Apple iPhone 4 Black (16 GB) Smartphone

My introduction to smartphones was a rotten one, indeed.

Back in July 2010, I decided to grab a phone that did something other than take calls and send texts. Down at the local AT&T store, they were fresh out of the Apple iPhone 4, so they offered to let me try out a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 that was running Android. While Google's Android OS is solid as can be, the Xperia featured junk hardware, some odd proprietary programs that were terrible and perhaps the worst call quality of any cell phone I've used (when people won't call you because they can't understand what you're saying due to a rotten phone, that's bad). I got rid of the Xperia after about a week and got what I wanted from the beginning -- an Apple iPhone 4.

Initially, I figured the iPhone 4 was the bees knees. I didn't even mind being locked into a two-year contract with AT&T for this. After all, the notion that anything running Android could be better than this was ridiculous. There might be an Android device that was as good, but better? Not a chance.

Ah, but one learns after a few months that there are some things about the iPhone that are very, very annoying and that may well be why Google is enjoying such great success with its mobile phone operating system. It all comes down to this -- you have choices with Android, whereas you don't with Apple. Apple, after all, is the company that encourages us all to "think different," so it is more than a bit ironic that the company is absolutely rigid when it comes to what a cell phone should be and what people ought to be able to do with it.

Now, Apple's iPhone business model would be solid if everyone had the same wants and needs when it comes to these devices as a "one size fits all" approach would work. That "take it or leave it" strategy works well for a lot of people, but not for all of us.

That's not to say the iPhone 4 isn't a fine device. Indeed, the hardware is rock solid, the number of apps available for the device is simply staggering and the retina display is about as sharp as any display for any phone out there. The phone is very fast and easy to use, too, and the picture and video camera quality is great for a phone. The call quality is fantastic -- undoubtedly among the best out there -- and the way this thing automatically picks up on WiFi networks after it's set up for them initially is ideal. Email is easy to set up, managing contact lists is a breeze and managing texts is very simple, too. In fact, simplicity is obviously what Apple was going for with this phone -- the interface is easy to navigate and you'll rarely find the features you want buried under a bunch of menus. Furthermore, when you buy an iPhone, you know you're getting a quality piece of hardware that's easy to use and reliable as a tank.

And, that, folks is something Apple does very well -- releases products that generally work as expected and offer up few unpleasant surprises. The Android OS may be great, but the hardware running it may or may not be. If you want to get a good Android phone, you'd better do a lot of research to make sure you're not getting a dud like the aforementioned Xperia. You can save all that time and trouble by simply picking up an iPhone -- the hardware works as well as advertised. Apple's obsessive control over the iPhone hardware does have its drawbacks, but one good thing about it is that the company does release products that are refined and functional by the time they reach the consumer.

Ah, but there are problems with Apple's "our way or the highway" approach. For one thing, the availability of a sliding, full-travel keyboard would have been nice. People either love the virtual keyboard or they hate it. Those of us who hate it get sick of hearing "well, you'll get used to it" from Apple fans. Humans are very adaptable and can get used to a lot of things that aren't good for us. Just because you get used to something doesn't mean a superior alternative wouldn't be preferable. After a year, I still struggle with the virtual keyboard and feel like it is ideal if you've got the tiny hands of a nine-year-old girl. The screen is simply too tiny to provide the surface area needed for adults to use the keyboard.

If you hate the input device, the phone is close to unusable for anything but calling people and playing a few games. It doesn't matter how good the phone is if the thought of pecking away on the keyboard makes you cringe. Text messages go unanswered and what's the point of checking email on this device when you know for a fact you won't bang out a reply on it? While some love the keyboard, it would have been nice to have a choice. You get a choice with Android -- there are plenty of phones running that OS out there with actual keyboards (the Motorola Droid 3, for example) and plenty that have virtual keyboards only. Heck, even the struggling Blackberry is keeping hold of some fans with its keyboards. Apple, meanwhile, has ignored keyboard fans entirely and company officials have done so at their peril.

Then, of course, you've got voice control -- as much of a failure as Apple's Newton was. For those who don't remember the Newton, it was Apple's attempt to put together an early personal data assistant (PDA) that could recognize handwriting. The handwriting analysis software was notoriously inaccurate, but Apple released a few devices utilizing it, anyway. Voice control on the iPhone is about as bad. Wouldn't it be great to activate voice control and then have the iPhone call people, play music, or etc.? Wouldn't it be great to have a solid alternative for some tasks to the iPhone's virtual keyboard? Voice control fails miserably in that regard and yields seemingly random results. For example, activating voice control and instructing the iPhone to "call my wife at work" might result in the thing calling my wife at work, trying to activate a Facetime session with my mom or some other random, goofy event. There's no rhyme or reason to the way voice control gets things so terribly wrong, but it seems to work best when sitting in a quiet room. The only problem there, of course, is that I tend to want to use it when occupied with other things, such as roaring down the Interstate at 75 MPH in my truck -- voice control hates background noises, rendering that feature all but useless in those environments in which it would be the the most appreciated.

The barely-functioning voice control feature seems very much out of place on a device made by a company that prides itself in releasing fully-realized products rather than ones containing buggy, half-baked features. Two other areas that could have used attention are found in the automatic screen dimming features and the much-hyped auto-rotating one. Quite often, my screen will dim automatically to the point where it is very, very dark. That doesn't happen often, but it does happen enough to be obnoxious.

Of greater concern is the inaccurate screen orientation. Yes, we're supposed to be able to flip it from landscape to profile at will and that feature does work at times. Often, the phone struggles with figuring out how it's being held, leaving the user to resort to shaking the thing a few times or tapping the edge of it on a table (that method works surprisingly well).

Ah, and then there's iTunes. That bloated piece of junk sure feels like it's a Microsoft product in that it's slow, counter-intuitive and prone to failure. And if you're on Linux, forget about running iTunes (yes, Apple wants you to think different, but not that different -- Windows and Mac only, kids, unless you figure out how to get this to run with Linux under WINE). You'd also think that Apple would have made it possible to enjoy a truly mobile device -- one that wasn't chained to a piece of software that looks more like a marketing tool than a useful application. Alas...

One of the few good things about the Xperia is that building a music collection on it was a simple as dragging files from my PC and dropping them on the phone. Such a simple operation isn't possible on the iPhone because one has to go through iTunes to do anything. The process involves adding music to your iTunes library then syncing that with the iPhone. It's a chore and one that becomes nightmarish should an IOS update fail and I'm stuck having to resync everything to my phone. I've had two updates fail so far, leaving me with no choice but to start over -- install IOS and then resync my apps and music. I don't even bother with a music collection anymore as it's frustrating and time consuming to have to dump it on the phone again every couple of months after a botched IOS update.

Yes, it is possible to jailbreak the phone so as to be able to drag and drop files and etc., but I don't feel obliged to do that. I should be able to use this hardware as I see fit, but Apple doesn't want to let me. The jailbreakers, I'm told, have to deal with Apple's seemingly constant IOS updates that contain ways to thwart people who want to actually use their hardware as they'd like.

Then, of course, there's the storage limitation. In truth, 16 GB is quite a bit and most people won't exceed it. However, how hard would it have been to allow iPhone users to simply put in an SD card to boost storage capacity? While we're on the subject, why aren't we allowed to install new batteries should the ones in these things go bad? Apple, again, wants to excercise complete control over its hardware and that's a shame.

Another odd choice made by Apple is its decision to not allow Flash to run on the phone. What that means, of course, is that a lot of content on the Internet can't be viewed on the iPhone. While some dismiss the lack of Flash, it becomes a big deal when you're on that site that is brimming with content that you simply can't see.

Two issues that must be addressed have to do with call reception and battery life. In spite of all the noise about poor antenna reception when the iPhone 4 was released last year, I've never had that problem with mine. That could be because I immediately bought a bumper case and anyone who gets one of these should do the same. There is a lot of glass here (on the front and back) and it's wise to protect the phone from being scratched.

There have also been some complaints about battery usage. I do use this thing quite a bit to make phone calls and can easily get a day of moderate use out of it with one charge. I honestly have had no problems with the battery life on the iPhone 4 at all and, in fact, have had this thing last a lot longer than most phones I've owned.

The bottom line is this -- the iPhone 4 was nothing short of impressive when I first got it. After a year of using it, its subtle "charms" have become annoying. We all know the iPhone 5 will be out soon and it's long overdue as the iPhone 4 seems downright primitive and limited when compared with some of the newer Android-powered phones on the market (that 3.5" screen looks dinky in 2011, doesn't it?) It is incredible, too, that this phone just seems so out of date when it's just over a year old -- IOS, indeed, comes across as yesterday's news when compared to the latest snazzy Android offerings. One has to wonder if the newest iPhone will carry with it some of the limitations and quirks of the current one. If Apple remains true to form, it almost certainly will.