iPhone 4S Notes

First of all, how weird is it that I have a blog for things I want to publish but that I don't actually want people to read? Why is there a need to simultaneously share and not share? I could totally have just started a Word document but NO, I need it to be somehow available to the public at large. Anyway, whatever. I just bought an iPhone 4S. It's my first iPhone. Here are my thoughts.

1. It's pretty. The size is perfect, the screen is perfect, little things like the clickiness of the buttons are perfect. It feels good.

2. Setup was very different from what I'm used to. Every other major platform sans BlackBerry is heavily cloud-based, meaning you should hardly ever need to plug your phone into your computer. The iPhone is not like this. I tried to set up the phone without syncing, not to try to trick it or anything but just because that's what I'm used to. I should be able to plug my Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Rdio, Netflix, and Hulu accounts in, and then everything should be there, right? But no, not so much. I had to plug it in to sync my Google contacts. I had to plug it in to get my apps. And even now, it doesn't do things that I assumed were common to all modern smartphones, like taking my friends' pictures from Facebook and adding them to my contacts list.

3. Um why is it so goddamn difficult to select a custom ringtone? Here are the steps on Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone: open music app, browse to the song you want, tap it, select "make my ringtone," done. On iPhone, I had to manually convert, trim the length to under 40 seconds, convert again, delete all other instances of the file from both iTunes and my computer, re-import back into iTunes, go into the advanced preferences and tell iTunes to show my "ringtones" folder, drag new file from into the ringtones folder on my phone, then go into my phone's settings and select it. What the fuck. This makes me feel even more stupid because the ringtone in question is the first 30 seconds of "Gonna Make You Sweat" by C+C Music Factory, aka "Everybody Dance Now."

4. There are many apps. These apps are universally better than apps on other platforms. Android apps look embarrassingly engineer-y and ugly, WebOS apps look dead because they are dead, and Windows Phone apps are sometimes confusing or buggy and in any case are lacking in number.

5. Battery life doesn't suck. Neither my Palm Pre Plus nor any 4G LTE Android phone will actually get you through a day. The iPhone will.

6. Siri is fucked right now. It "can't connect to the network," even though I have five bars and every other part of the phone connects just fine. This is annoying for work because it's the feature of most interest to PopSci, but I personally don't care that much.

7. Notifications are still sort of stupid. The ripped-from-Android notifications shade is nice, but it keeps pestering me to join Wi-Fi networks with that damnable blue bubble.

8. Uh, yeah, the notifications shade is ripped from Android. Not that it's not bad but I always prefer companies steal from WebOS rather than Android. Also there's no way to tell what's in there without swiping it down. That keeps the status bar free of cluttery icons but means you're constantly swiping it and then being disappointed at your lonely life slash notifications shade.

9. Look widgets are mostly a terrible idea, they make Android all cluttered and ugly and inconsistent, but why doesn't the weather icon on the iPhone just update to show the god damn weather instead of always saying 73 degrees like we all live in god damn California.

11. Universal search works well. Not as well as WebOS or Android, because it only searches your phone, but much better than Windows Phone. Also I don't mind so much that it only searches the phone, it feels more concise, even though it's not as functional.

12. The camera is amazing. As amazing as you've heard. Better than my point-and-shoot, for sure.

13. It's interesting when people say it's "fast," because I find that I don't get as much of a sense for speed in it as I do with Windows Phone--there are fewer (though still a bunch) of superfluous animations, not a lot of eye candy overall. But yeah, fuck, it's the most responsive phone I've ever used. What "fast" means here is: I am never waiting.

14. Maybe I should get a Windows Phone. If only the hardware wasn't so...Samsungy. Light and plasticky and cheap-feeling DEAR SAMSUNG STOP WITH THE CHROME COLORED PLASTIC GOOD LORD. If Nokia can make a solid, metal, thin-feeling Windows Phone, and Rdio can get their shit together and fix that app, I would definitely be willing to switch. Or maybe I'll get attached to this thing first.