Tuesday, June 8, 2010

iPhone 4 Love it or Hate it

Today was a big day for Apple fans out there as Steve Jobs finally unveiled the new iPhone at his WWDC keynote presentation. Not that we haven't seen the iPhone 4 before. A few months before images and video of the iPhone 4 were readily available due to Gizmodo's stolen iPhone. But the big question today is whether or not the new iPhone is a game changer or just more of the same.

Personally I don't think this new iPhone is enough of a step up to really get me excited. Maybe it was simply that Gizmodo took the wind out of Apples sails, by revealing the phone so many months before it was unveiled. Or the lack of live video of the event, but it really wasn't that exciting this time around. The iPhone's biggest new feature seems to be the "FaceTime" feature (Or husband tracker as I call it), which will allow users to make video calls to other iPhone 4 users. FaceTime sounds like a great feature, but I can't imagine it getting a lot of use other than in special cases. Many of you might remember my article from a few months back discussing Skype video calling being built in to TVs. In the Times article, which I sited for my post, Sherry Turkle, a MIT professor of social studies, found that people in general weren't that interested in real time conversations. Thus people were not interested in Skype or video calling. Could FaceTime change that? I'm just not sure.

The big problem that I see with FaceTime is that it requires Wi-Fi and can't function over your data connection. As soon as Steve said that FaceTime wouldn’t work over data connections, I told myself that I would never use this feature. Sure I could see myself using it from home, but I can't see myself going out and using an open WiFi point. Security is a concern for me, and so open Wi-Fi is definitely out for me. So really I would use this feature only from home, which would limit its usefulness to me, especially since I could always use Skype video.

As for all of the other new iPhone features, I came away feeling a bit underwhelmed. Other than iPhone 4’s new design and noise cancelling features, etc., it feels like pretty much the same phone as the previous generation.

So will I buy one? Probably not. I know I mentioned before that I work for Wind here in Canada and unfortunately the new iPhone doesn't support our network, so I don't see myself switching carriers to get one. But if it did support our network, I just don't know if I would buy one. I must admit that I'm kind of personally over the iPhone and I find myself more interested in what's happening with Android. Then again, that’s just me.

So, what about you? Do you plan on getting an iPhone? Or are you just not interested?

2 comments:

  1. It just looks like Apple have finally caught up with SOME of the basic features that other mobile manufacturers have included in nearly every smartphone for the last 3 years. Very uninteresting. Nokia N8 looks far more exciting.

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  2. Truth be told your right. Apple has finally put copy and paste into this device. I really don't know why it took them that long to put it in. But its here.

    The one thing Apple has going for itself is that they put everything together in such a way that people get excited and it just works. At least that's what all the reviewers and comments that I see around the net.
    If the iPhone is really better than the other phones I hope they keep it up, since it pushes the other mobile phone companies to make better phones. So we all end up winning even if we don't buy an iPhone.

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