MacNews and MacTech Editors spent a good amount of time this afternoon with the new iPhone. We wanted to share our initial impressions.
First, it’s fast. Apple didn’t have anything specific on how fast the new A4 processor was, but it was noticeably fast. It reminded us more of the iPad’s performance rather than the the iPhone 3GS. In some cases, we saw apps load 2-3x faster.
It’s thin. The thinness is noticeable. It feels super solid though.
While the edges are not as curved as the 3GS, the phone was very comfortable in our front pocket — even with blue jeans.
Facetime is astoundingly simple. It will simply feel to you like you’ve always used it. There’s nothing to learn. You just connect. To swap from front side to back side camera is trivial, and has an obvious button. You can do it whenever you want, as often as you want, and it’s easy and smooth. While not supported yet, promoting Mac sales through iChat support of Facetime is a no brainer.
The pictures are clear — very clear. iMovie is surprisingly usable despite a very small form factor.
Because AT&T struggles with this number of people having iPhones, it would be unfair to test the 3G. And, given the thousands of WiFi users, we didn’t want to test that either … but from what we could tell, it worked fairly well.
The big thing, beyond the above, is the screen. The MacNews (and MacTech) web pages were unbelievably clear and easy to read. Yeah, you may need reading glasses, but it’s amazing how readable even the smallest of print is, and how beautiful the regular size text is.
For most iPhone users, this really is the biggest jump forward for the iPhone platform.
See our full coverage of the keynote at
http://www.macnews.com/2010/06/07/continually-updated-notes-jobs-wwdc-keynote
