iPhone 4

I got an iPhone 4. It’s my first smart phone.

Signal
The one thing everyone’s talking about and the one thing I most noticed with the iPhone is the signal, but it’s not what you might think. My old phone was using Telus’ old CDMA network, I couldn’t make a phone call or receive a phone call with much luck in my apartment. While I don’t live in Toronto’s downtown core, I’m not far from it. At Broadview and Danforth, if you can’t get a cell phone signal, that’s just pathetic.

Now that I’m on Telus’ HSPA+ network (3G), my signal has drastically improved. You can call me if you want. I might not answer.

As far as the antenna issue that has been widely reported. Yeah, if I hold it in a certain way, I lose signal. I just don’t hold it that way, and Apple’s sending me a free case.

Apps
Here’s where I need help. What can you suggest? I don’t have many installed. Shazaam, Epicurious, Facebook, Twitter, Google Mobile, Google Earth, Remote, Urbanspoon, and VLCRemote. I don’t care about games, just applications which will make my life better. What can you suggest.

Calculator
Is it weird that I really love the look and interface of the calculator? My old phone had the shittiest calculator interface, and I used it all the time. This excites me.

32GB is not enough space
I have a large music collection, I want to have all of it on my iPhone. I can’t. Instead what I’m doing is putting what’s on my 30GB iPod (which will now live in my glove box) onto the iPhone, here’s the catch. To fit all that on, I need to use the new feature “Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 Kbps AAC.” Fab, perfect, except one thing. It takes forever to convert and transfer that much data.

Syncing and communication or use
When the phone’s syncing, which I said takes a while, you cannot use the iPhone. To do so will stop the data transfer. So if a call or more likely a text message comes in, to reply to it, you have to cancel the sync. If Emily’s wondering why it took me so long to answer her questions about going to the Miller abode, that would be why.

Sync Ringtones disables Manually Manage Music
I saw that my ringtones weren’t on the phone, so I turned on sync ringtones. Bad idea. That disabled manually manage music, and so all the music I spent days transferring was removed from the phone. Last night, it synced only about 2000 songs between 2am and 9am. We’re at 2179/4195. Sigh.

Battery life seems amazing
Can’t say more, until I use it more.

Google Sync
I use Google Hosted Apps with two domains, anklewicz.com/neverhadtofight.com (they’re the same) and myemployer.ca. I did a quick search to find out how to sync all the contacts, mail, and calendars from both accounts, and followed the instructions. Unlike the BlackBerry Google Sync, which falls to the symptoms of bad UI that BlackBerrys are known for, this was easy as pie, and I didn’t have to download any Google software. I just entered my account info into Mail, and it pulled all three things, calendar, contacts, mail. Fuck yeah!

Which calendar do you want
This one has absolutely nothing to do with Apple, that I can tell. When I connect my two accounts, it grabs the main calendar on each account. However, I have numerous calendars on each account. I have my FB Events calendar, my “Rock and/or roll” calendar, all the school calendars, etc, etc. To tell it to sync the other calendars, is roundabout and silly. You have to go to Google, and then log into your domain account, and then go to settings, and do this and that and choose this and that. It works now, though.

Making ringtones is fun

The screen and UI are elegant and beautiful

It’s much thinner than my old phone which did much less

I can’t answer it like Captain Kirk

The tinny speakers are kind of shit, but at a picnic or BBQ, you can bring it out to play music without brining another device