Miscellaneous iPhone Musings

I’m finally upgraded my wife’s original iPhone last week. Despite her protestations that the old one was just fine, she’s in love with the new one, a 4 not 4S.

The reason I got an iPhone 4 is, well, they’re easy to find, and I wanted this to be a surprise with instant gratification. The 4S, on the other hand, is scarce. You can order it online, but if you want to go to a physical store, you’re stuck with the reservation system, which feels like playing the lottery.

I thought this would be fine, but now Siri sounds like a useful feature for her.

Now, I’m in a weird limbo between AT&T and Apple.

AT&T says I just upgraded, so Apple can’t sell me the 4S at the subsidized rate. Full bid is $649. I would go directly to AT&T to get the 4S, but they have no stock and no idea of when any will be arriving.

Apple has stock online, but I’d have to downgrade the phone, hoping the old one would work at all while we waited for the new 4S to arrive. Bit of a bummer. The best bet now is to try the reservation system for the physical stores, but that’s dicey.

Why can’t these things be easy?

And with Black Friday looming, does Apple plan to let this shortage continue?

Anyway, beyond that pickle, this is first time I’ve seen an iPhone 4 up close and used one, and I have to say it’s a great device. I haven’t used an iPhone much since I went Android last year, and the iPhone I left behind was an original one which I’d carried since they were introduced in Summer 2007.

The 4 is a beautiful device, fast, responsive and fun to use. So, pretty much what you’d expect from Apple, and that last bit gets lost for me on Android at times. I love Android and don’t plan to switch any time soon, but it can be a chore at times.

Plus, the wife loves the new phone, which is good.

Probably the biggest difference I’ve noticed is the camera. We take lots of pictures and video of our infant daughter, and the colors from the iPhone camera are so much richer. Plus, there’s very little shutter lag in the camera app, whereas my Nexus S constantly misses cute moments due to a bad lag.

This is set to change any day now, I hope, with Android 4.0.

Moving on to semi-related musings, one thing trend has become clear. Apple has been releasing an incrementally better iPhone in odd years, the 3G S in 2009, now the 4S in 2011. I assume this helps their supply chain empty some components, since outwardly, the S iPhones are identical to the predecessors.

If it holds, this cycle screws the people who buy in the S year because they are forever tied to a two-year contract, meaning to get the awesome new hotness released in the even years, they’ll either have to buy out or pay to upgrade after only a year or wait an extra year after their contracts expire.

Will that matter? Will it encourage carrier competition?

Back to camera apps, one thing my wife wanted was an app that did rapid shots, another great way to catch a cute moment by delaying the processing. This will be in Android 4.0’s camera app, but it’s not in iOS.

After asking Twitter, Hipstamatic was recommended. So, I ponied up the $1.99 to try it.

After last week’s discussion of skeuomorphism, I was surprised to find such a terrible example. Hipstamatic is one of the many retro-filter-adding apps like Instagram, but they’ve taken a slavish approach to retro, copying the tiny view finder and faux mottled plastic.

The view finder has to be 30% of the screen, which makes it very tough to see your subject.

Plus, the interface is so retro, the controls to swap filters and flashes are hidden behind an icon you can barely see that has no affordance for its function. I’m a very experienced user, and it took me 15 minutes to find it. As for the rapid fire, no affordances at all, just poke the giant yellow take-picture button repeatedly.

Unfortunately, like Instragram, Hipstamatic saves your filtered image, but not its original, unfiltered version. I wonder how many people who are gaga for filtered pictures today will be sad in ten years when they can’t recover the actual images as they were.

I’m not sure if they strip the EXIF, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Anyway, Twitter also recommended Camera+, which does a much better job at everything for only $0.99. No filters, no auto-saving images, usable UI.

I told you in the title these were musings. Find the comments with your own.