one. As Christmas approaches you increase your endeavours which involves sitting on your old cell phone so that the screen cracks and ignoring your partners text to say they were caught in the bad weather with a flat tyre – blaming bad reception. Christmas goes and there is no cell phone – frankly you have been lucky to get that jumper following the whole flat tyre incident.

Then finally you resort to desperate measures – you accidentally drown your cell phone in a freak sailing accident the very same week as your January bonus comes through and the sales start. By lucky happenstance you just happened to have backed up all your numbers the day earlier.

Finally your day has arrived. You try the first mobile phone shop and they only have it in pink, identical story in the following one, you start to panic. At the following shop they have sold out and at the next one they will only provide it with the £3,000 per month contract. Out of the blue you have an epiphany – going outside to real physical retailers is so 20th Century you ought to be seated or reclined indoors moving only your right and left hands from the elbow down. You go home and buy it online, remembering to uncheck the box that asks if you want to buy mobile phone insurance.

Your new phone arrives through the post. It is in a box roughly the size of a small fridge – you start to panic. Maybe they despatched you the incorrect model and you have something from the 80’s that comes with its own trolley and a wind up handle! You open up the box and there at the top is a tiny stunning black and metalic machine – you start to drool. After fondling your new cell phone for about an hour or so and wiping up the drool you finally investigate what the hell else is in the box. Ah – the handbook.

You flick though the first 300 pages and are dismayed to realise that it is not the multiple language version. You begin from page one – battery power, safety, charging, zzzzzz. You wake up 30 minutes later and peel the instruction manual off your face and wipe up a lot more drool. You determine that manuals are for ladies put the cellphone in your pocket and go to the pub to show off to your mates. You delay so you are fashionably late and everybody else is there and then you stroll in with your cell phone held aloft in triumph. They all laugh and point.

You flee to the loo to cope with your devastation in private. While there you realise they are not laughing at the cell phone but at you as you have pages 6&7 of your mobile phone manual printed across your face. You use your drool to wipe it off – eventually it comes in handy!

Your love affair with your cellphone lasts precisely for 18h 23mins, most of which is spent asleep. You devote the subsequent 2 weeks swearing in and around the vicinity of your phone. The **?/## touch display does not work with your sausage fingers, there are **?/## stupid symbols all over the home page which you can not work out how to get rid of, you cannot use any of your apps primarily because you are not able to work out how to get to them. You can use the digicam and have taken some fantastic photographs and even some video but you have absolutely no idea whatsoever how to move said objects from your mobile phone and get them on to a computer.

You can’t set up email. Intensive research on the web and amongst your social circle reveals that no one has ever before managed to set up their email on their cellphone and you start to suspect a huge conspiracy in the cellular phone industry.

You studiously ignore the dark looks your partner shoots you every time you swear at your cell phone. They start to mutter things which sound a bit like ‘waste of money’ and ‘study the manual’. However these comments have no influence on you what so ever as you are already practiced at selectively tuning out anything your partner says. For example “do the dishes” and “put your stinking soiled pants in the wash basket” are all efficiently tuned out but ”are you ready for the pub” or “I am felling a bit frisky tonight” actually get amplified.

After several weeks you realise that all you use your cell phone for is making & receiving calls, telling the time and setting the alarm. You realise that that is all you have used each and every one of your other mobile phones for and are momentarily baffled as to why you invested all that money on a new one when your old one did that perfectly adequately. You take the mobile phone out of your pocket and lay it on the taxi seat as you ponder its worth. You are so deep in thought that you exit the taxi, walk up the steps and let your self in the flat before you realise that your cellular phone is no longer on your person and is now probably being boxed up for the Taxi drivers spouse’s subsequent birthday.

You curse as you remember that you unchecked the please include mobile phone insurance box when you bought the phone and realise you have exaclty 30 minutes to come up with a brilliant excuse before your partner returns home.

Windows Phone 7

Microsoft has announced that the soon-to-be-launched Windows Phone 7 device will support tethering. Tethering allows users to turn their smartphone into a modem for laptops and other mobile devices. Brandon Watson, the director of Windows Phone 7 at Microsoft confirmed that Windows Phone 7 will support tethering, but it will be up to the service provider whether to activate the service or not, tech news site Engadget reports. The functionality is currently used on Google’s Nexus One, whose users pay a small fee to their service provider to tether their smartphones to their laptops for internet access. Microsoft is doing everything it can to garner support from service providers in order to ensure the success of its smartphone device. With Microsoft confirming that all 5 major UK mobile service providers, O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone , Orange and 3, will be offering the smartphone, it remains to be seen which ones will offer the functionality and which ones will not.

The competition has been running since 2004. Basically anyone can enter and see how far they can chuck an old handset. The event is organised by sport and adventure club 8th Day UK (www.8thdayuk.com) and features men’s, women’s and Under 12 categories. As there is a good cause behind it, why don’t you take your old phone along on the day to give to a phone recycling charity (the organisers will provide a selection of phones to actually throw, though you may throw your own if you prefer!).

Many of the high street retailers offer their own insurance but it can be very expensive, that is the reason many people turn to the internet to find web based insurers who offer really competitive insurance for a fraction of the price.

It is now not uncommon for businesses to look to insure their mobile phones to protect employees against the embarrassment of having to tell the boss that they had a phone stolen or damaged. The business market is growing all the time.

Nowadays many people are looking to insure items other than mobile phones that are also carried around outside the home such as laptops, netbooks, Tablet PCs and MP3 players. It goes without saying that whenever something is taken out of the house becomes far more vulnerable to damage and theft. These days if someone is out with an iPhone and £600 laptop they can be walking aroud with over £1,000 worth of stuff with them, these days someone’s wallet may not be the most attractive thing for a pickpocket!

June 2010 has brought us Apple’s fourth iPhone. No longer a revolutionary device, but still a pace setter, iPhone 4 features an elegant new industrial design, a stunning new display, and even more speed than last year’s “twice as fast” iPhone 3GS.

iphone 4

Pricing is the same as before: $199 for one with 16 GB of storage or $299 for 32 GB. As before, these prices are subsidized in the US by AT&T; current AT&T subscribers who aren’t yet eligible for discounted upgrades will pay a whopping $599 or $699 — more than the original, unsubsidized iPhone in 2007, which was $499 for the base model or $599 with extra storage. At these prices you will do well to look at iphone 4 insurance.

Apple has evolved its industrial design again, pushing the limits of both design and manufacturing. The original iPhone was made of round-edged aluminum — stylish, but paying a steep price in poor reception. The next iPhone replaced metal with plastic, dramatically improving reception, while the gently curved back nestled nicely in the human palm. The 3GS didn’t change this design a bit, but iPhone 4 breaks the design mold, for better and for worse.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs likened the iPhone 4 to a Leica camera, but we think first of Dieter Rams’ iconic Braun product designs, and of the German Bauhaus design movement. Perfectly flat, thinner than ever, with precisely radiused corners, sleek black glass front, and black, steel buttons and mute toggle… it’s a beautiful and pure, yet severe, design. It weighs the same as its predecessor, but it’s smaller, more rigid, denser. It feels right.

iPhone’s defining glass front is now complemented by a matching glass back, adding another dimension of symmetry to the design. Earlier models’ decorative plastic chrome has been discarded for a steel band circling the unit. That steel band, notched into 3 sections, is not just for style: it pulls double duty as both structural support and antennas for cellular data, wifi and Bluetooth. The combination of black glass and satin finished steel is striking.

Still, the new design is less approachable than the warm, welcoming curves of iPhone 3G/3GS, and that clever antenna turns out to be prone to losing cell network reception if you touch the bottom and left sides simultaneously. All cell phones are prone to losing some reception, but iPhone 4 is far more vulnerable to this than others. It seems like a triumph of style over function — something neither Rams nor the Bauhaus movement ever advocated — but on the other hand, iPhone 4 can pull in weaker signals than the 3GS, which can mean fewer dropped calls.

Beneath the skin, iPhone 4 has some huge changes, all for the better. Most obvious (and most hyped) is the “Retina Display” — with four times as many pixels as previous iPhones, it surpasses the resolution of the human eye. A front-facing camera enables Apple’s new “FaceTime” video chat system, while the rear camera gets a flash, HD video recording, and a “backside illuminated” sensor that can resolve finer details. A tiny microelectromechanical gyroscope inside complements iPhone’s accelerometers, giving the new iPhone high-precision, six-axis motion detection.

In the box (which is completely recyclable) are much the same contents as last year: a wall charger and USB/charging cable, earphones with mic and remote, a “Finger Tips” booklet for getting started, and two white Apple stickers. Apple’s custom “SIM removal tool” is no longer included; a paper clip will do the job if needed.

iPhone 4 has Apple’s latest iPhone software; it’s now called iOS, to reflect its use on iPods and iPads, as well. iOS 4 brings many new features to most recent iPhones and iPod Touches (but won’t work with the original 2007 iPhone and first generation iPod Touch). Notable features include fast task switching and multitasking, home screen folders and wallpaper, spell checking, and support for Bluetooth keyboards, unified email inbox and message threading, 5x digital camera zoom and tap-to-focus while recording video. iOS 4 also brings Internet tethering to the US from AT&T. (The rest of the world got it last year.)

Along with the iPhone 4 come two new data plans from AT&T. For light data users, AT&T offers a $15/month option with a 200MB data quota; heavy users can opt for a $25/month quota of 2 GB (2000 MB). We estimate about 45% of iPhone owners use less than 200 MB of cellular data a month; 2 GB will keep most of the rest happy. AT&T says only 2% of users exceed this regularly, and our own use bears this out. For that 2%, existing customers can keep their $30/month “unlimited” data plan — but new customers don’t get this option.

Internet tethering, which lets your iPhone provide Internet access to your laptop via USB or Bluetooth, is not available with the cheaper plan or the old unlimited plan — you must switch to the $25 2GB quota plan and pay another $20/month to turn on tethering. This would be okay, but that money doesn’t get you any more data, despite the higher data use that laptops tend to incur. At least, overage charges are reasonable, at $10 per 1GB.

As usual, Apple touts their latest product as the best thing ever; Apple’s store banners proclaim “This changes everything. Again.” But does it really? After the Steve Jobs “Reality Distortion Field” effect and the launch-day excitement and press coverage wears off, how does it stand up? And if you have an earlier iPhone with the iOS 4 upgrade, is the new iPhone 4 really all that?
What’s New

Just like last year, Apple has made sure the new hardware has some features the earlier models can’t match, even after the latest software update. Apple applied its knack for turning techno-babble into understandable terms in naming two flagship features: Retina Display and FaceTime.
Retina Display

iPhone 4′s new display is twice the resolution of previous models: 960×640. Aside from being most of the way to HD resolution, the pixels are packed so densely — 326 per inch — that they exceed the resolution of the human eye, according to Apple.

That’s quite a strong claim. Retinal neuroscientist Bryan Jones, of the University of Utah’s Moran Eye Center, put the iPhone 4 display under his lab microscope, as well as previous models and the iPad, and published his observations.

The original iPhone and 3G models have pixels measuring 176 microns by 223 microns (one micron = 1/1,000,000th meter). The iPhone 4′s pixels are 78 by 102 microns. For comparison, a human hair is about 100 microns wide, and a droplet of water in fog is 10 microns in diameter.

Dr. Jones notes that standard visual acuity (“20/20 vision”) can discern black/white transitions at a fineness of one arc-minute (1/60th of a degree). At 12″ away from the eye, this works out to a resolution of 287 pixels per inch. The iPhone 4′s 326 ppi is, as Apple claims, “comfortably higher” than that limit.

The other feature of the Retina Display is its construction. Rather than a sheet of glass laid against a touch-sensor and LCD panel, with an air gap that introduces distortion (and eventually, dust), Retina Display’s components are glued together with an optical-grade adhesive. Microscope photographs show that iPhone 4′s pixels are far sharper and better defined than the iPhone 3G’s or the original iPhone’s. (In fact, they are so clearly visible that we can see several sub-pixel elements, with the microscope, in each color bar within each pixel.)

The overall effect is that the iPhone 4′s display looks amazing. It looks like a glossy photographic print, and with iOS’s built-in text antialiasing, text sharpness on the iPhone compares well with a 1200dpi laser printer.

The iPhone has always used Helvetica as its default font — a beautiful typeface for print — but its subtle details are lost on computer screens, so it was an odd choice previously, when Apple already had the screen-optimized Lucida font family on tap. Retina Display shows all of Helvetica’s beauty and precision, and the thinner, lighter strokes possible at these resolutions make for wonderful readability. We can’t help but wonder if Apple’s iPhone interface designers were betting on ultra-high-resolution screens from the outset.
FaceTime

The iPhone 4 adds a second camera on its face (just to the left of the speaker slot), and a companion app called FaceTime. While you’re on a phone call, you can start a video call by tapping the new FaceTime on-screen button (replacing the little-used Hold button — you can mute your call instead, or press-and-hold for a second to switch to true Hold mode). Tap it on a call with another iPhone 4, and the phones set up WiFi-based video chat. The phone call is dropped (so you stop using your AT&T minutes) in favor of the video chat. Within seconds, each caller sees the other on-screen; you can tap a translucent button to flip to the backside camera and share what you are looking at; tap again to flip back to your face.

It sounds simple, but no handset maker has ever really done it right before. Some Android phones have the requisite extra camera, and software, but it’s been finicky at the best of times; even prominent tech journalists supported by the Android handset vendors have been foiled recently. Apple’s special “it just works” sauce here uses the telephone call itself to identify each user and set up the session — no extra accounts to log into, no extra software to download. It’s simply present and ready to go in every iPhone 4.

Although Apple demonstrated FaceTime with phone calls, you can go straight to FaceTime from your Contacts list. (The implication is clear: FaceTime may be coming to iPod Touch, sooner or later.)

Apple also has proposed FaceTime as a free and open industry specification, in hopes that other handset vendors will hop on the bandwagon and bring video calling to everyone, whether they are an iPhone user or not.

Today, Wifi is required for FaceTime; perhaps AT&T doesn’t want Apple’s millions of customers flooding their network with bandwidth-chugging video? At least wireless access points are easy enough to find while traveling. If you can’t find a trendy Internet cafe, almost every Starbucks and McDonalds have free wifi too. But FaceTime on a street corner or in a shopping mall will have to wait for AT&T to loosen up (or improve its network).

If there is a drawback to FaceTime, it’s one of self-confidence. The camera shows you just as you are; if you have a hard time with mirrors, you’ll have an even harder time with FaceTime. Jason Kottke recently noted that author David Foster Wallace predicted this in his 1996 novel Infinite Jest. We think Wallace’s irony-laced predictions are a bit exaggerated; FaceTime may not be for every phone call, but there is nothing quite like it. It feels deeply personal and a bit magical, and for frequent travelers away from family, it will be a godsend.
Improved Camera

Last year, Apple upgraded the iPhone’s camera from mediocre to almost-acceptable; it was good only compared to how bad it was before. But this year, Apple’s done much better; we’re pleasantly surprised.

iphone 4 camera photo sample 1

The new iPhone 4 camera sensor goes from 3 megapixels to 5 megapixels — 2592 by 1936 pixels. But, instead of packing more pixels into the same size sensor, which reduces sensitivity and increases noise in the image, the new sensor is physically larger for higher quality.

The 3GS’s sensor improved on its predecessor in dynamic range and color saturation, but the iPhone 4 has made a huge jump. It can handle much wider ranges of light and dark in an image (although sunlight can still wash out the sky), and color is boosted. The iPhone 4′s color is almost too vibrant — not cartoonish but a little exaggerated. Most people will like this effect, but purists will not. Noise is definitely lower, which improves both well-lit scenes and night time images. The new sensor is able to capture much more detail than before, with finer gradations of light and color. It’s not perfect — blues and purples are prone to washing out — but it’s quite good for this class of device.

Like the 3GS, the iPhone 4 camera has both auto-focus and tap-to-focus. The lens has the same fixed F/2.8 aperture as the iPhone 3GS, but with blurring (“bokeh”) outside its depth of focus that is far more pleasing.

iphone 4 camera photo sample 2

We noticed that when taking “macro” photos (super-close ups), or when the subject has indistinct edges, the camera tends to focus on objects behind what we tapped on, so such photos may require a second try at focussing correctly.

The iPhone 4 also adds an LED flash, which works surprisingly well; it’s useful out to nearly eight feet, enough for photos of people at night. It fires automatically as light requires (or you can disable it or force it on). Before firing, it turns on for a second to illuminate the scene, then flashes brighter for a moment. It definitely beats the blurry, grainy, out of focus nighttime photos the iPhone 3GS took! (Last year in our annual iPhone review, we asked why this was missing; we’re glad it showed up at last.)

iphone 4 camera with flash

without flash

HD Video

Next on the upgrade list: 720p HD video recording, replacing the 3GS’s 640×480 video. Image quality is pretty good, with few compression artifacts, but it has a much smaller angle of view than its predecessor. This isn’t the lens, which has an angle similar to the 3GS’s; rather, the edges of the image are cropped away. This forces you to back up from your subjects, compared to the iPhone 3GS. The microphone is still pointed 90 degrees away from the subject, so you lose audio volume, and it’s prone to wind noise.

The Flip MinoHD, which we reviewed in December 2008, also suffers from the tight field of view, but its microphone is pointed in the correct direction, and that alone makes it a superior camcorder. A correctly-oriented microphone would make a huge difference to iPhone 4′s video recordings.

iMovie

Sold for $4.99 in the App Store — only for the iPhone 4 — iMovie for iPhone is a basic video editor. You can join together multiple clips with Apple-designed transitions and titles, trim at the beginning or end, insert pictures from your Camera Roll or photos synced from your computer, and lay in a music track. Five basic themes are included, each with a custom transition effect, plus beginning, middle and end title styles. The basic cross-fade is also available. Transitions are applied in real time, no waiting required.

While it can’t hold a candle to iMovie’s range of effects and transitions on the Mac, the iMovie app is quick, easy, and fun.

Unfortunately, the iMovie app has some very poor interface choices. It took us two days to discover titles — the option doesn’t appear until you double-tap on a clip. This is the first significant use of double-tap we’ve seen in Apple’s iPhone apps. Formal research studies and anecdotal experience both tell us that the vast majority of people don’t distinguish between a single and double click with a mouse; this does not bode well for discoverability in iMovie. Core functionality should not be hidden.

We eventually found an iMovie FAQ on Apple’s support site which documents some of the interface. Among other things, it told us that you can stretch or pinch the timeline — which we had tried and thought didn’t do anything. There isn’t much visual feedback that the timeline is scaling, and if you’re at the maximum or minimum end, the timeline “shudders”… so we thought that pinching just didn’t do anything.

Adding pictures from your photo albums is easy, but not painless. Instead of the standard iPhone photo picker, iMovie uses a custom picker that lags badly when you flick it up and down quickly. And instead of starting at the bottom of the list, with your most recent photos, it starts at the top, with the oldest. If you have a lot of photos in your Camera Roll (we usually have several hundred waiting to be downloaded to our Mac), this makes adding more than one photo a painfully slow and frustrating process. Adding confusion, both Albums and Faces from the Photos app are in the list, but not Places.

The iMovie app designers re-invented the wheel just to match its nearly-black interface color palette. As a consequence, we have lost the benefit of four years of performance tuning of the standard photo picker. No other app on our iPhone makes it so hard to add photos.

Getting your project out of iMovie is a multi-step process. First you exit your project to iMovie’s main screen. Then you export the project to the Camera Roll. Then you return to the home screen, and launch the Photos app. (Yes, “Photos.” For video.) With us so far? Tap into the Camera Roll, tap your video. And at last, you can email it, send it in an MMS phone message or publish it to YouTube or MobileMe.

But… your HD-quality video is compressed to less than a quarter size before sending; if you want to share the real HD movie, you have to connect your iPhone 4 to a Mac or PC, get the HD movie out using iPhoto, Image Capture or Aperture, and then publish it yourself. Who thought up this mess?

Finally, you can only add one song to the timeline. You can’t start with one, then transition to another, nor can you adjust when the song starts. Your one song had better be perfect for the whole video. Frustrating. Audio cross-fade is not computationally expensive, and with the iPhone 4′s 512 MB of RAM under the hood, this should not be a problem.

For $5, maybe we ought not expect much, but this is from Apple. Gestural interfaces already suffer from low discoverability, as eloquently illustrated by Lukas Matias last month in his blog Gestures, and more formally this month by Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman in Gestural Interfaces: A Step Backwards in Usability. Apple, as the leader in touch technology, has a responsibility to lead not only through innovation, but through consistently providing the best examples. Independent App Store developers follow Apple’s lead. We hope they don’t follow many of iMovie’s missteps.

Issues & Compatibility
Reception

We can reproduce the widely reported “Death Grip” easily enough, and that’s certainly not a good sign. But don’t all cell phones get worse reception when you cover their antenna? We took an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4 for a walk outside, with a full five bars showing, and fired up the free SpeedTest.net app to see how they fared when held at the bottom, covering the antenna, and at the top, farthest from the antenna. We ran each test five times, alternating phones (so they would not compete for bandwidth), and averaged the runs.

When held in the “Death Grip”, iPhone 4′s download speed plummets. Yet the iPhone 3GS plummets very nearly as much (proportionately). Perhaps this is not an entirely new problem, but still, the iPhone 3GS never loses service entirely, as the iPhone 4 can.

AnandTech has published detailed antenna testing results, using a clever hack to get iPhone 4 to show raw signal strength data instead of the signal bars we usually see. Two things stand out from their testing: First, the antenna loses 24dBm of signal when held in the “Death Grip”. Second, the antenna is capable of pulling in far weaker signals than iPhone 3GS! When the signal is at the edge of reception (around -113dBm), previous iPhones tended to drop calls and stop passing data. iPhone 4 maintains calls, and keeps moving data back and forth, albeit at a lower rate.

This testing reflects our experience: iPhone 4 does better in areas with marginal coverage than previous models. But lay your hand across the black line between the two antennas, and you can negate than advantage.

For advice on coping with this issue, see our iPhone 4 Tip Sheet.

Our speed tests did demonstrate another kind of improvement in the iPhone 4′s radio: It implements “HSUPA class 6″ for faster uploads. Class 6 devices can, in theory, hit 5.76 Mbit/sec; ours handily pushes a megabit under conditions. (The iPhone 3G and 3GS were limited to 384 kbps upload speed.) On iPhone 4, Flickr and YouTube uploads are fast.

Accessories

Apple has a solution for the antenna problem: “Bumpers”.

These $29 accessories are not quite a case, rather, they are plastic-and-rubber rings that encircle iPhone 4′s edge. Made in six colors (but only black was available on launch day), bumpers have plastic core, with rubber edges raised just a little above the glass surface, and metal volume and sleep switch buttons. The design is similar to Speck’s line of rubber-and-plastic iPhone and iPad cases; without Apple’s packaging, we’d mistake them for Speck products.

Bumpers appear to add some badly needed impact protection and grip while not detracting from the new iPhone’s sleek look. They’re very precisely made, perhaps too much so: only earphones as slim as Apple’s fit through the audio jack opening, and the iPhone USB/charging cable just barely clears. Apple’s Component Video Cable is entirely too big to fit, as are Apple’s pre-2007 USB-Dock cables; we had to remove the bumper to connect any of these. We also discovered the Dock cable included in DLO’s PowerPack charging kit doesn’t fit either, despite the “Made for iPhone” logo indicating Apple certification.

When introduced, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that Apple decided to try its hand at the iPhone case business with the new Bumpers. We can’t help but be a little suspicious that this new accessory precisely covers exactly the antenna that, when touched, causes iPhone 4 to lose its connection.

With the new design, Dock devotees will shell out another $29 this year, for the third iPhone dock design in four years. On the other hand, just $9 gets you three adapter plates for the Apple Universal Dock, and our vintage 2005 iPod Universal Dock works with only the usual complaints we have come to expect.

Speaking of docks, if you use iPhone to play videos on your TV using those pricy Apple cables and docks, you’ll have the leave the iPod app active to watch videos. Unlike music, which keeps playing when you leave the iPod app, video stops. This inconsistency is frustrating, though not new.
Missing Features

Four major releases into the iPhone software, Apple still hasn’t quite filled common wishlist items seen in the MacInTouch reader reports:

* No lock screen customization: Many people use their cell phones as pocket watches. Why not use the screen for more than a clock? Perhaps show the day’s forecast, the next appointment time, and how many unread emails have piled up?
* No Junk mail filtering: We called this out last year, and it’s still not here. Over 90% of email worldwide is spam, but iPhone is as trusting as a puppy. Server-side filtering has become common, but mail apps such as Thunderbird, Mac Mail, Outlook, and Entourage provide the last line of defense. iPhone is defenseless.
* Spotlight still limited: Spotlight can only search Apple’s system apps, not data from your other apps. The new ability to launch a web or Wikipedia search is nice, but we’d really like to be able to search our DocsToGo, Dropbox and MobileMe iDisk files, our Notably and Course Notes, and so forth. Give developers a way to integrate with Spotlight, like on the Mac.
* No HD video output: Although the iPhone 4 itself supports HD video, Apple’s component and VGA outputs are limited to 480p (at best). Apple says this is because content owners (i.e., movie studios and TV networks) won’t allow it, but if this is the case, why can’t we play our own content through these outputs? Like, say, the beautiful 720p video this very device can create and edit?
* Voice Control stagnant: It was very cool last year, even if a little limited, but Android has raised the bar with voice dictation into any text field. Step up, Apple!

Lastly, while AT&T has finally deigned to permit iPhone owners to pay extra to turn on tethering (with no extra quota, mind you!), you can only tether to a Mac or PC using USB or Bluetooth. Cables can be awkward and Bluetooth is a notorious power hog. Why not Wifi tethering? Palm’s WebOS phones and the latest Android 2.2 devices all offer Wifi tethering, and it’s a heck of a lot simpler to use than Bluetooth tethering.

CPU and Memory

Apple does say that iPhone 4 uses its new A4 processor, introduced in the iPad earlier this year. (We know from prior analysis that the A4 is a custom chip built on the ARM Cortex A8 platform used by the iPhone 3GS; see our iPad Review for more.) The iPad’s A4 is clocked at 1GHz, but Apple hasn’t published a speed for the iPhone 4, and if you use a programming interface to ask, it tells you “0.0 GHz”.

We ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark on an iPhone 3GS (upgraded to iOS4) and on an iPhone 4 for comparison. The iPhone 4 is 34% faster overall; as the 3GS is clocked at 600 MHz, this implies the iPhone 4 runs at 800 MHz. (Standard deviation of error across the sub-tests is about 5%, within SunSpider’s design limits.)

Unfortunately, SunSpider tests on the iPad are wildly different, varying anywhere from 39% faster to 53% slower! Such widely varying scores can’t be used to compare the devices. (This may indicate that either a very different version of the JavaScript engine was used in iOS 4 vs the iPad’s iOS 3.2 branch, or Apple is using a different compiler than it did a few months ago.)

Primate Labs now sells GeekBench 2 on iPhone for $4.99 on the App Store, but it requires iOS 4, so it won’t run on the iPad for comparison.

Developers have confirmed that the iPhone 4 is equipped with 512 MB of RAM, twice as much as the iPhone 3GS or iPad. (We noted that Geekbench 2 reports 503 MB — is the other 9 MB used for graphics? If so, that’s a very modest amount to reserve for 3D rendering. Until more information is available, we’ll just have to wonder.)
Video chipset

Assuming the iPhone 4′s A4 processor is not significantly changed from the iPad’s, the iPhone 4 probably uses the PowerVR SGX 535 graphics processor. iPhone game developers learned recently that iOS 4 now offers hardware antialiasing of 3D graphics on the iPhone 3GS and 4. PowerVR’s chips have supported antialiasing since the MBX in 2006 (used by the original iPhone and the 3G), but this capability was never enabled. We must assume there are performance reasons not to enable it on the MBX-equipped iPhone 3G, 2G, and first two generations of the iPod Touch.

The few games that have already adopted antialiasing look great, with smoothed edges and finer textures. Firemint’s Real Racing adds antialiasing to not just the iPhone 4, but also to the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch; on the iPhone 4 it also runs at the full Retina Display resolution. Developers at Secret Exit have posted screenshots from the upcoming Zen Bound 2 for the iPhone, now using antialiasing, and it makes the objects look more, well, real.

Since a developer can choose to render a game at the old iPhone resolution of 480×320, and use antialiasing to pixel-double and smooth its look on the iPhone 4, this provides a way for developers to make their existing games look even better on the iPhone 4 without having to rebuild and re-optimize their graphics code entirely, or maintain a high frame rate in complex scenes that won’t run as well at full Retina resolution. This technique is combined with higher quality textures in Real Racing, showing that it works.

Also in the A4 is PowerVR’s VXD370, a media processing engine that handles duties such as encoding H.264 video from the iPhone’s cameras (and preparing video for uploading, email, or exporting from iMovie), and decoding movies to the screen.
Battery

The iPhone 4 has a 1420-mAh battery inside, for about 17% more than the iPhone 3GS’s 1219 mAh unit. Apple claims the iPhone 4 is good for 7 hours of 3G talk time, vs. the iPhone 3GS’s claimed 5 hours (which we never approached). But, so far, we’ve found the iPhone 4′s battery lasts far longer — for phone calls, Internet, video, audio, and assorted games — than our 3GS ever has, far more than the paltry 17% capacity increase accounts for. It’s clear Apple has done a lot of work to lower power consumption.

Like other iPhones, we noticed the iPhone 4 charges faster from the iPad’s 10-watt wall charger than from the more compact 5-watt unit in the iPhone box. It also charges more quickly from newer Macs’ high-power USB ports than from most pre-2009 Macs or PC USB ports.

Construction

You can open an iPhone 4 with just a #00 Phillips screwdriver. The back panel comes off, giving immediate access to the internals. There are plenty of screws inside, all tiny Phillips-head screws, rather than the Torx screws often used before. (We generally prefer Torx for their ease of use, but Phillips-head screws resist over-tightening, making it a good choice here.)

The battery is immediately accessible after removing the rear cover, and is blessedly not soldered in place. Do-it-yourself battery replacement will be much easier for the iPhone 4 vs. earlier models!

Beyond that, space is very tight inside, which may be why the iPhone 4 is the first iPhone not to double its predecessor’s flash storage. Moore’s Law appears to need another year for flash density to increase enough to fit into Apple’s ever-smaller designs.

The front glass, touch sensor and LCD, like the original iPhone but not the 3G or 3GS, forms a single component, glued together with optical-grade adhesive. This increases sharpness, brightness and contrast, and prevents dust from getting trapped in the air-gap. (Such dust often afflicts the 3G and 3GS as they age.) But, it means that if you break the glass, you’re in for an expensive repair, even if the LCD is intact.

Despite our best efforts, almost everyone drops their phone once in a while. Apple uses a hardened glass (generally believed to be Dow Corning’s “Gorilla Glass”), which is designed not just to resist cracks and scratches, but to prevent the spread of cracks perpendicular to the surface. This may be the key to the iPhone’s surprisingly durable glass face.

But with glass on both front and back, almost any drop is likely to see that Gorilla Glass take a hit. iFixit’s disassembly photos seem to show thin rubber gasket between the glass and the electronics behind it; perhaps this is meant to absorb some impact force? Time will tell just how vulnerable the iPhone 4 is.

Finally, the iPhone 4 replaces the standard SIM card, which identifies a phone to the cellular network, with a smaller MicroSIM (also used in the iPad 3G). This may cause some challenges for international travelers, as local sellers may not have MicroSIMs, but that’s handily fixed with a sharp knife and some careful cutting.

An interesting, yet-unanswered question is whether you can move iPhone 4′s SIM into an iPad 3G to enable data service. After all, you can’t use both at once, so it shouldn’t break any AT&T rules… right?

Conclusions

The iPhone 4 has, once again, reinterpreted Steve Jobs’s original concept, maintaining a core look and feel, yet changing and improving almost every aspect of the experience. We’ve described some of the new iPhone’s problems, but in practice they are more than balanced by how much it does very well.

The refreshed design is the purest example of Bauhaus style in mass production today. It is clean and elegant, with no wasted lines or curves. Every visible part of this phone has a function and every function has a beautiful form; the only nod to ornamentation is the Apple logo on the back.

The iPhone 4 feels like a luxury item — and it is. Starting with the iPod, Apple created a niche of affordable luxury consumer electronics. This new iPhone is just the latest expression of that.

The hardware inside improves the experience, most of all the Retina Display, but also the A4 processor. Using the iPhone 4 is a fast, fluid experience. (We said this about the 3GS, and again about the iPad, and it’s even more true today.) Attention to details abounds; a secondary microphone helps cancel background noise on your end of a call, while a revised speaker enclosure adds some resonance to increase volume. The battery life is definitely improved; the iPhone 4 can make it through a complete diurnal cycle, just like a portable phone should!

The new camera is the first iPhone camera that isn’t embarrassingly behind the competition — in fact, it’s really quite nice! Of course, it can’t replace a good digital SLR, but it may actually displace the snapshot cameras we routinely carry around; it’s a big plus for the new phone. HD video capability is also an upgrade from earlier iPhones. (The next improvement we’d like to see is image stabilization. Maybe next year.)

Most of our complaints about the iPhone 3GS’s software have been remedied with the iPhone 4, but you don’t have to buy an iPhone 4 to get these improvements, because iOS 4 is a free download for every iPhone 3G and 3GS owner. (But it’s the end of the line for the original iPhone, which doesn’t run iOS 4.)

A few missteps mar the great upgrade. We have our doubts about using glass for both front and back, which all but guarantees that glass will hit the ground when we inevitably drop the phone, and its antenna reception issues are troubling, to say the least. But even with a weak 3G signal, the iPhone 4 moves data faster than an iPhone 3GS, and a decent case should mitigate the risks of a drop while also helping with the reception issue.

Our upgrade advice:

* Original iPhone and iPhone 3G: Go for it. The new camera and extra speed make for an incredible experience upgrade; $199 or $299 gets you the latest and greatest; and you can still “grandfather” your unlimited data plan to iPhone 4, or you can lower your monthly bill with the $15 plan.
* iPhone 3GS: Just update to iOS4. You get almost all the new software features for free. Unless the new cameras and Retina Display are compelling enough to justify the $600 to $700 purchase cost, your best bet is to wait until next year — then upgrade at a fully subsidized price to iPhone 5! (Which, if we’re lucky, will be redesigned for improved ruggedness.)
* New Customers: If you are buying your first iPhone, you can get last year’s 3GS for just $99. It’s a good phone, though with a mediocre camera, but considering that you are committing to two years with it, give serious thought to spending the extra $100 for an iPhone 4 instead. We doubt you’ll regret it.

A Guinness World Records representative was on hand to certify the record-breaking phone. We are excited to recognize the worlds largest working cell phone from Cricket and Samsung Mobile as a new Guinness World Record, said Danny Girton, Jr., Guinness World Records adjudication executive. As this was a successful first record attempt, it is a tremendous accomplishment and we are delighted to welcome them into the Guinness World Records family.