In my last post I wrote about the planets starting to align or something in order to force strongly encourage our household to move over to the dark Apple side of the computing spectrum. Part of the alignment of all of that activity was the opportunity to get my hands on an iPhone 4 on Verizon's network and see what I thought.
I won't get into all the reasons why I've generally avoided Apple products, so let's just jump right into what I thought about this phone.
What I Like About the iPhone 4
The first thing I noticed about the iPhone 4 when I had it in my hand was the weight of the device. It felt heavy and solid. I liked this. You see, I'm not a buff, muscular guy, but I don't mind carrying around something with a few more ounces on it and whine about the size.
This is especially true when that weight comes from what appears to be some solid construction and materials. It felt like the iPhone 4 could take an accidental drop to the ground and have no problems living through it. Unlike some other phones that feel and look like they should have Fisher-Price stamped on the backs of their casing. You may sell your iPhone if you cannot fix it.
The other item that I was immediately impressed with when I used it was the on-screen, virtual keyboard. Generally I don't think I'll ever buy a phone that doesn't have a slide-out, physical keyboard, but what I noticed about the iPhone 4 keyboard is that it was much more forgiving than the on-screen keyboard available on my Samsung Moment from Sprint. I found that I could actually type fairly quickly with two fingers on the Apple keyboard with fairly good accuracy.
The last really noticeable feature of the Verizon iPhone 4 is the resolution of the display and also the quality of both still images and video taken with the phone.
I should also probably state that since my wife and kids have made the switch to Apple, both kids were always asking for the iPhone so they could play their favorite games. I don't really think availability of apps is a big differentiator these days between Apple and Android devices though.
What I Didn't Like About the iPhone 4
Perhaps the biggest dislike I have on the iPhone 4 is having to install iTunes on your computer to manage the phone. In the entire time I had the phone I hardly ever had the phone plugged into my PC laptop. My first attempt suggested that I had to install iTunes on my computer to manage the phone and there was no way I was installing iTunes on my computer again. I absolutely hate that software. I did find out later that I could plug-in the phone through the USB device cable and disregard the iTunes prompts and still access the phone like an external storage device. I eventually used this option to get all of the photos and videos off the phone that I'd taken.
Another item that I didn't enjoy was that I would regularly try to find various menus and preference settings in the OS and on applications that I would expect and they'd either not be found, or just buried in unintuitive locations. There are also some other controls that make absolute sense when you finally have someone show you how to do it, or figure it out on your own, it's far from logical to find it on your own.
Overall phone call quality and network access never seemed to be an issue while I was using the phone. Since the phone isn't my primary phone, real-world, regular use as a phone device wasn't tested as much as I would have liked.
One good and bad thing I picked up from the phone is I've now started playing Words With Friends. The application on the iPhone 4 looks fantastic and was a lot of fun. Even knowing I wasn't keeping the phone I still bought the full-paid version of the app to play it. The bad news is that the Android iteration of the game isn't quite as smooth and polished. Some of that is due to the graphic display differences between the two phones, but the Android version of the game also seems to crash and hang up far more frequently. And... there's no paid version of the Android app.
So there's my review of the iPhone 4. Am I dropping the Android and making the switch? No. Would I? Perhaps, but that would be inclusive of my final decision to then probably go full-blown Apple convert and completely move to all Apple computers and other devices. That day isn't on the horizon in the near future that I can see.