Kelly's World

So, I’ve now had my iPhone 4 for almost 3 weeks now, which means it’s time to review the changes.

The major major one for me was that I changed service providers, from Optus to Telstra. I discussed previously my reasons for contemplating the change, and I went ahead and did it (at a midnight launch too – silly me). I haven’t been disappointed since. The Next G network on the Sunshine Coast is fast, really fast. Everything, from GPS pinpointing to loading pages is almost instantaneous. I think it’s evidence in itself how fantastic it is, since my data usage has almost doubled for the month already. I’ll have to watch that, and see if I need to think about getting an additional data pack.

The other thing that I love about the iPhone 4 is the camera. I blogged about it here after I went to a party and used it to take photos of the night. Since getting the phone, it’s been the primary photography tool for my series of photos of the day. I haven’t been disappointed at all.

And the antenna issue? Non existent. I tried holding the phone in the death grip and I had no problems. I’ve occasionally experienced the problem with the proximity sensor though, where the screen has turned on and I’ve either prematurely ended a phone call, changed it to mute, or in one instance turned it onto speaker and almost blown my ear off. Very rarely though, and definitely not enough for it to be annoying.

The other things are nice too, the retina display etc. I’ve used FaceTime once, and got a kick out of it, but it’s not something I imagine I will be using all that often.

Overall, my experience has been a wholly positive one, and on a surprising note, my mum picks one up tomorrow…which means for all those who don’t have an iPhone yet, my Mum is cooler than you. That’s embarrasing (for you).

Last night I went to a 21st birthday party, where the theme was opp shop clothing. The only catch was that you had to actually buy something from the opp shop, wear it, and then donate it back. Great idea, and geez it brought out some funny characters!

I also tried to capture the night on my iphone 4 so I could use one of the photos as my photo of the day. I was a little bit worried beforehand, as from previous exeperience night shots on my old iPhone 3GS weren’t too crash hot. Knowing the iPhone 4 had a flash though, I was determined to give it a try.

Boy was I impressed.

The photos still have some issues – noise in particular, and the occasional red eye problem. But for a camera phone, at night, with a flash it blew my mind. It kept the colours intact, a LOT better than the photos I saw produced from a HTC in fact (most photos taken with that had a blue tinge from the flash). The photos are almost comparable with my actual point & shoot camera (a fast aging Fuji S5700), which really struggles at night time.

Take a look at this photo for example (which is also my photo of the day):

Other than resizing and adding a border, that photo is completely untouched. It’s one of the best photos taken on the night with the phone. Others, where I have been standing several meters away turned out a bit worse, particularly with noise. I also found that when holding the phone to take a photo, you need to completely hide your finger so the flash doesn’t reflect from your finger back into the lens. I have a few photos that were washed out because of this.

But going back to basics, it’s a camera phone. It was also at night, in dark conditions. To come out with an image with as much quality as this has me jumping for joy. I really can’t wait to run the phone through its paces during the daytime.