Walt Mossberg of Wall Street Journal was given an iPhone 4 by Apple about a month ago as a testing unit. In his review, he mentioned iPhone 4 as the best smartphone available. Now six weeks after the launch of iPhone 4, Mossberg has shared his real world experience with his two units of iPhone 4. Mossberg still considers iPhone 4 as ‘the best device of its class’, but he recommends not to use it as a primary phone if you live in an area with weak AT&T coverage.
After my six weeks of constant use of two iPhone 4s, I still believe it is, overall, the best device in its class, for reasons including its ultra high-resolution screen; easy, integrated video calling; slick software; strong battery life; a remarkably thin body; and a world-beating selection of 225,000 third-party apps.
After using two iPhone 4 units for 6 weeks, one with iOS 4 and other with iOS 4.0.1 he found that iPhone 4 generally performs better than iPhone 3GS in areas where signals strength is good or average. But in areas where signal strength was poor, iPhone 3GS had better signal strength than iPhone 4. While in that case iPhone 4 showed no signals or was just searching for them. However iPhone 4 still dropped more calls than iPhone 3GS in different places as in places with very weak signals or in a moving car.
Talking about the antenna ‘death grip’ issue, he said that handling the iPhone 4 from its antenna place makes the bars go down or sometimes even go up, but it hardly effects calls. While testing the bumper for iPhone 4, he found that it nearly eliminated the problem but there were still dropped calls.
In his conclusion, Mossberg said:
So that’s my six-week, real-world report. Despite the hot-spot issue and the exposed antenna, the iPhone 4 does better than the 3GS for me in decent coverage. But I still wouldn’t advise adopting it as your primary phone if you live, work or travel in areas with poor AT&T reception, or if you prefer a network under less stress.
