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So I've had my phone now for a full 48 hours. I thought I'd do a little review, as best as I can. I'm sure I'll forget some things, but I'll come back and edit as I need to.
Note: I am coming to the 4S from a BlackBerry Torch 9800. I will not compare the 4S to devices I have not owned or tried.
Set Up: Setting up the phone was relatively easy. I did it wirelessly versus plugging it into iTunes. You just follow the on screen instructions and bam, you're on your new phone! I did have trouble connecting to the internet which was frustrating. I called AT&T tech support, I didn't have to wait long and the rep was super helpful, ran a few tests and boom, I was good to go!
First thing I did was set up my preferred ringtones, install Facebook and Twitter, get both my email accounts up and running.
I manually entered all my contacts since I don't have Outlook installed on my laptop, so that was a bit time consuming, but sure enough all 50+ contacts made it into my phone by the end of the night.
I won't go further in detail about set up, it's pretty easy and I had no problems activating the phone like the news had reported some users were having.
Display and Screen: The first thing I noticed upon activating the device was the gorgeous retina display. Absolutely stunning. Coming from the 9800, this screen is just beautiful. I can't rave about it enough. It may not be the largest screen out of all the smartphones on the market, but I can almost guarantee it's the prettiest.
The touchscreen is wonderfully responsive. My 9800 touchscreen was pretty non-responsive and never flowed right. This touchscreen is so fluid and smooth. Flipping between screens and scrolling through webpages is very, very smooth. No lag, very fast.
Keyboard: As you all know, this is a virtual keyboard. I haven't had that hard of a time typing on it. My 9800 keyboard was very stiff and often hurt my fingers and hands after long periods of typing. I'm sure other BlackBerry keyboards are much better, but this is what I have to go by. The virtual keyboard is very accurate and smooth. I can't compare it with any other virtual keyboard as I've never tried an Android, but it is easily 50x better than the virtual keyboard on the 9800.
I absolutely love that the iPhone now has keyboard short cuts, it was one of my favorite things about BlackBerry. They are easy to set up and work the same way they did on my BlackBerry. The only draw back is that you have to have a minimum of two letter shortcuts, where as with BlackBerry, you can use a one letter shortcut.
Siri: My husband has played with the new Siri feature more than I have, but needless to say, she's pretty freakin' awesome. We haven't had any problems connecting to her and it's a lot of fun to ask her random questions. I set a reminder to get dog food at the grocery store and I've texted back and forth with my husband a few times. I imagine once I actually go back to work tomorrow and spend more time in my car I'll take full advantage of Siri. She's usually accurate, though sometimes you have to get a little more specific for her to figure out what you want her to do. All in all, she's a great feature.
Find My iPhone: When I first heard about Find My iPhone, I was pretty excited. I got it set up by downloading the free app and setting iCloud up on my PC. I sent my phone a "test" message from Find My iPhone on my PC and it worked, played the alert tone until I acknowledged the message on my phone.
I also backed up my phone wirelessly to iCloud though to be honest I'd have no idea how to retrieve it from iCloud, but I'll play more with that later.
Sound: The sound quality is amazing. Alerts and notifications are crisp. When you play music without headphones the sound is loud and clear, none of the metal-ish sound that I had on my 9800.
Camera: I was super excited for the upgraded camera and it is worth it! Pictures come out clear, beautiful, clean. I also downloaded an app called Instagram that lets you add filters to your photos, which I love. I also love that you can crop and enhance the photo, really nice features to have. Here are two sample photos, one of me being a dork at the fair today and one of my handsome puppy. These have been edited on Instagram with a filter. Pic 1 | Pic 2
Battery: I've been a little disappointed in the battery life. The first night I had the phone, I charged it to 98%, took it off the charger at 11:30pm, woke up at 6:15am and the battery was at 92%. Not a bad drain, it's when you use it that I notice the most drain. I learned how to close apps running in the background and I think that helps. But I've been listening to music, downloading apps, taking pictures, updating a lot on Twitter, etc, so I'm sure once I get back into my regular routine of using the phone every day, the battery won't be an issue.
I think that's about it. Not sure what else to say about the phone. Believe it or not, I haven't even used it as a phone, I've mainly been texting and playing with it. It's an amazing device. Best phone I've had to date.
If I think of anything else I'll be sure to add it.10-16-11 09:25 PM - Turn the battery percentage off and maybe you won't think about is as much
I usually juice up my iPhone 4 around middle to late afternoon at work and that will get me through the evening/night. I plug in at 9:00pm for the night. I'd consider myself a moderate to heaver user. I was moderate user until I recently got a text plan. That pushed me over to a heavy user
10-17-11 05:43 AM - Just to comment about the battery life, my hubby's iP4 definately gets better battery life than i do with my 9650.
I recall a day in the summer, we went to the beach with the kids--both of our phs started off @100%. I used his iP4 mainly on the beach to surf and tool around--drained it down to, idk 64%-ish. Used mine very little, drained it down to 45%-ish. BTW we were driving home i HAD to connect to a usb charger because i was nearing 30% (i'm anal about letting my ph go below 25-30%, whereas my hubbys sustained the whole ride home and didn't need to be hooked up till that evening--turning in for the night !!
So i agree with those of you that say the iP4 gets better batt life than a bb10-17-11 02:00 PM
