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Tuesday, July 6th, 2010help | Posted by Editor - Blog News Service

Tech Review of the iPhone 4

Tech Review of the iPhone 4

Tech Review of the iPhone 4

By Jacqui Cheng
The iPhone 4 is Apple’s “biggest leap since the original iPhone,” at least according to Steven P. Jobs speaking at the WWDC 2010 keynote. Indeed, in the three years since Apple first introduced the iPhone, the device has come quite far. At the same time, the basic concepts behind the iPhone have remained very consistent over the years. Despite regular modifications to the OS and yearly hardware upgrades, the iPhone 4 is very much a more modern, more capable version of that original device that made such a splash in the industry back in 2007.

We’re not living with our heads in the sand: if you have come to hate the iPhone, walled gardens for developers, and everything Apple stands for, you will likely hate the iPhone 4, and there’s nothing anyone can say to change your mind. Luckily for you, Apple is no longer competing against the saddest of the sad: there are now plenty of solid phones from other manufacturers that have multitouch screens, app stores of their own, great cameras, and much more extensible OSs. If you are curious about Apple’s latest offering, however, read on. The iPhone 4 is not without its flaws—some of them more serious than others—but the device remains a really cool evolution in Apple’s lineup.

(We have already reviewed the majority of the OS, now called iOS 4, in a separate review. If you’re looking to read about our impressions of the features in iOS 4, go read that one first and come back. This review is focused on the hardware of the new iPhone and on specific parts of iOS 4 that are limited to the iPhone 4.)
What you get in your grubby little hands

The iPhone 4 comes with the same accessories that iPhones have come with since the iPhone 3G launched in 2008 (sans microfiber cloth): a wall plug, a syncing cable, and a set of Apple earbuds with a built-in mic. The device does not come with a dock—that costs extra, to the tune of $30—but a dock isn’t necessary in order to use it with a computer. (I prefer using a dock at my desk, however, so I always find myself forking over the dock tax.)

The phone itself, as you likely already know, has a completely new design compared to previous generations of iPhones. Gone is the curved back of the iPhone 3GS and 3G, and the plastic has given way to glass. The iPhone 4 is flat from top to bottom, making it considerably thinner than its predecessor: 0.37 inches thick versus the 0.48 of the 3GS/3G. Otherwise, it’s basically the same overall shape: 4.5 inches tall (same as previous iPhones) and 2.31 inches wide (slightly thinner).

You might think that the 0.11 inch difference wouldn’t be all that noticeable, and it doesn’t even look like much in the picture, but it is—possibly because the back is now flat and doesn’t have the same “fat” feeling of the 3GS and 3G. For comparison’s sake, the HTC Evo is also 0.47 inches thick, almost the same as the iPhone 3GS, but otherwise has very similar dimensions to the iPhone 4 (4.63 inches tall and 2.3 inches wide). Weight-wise, they are all similar as well: the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS are both 4.8oz.

My, what a nice display

One of the iPhone 4’s major selling points is its new 960×640, 3.5 inch display. That display crams in 326 pixels per inch, and the difference is noticeable, even if most average users may not be able to articulate why.

Graphics and text are noticeably smoother on the new iPhone than on any other device from Apple, and the iPhone 4 beats out most other popular devices from third parties as well in this regard. Aside from instances where an app’s artwork is out-of-date, pixels are basically indistinguishable by the naked eye. Even users who think this detail is unimportant remark on the quality of the screen.

In addition to visible pixels (or lack thereof, as the case may be), the iPhone 4’s display is much more contrasty than previous models thanks to the IPS technology. The tint is a bit yellower than the 3GS, but colors are brighter and blacks are blacker than previous iPhone models.

Also different is Apple’s use of an aluminum-based ceramic glass for the front of the display (this same material is on the phone’s back). Apple claims the glass has been chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic. Thanks to its recent teardown, iFixit believes the glass is Corning Gorilla Glass, which is known for being strong, lightweight, and very scratch-resistant. We have not yet managed to do any damage to the glass on our iPhones. (I tend to be very rough with my phones—I don’t use a case and I throw the phone into pockets with keys and other sharp objects all the time.) However, we have already heard numerous horror stories online about people cracking the glass thanks to one drop.
iPhone 4 cameras (front and back)

The iPhone 4 camera includes an improved sensor and lens, as well as an added—and surprisingly capable—LED flash.

We already discussed the iPhone 4 camera hardware improvements in detail recently, but we’ll give a quick recap before digging in to its actual performance.

First, Apple replaced the 1/4″ 3.1MP CMOS sensor of the iPhone 3GS with a 1/3.2″ 5MP backside illuminated CMOS sensor. By increasing the size of sensor itself, the size of the individual pixels remains the same between generations—at a 1.75µm pixel pitch—which would maintain the same sensitivity. However, Apple went one step further and utilized the newest OmniBSI sensor from OmniVision. Backside illumination changes the physical layering of circuit elements in the sensor so that more light reaches the individual photo diodes in each pixel location.

In addition to the sensor itself, Apple improved the lens to account for the increase in resolution. Mated to the larger sensor, the 3.85mm focal length lens gives a slightly wider angle of view than previous iPhones. Those earlier models had angle of view comparable to a 37mm lens in 35mm format, while the iPhone 4 lens is closer to a 28mm lens. (Comparisons to APS-C format, common to most non-pro DSLRs, are 23mm and 18mm, respectively.)
iPhone 4 front-facing camera

The improved sensor allowed Apple to increase the video recording capabilities to 720p HD at 30fps. Apple also added an LED-based “flash” to help illuminate indoor and darkly lit subjects, and this flash can also be used when recording video. And finally, it added a VGA resolution camera to the front of the phone, capable of both still and video recording. While the camera’s main purpose is to enable video calling via FaceTime, it also makes taking self-portraits a snap. We found it especially handy for taking super-emo Facebook and Twitter profile pics.

We covered some of the improvements in the Camera app in our review of iOS 4, including the 5x digital zoom and the ability to view images via geotags as Places. On the iPhone 4, Camera also adds two new controls: one to activate the LED flash, and another for the front-facing camera. On the top left, a translucent button lets you set the flash to auto (the default), on, or off. On the top right is a translucent control that lets you switch between the rear and front cameras. These controls work for both stills and video—you can take low-resolution snaps with the front-facing camera, or use the LED as a spotlight when shooting video. One quirk we noticed is that the flash control resets to “auto” when Camera is quit and relaunched, while the front/back camera control seems to stick between launches.
iPhone 4 camera inerface

We took an iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 3G to the park during the day and to a local watering hole at night to take a few comparison shots and get a feel for the relative performance of the improved hardware. The phone also came along for a bike ride to the Taste of Chicago and up the lakefront path for some more picture-taking opportunities.
Front-facing camera still

Overall, the iPhone 4 camera takes great pictures. The improved sensor and lens definitely capture more detail than previous iPhones. The wider angle of view makes composition in tricker situations, like large groups, tight spaces, etc, much easier. The new lens also focuses much faster than the iPhone 3GS, which helps improve shutter lag.

And speaking of shutter lag, the iPhone 4 hardly has any—it’s as fast as any point-and-shoot we’ve ever used. It’s clear the Apple engineered lag out of the camera module itself, and the lag likely also benefits from improved software and the speedy A4 processor. Two features that might decrease lag further would be a separate hardware button and a mechanical, MEMS-based shutter. Apple probably won’t include a button (though we’d really like one), but a MEMS shutter could appear in iPhone 5.

Though the image quality is great, even at the minimum ISO 80, images are somewhat noisy compared to many current point-and-shoot digital cameras. That noise isn’t noticeable unless you’re zoomed in 100 percent, though, and is as good as any comparable mobile phone on the market. In low-light images, there is definitely more noise, but it appears to be strictly luminance noise, similar to Nikon and some Panasonic digital cameras. We find this less annoying than the blotchy chroma noise of the iPhone 3G, and fairly comparable in quality to the iPhone 3GS. (It’s also easier to filter out using something like Noise Ninja.) Also like most Nikons, the iPhone 4 tends toward slight over-exposure and over-saturation. Picky pros might find it objectionable, as sometimes highlights or large areas of bright colors lose all detail, but this type of rendering is what an average consumer would say really “pops.”

Apple still hasn’t offered any kind of exposure compensation control (we’d definitely take that over the current digital zoom). However, using the tap-to-focus feature to find the right area to bias the programmed autoexposure can work as sort of a makeshift exposure control. It’s not perfect, but it sure beats the iPhone 3G.

As the light goes down, however, the iPhone 4 camera keeps chugging along. It seems that the Camera app will try to keep the ISO from going up to keep noise down, but it also means you might be getting slower than expected shutter speeds. We think it would be better to bias this tradeoff in favor of faster shutter speeds, which is pretty easy to fix via a software update.

We also briefly experimented with the digital zoom. If you’re a fan of Matisse, you probably won’t be as disappointed with the maximum 5x setting—the results are strictly impressionistic. Pushing the zoom slider as far as halfway produced results that were acceptable. However, it seems that the viewfinder also becomes much less accurate with digital zoom. Our advice: just avoid using it. In fact, we’d love it if Apple added a preference to turn the feature off altogether, since tapping near the bottom of the screen will display the control, and it means you won’t be able to focus on something on the extreme bottom or right of the frame (depending on orientation).

One relatively minor trade-off for the increase in resolution is that images take up more space than images from previous iPhones. The iPhone 3G (and original iPhone) averaged about 700KB per image, and the iPhone 3GS averaged about 1.3MB, while the iPhone 4 averages about 2.1MB. I myself tend to take a lot of snaps and download infrequently, so I had about 300 images taking up about 185MB on my iPhone 3G. That same number of images would occupy 630MB on the iPhone 4—that’s only about 5 percent of the available space on a 16GB iPhone 4, though.

When it comes to the most demanding of lighting situations—a murky, late-night bar—the iPhone 4’s backside illumination performs well. With double the sensitivity of the iPhone 3GS, and nearly double the pixel count, the iPhone 4 does a great job of balancing detail, noise, contrast, and exposure.

Is this detail comparison (below), you can see a 2MP iPhone 3G image at 100 percent zoom. The iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 images were then sized to match. Look at the detail the iPhone 4 captures in the eyelashes in particular.

The LED flash also performs very well. Apple wisely chose to use a warmer white LED, which is very close to daylight balance. Many other similarly equipped mobile phones use cheaper “cool white” LEDs, which tend to make images bluish—especially ghastly for skin tones. The Camera app will also attempt to blend in some background ambient light. You’ll notice this when using the flash—the exposure will drop slightly when you push the shutter button, with the flash filling in the rest. We were surprised just how well it worked, given our previous experience with LED flash.

As a still camera, the iPhone 4 is a great performer. For all but the pickiest shooters, it can save you from carrying another expensive and often bulky gadget for casual shooting.
Video chat with FaceTime

Another feature that Apple’s marketing department is pushing heavily is FaceTime, a (now) open protocol built into iOS 4—it currently only works on iPhone 4, and it allows you to conduct video chats with other iPhone 4 users. As noted at the WWDC 2010 keynote, this feature only works over WiFi for the moment, though Apple indicates that it may eventually work over the cell network.

It was not immediately obvious to us on how, exactly, to initiate a FaceTime call. The setting is supposed to be enabled by default, but I (and several other followers on Twitter) found it turned off when I went into my Settings (it’s in Settings > Phone > FaceTime slider). Once you turn it on, you can then initiate a call by going into your contact’s entry and tapping the FaceTime button.

The iPhone will apparently show you this button for every contact, whether or not they have a phone with FaceTime capabilities. If you try to FaceTime call someone who doesn’t have it, the phone tries, and then tells you it can’t connect. We’re not sure what a better implementation of this would be (how could the phone constantly keep track of who has FaceTime capabilities and who doesn’t?), but as it is now, it might end up being a little confusing to regular users. It’s fine for us nerds who have nothing better to do than to remember which friends have iPhone 4s, but what about everyone else?

That said, in our tests, FaceTime worked well when we tried it with users who were not using their corporate WiFi networks. People who were on their home networks, open WiFi at coffee shops, public WiFi in the park—you name it, and it worked. Generally speaking, FaceTime took a few seconds to connect, though it occasionally took a little longer if the network was spotty or slow.

We consistently had problems connecting to users who were trying to do FaceTime at work. The protocol is allegedly supposed to work around corporate firewalls and blocked ports, but so is iChat on the Mac, and corporate users can attest to that not always working well either. In addition to our own experiences while testing, I tweeted about this issue and got back numerous responses from iPhone 4 users saying they had trouble getting FaceTime to connect at work, too, so clearly it’s a problem for those types of users.

When we polled our readers recently on whether they were looking forward to the feature, many were either unsure whether they would use it or said they were not planning to. I fell into the latter category—I don’t make many voice calls as it is, and I definitely don’t want people to see me most of the time when I am on the phone.

Despite this, I found myself growing to like FaceTime more and more over the course of testing. Granted, all of the FaceTime calls I have conducted so far have been for testing or novelty purposes—we’ll have to see how well this feature sticks after the novelty wears off—but I found myself not minding having a face-to-face video chat as much as I thought I would. In fact, I found it kind of enjoyable, and it really made me feel like I was having a much more “real” conversation with the person than I would if it was voice-only. In fact, there were a couple calls in which I meant to only test the feature, but they ended up turning into work-productive calls like an actual meeting. You almost feel as if you need to talk about something substantial when you’re looking at the person.

Yes, many other phones have had video chatting features for some time—particularly in Europe and Asia, as mobile technology there is actually somewhere beyond the Jurassic time period—but this was my first experience with a mainstream phone that has such a feature. I’m still not sure how much I will seek out having these kinds of calls with others (and there are almost no kids in my life, which seems to be a major draw for video chats), but I definitely feel more positive about FaceTime than I did before I used it.

Obviously, the major downside is that no one else uses FaceTime besides Apple, and the feature is currently only available in the iPhone 4. Apple hopes that third parties will adopt the FaceTime protocol, and we’ll eventually be having video chats with users on other devices and platforms, but whether that will actually happen remains to be seen.
HD video

Another major draw of the iPhone 4 is its ability to take HD videos. The 3GS could also take videos, but the iPhone 4 now shoots them in full 720p. Apple’s target here is clearly the Flip market: the type of people who want to shoot short videos in high resolution, but don’t want to use a bigger or bulkier piece of equipment to do it.

When it comes to the actual video, though, the iPhone 4 is fair-to-middlin’. With 720p HD resolution, you’ll capture plenty of detail, and the built-in microphone works well enough for general purposes. Apple thankfully added tap-to-focus for video, which will adjust exposure and focus to the area you tap in the frame. Ironically, though, the device’s light weight makes it difficult to hand-hold the iPhone 4, so tap-to-focus can be hit-or-miss in some cases. Also, the LED flash functions as a torch light when shooting video, with the same auto, on, or off controls. The useable range seems to be about 6-8 feet or so, depending on how much ambient lighting is in the room.
iPhone 4 versus Flip UltraHD

Up front, we’ll say that we think the iPhone 4 will steal a good number of customers away from the Flip simply out of the convenience factor alone. You’re more likely to have your phone on you at any given time than a single-purpose, pocket-sized video camera. And, why bother spending the extra $150 to $230 for a separate device that will shoot a similar video to what comes with your phone already?

That said, there are some differences between 720p video shot with a Flip versus the iPhone 4 camera. For these comparisons, we used a Flip UltraHD, which runs $200 right now and comes with 8GB of built-in memory.

In all, the video capabilities are an improvement over the iPhone 3GS, and will likely replace a compact camcorder for some users. Others may find that the quality advantages of carrying a Flip-type camera is worth worrying about another device, however.

How is it as a phone?

The iPhone 4 sports a new antenna design that is meant to improve reception and overall call quality. Instead of being buried within the case, Apple designed the wireless antennas to be integrated into the stainless steel frame and bezel of the phone—iFixit describes this as a “work of genius.” As you’ve no doubt heard by now, however, this design also apparently has a major downside: numerous users have discovered that holding the phone in a certain way in your hand appears to degrade signal and, in some cases, drop calls.

We were able to reproduce this problem consistently once we learned the proper technique for “cupping” the phone—before watching a video how to do this, several of us on staff were unable to just figure out on our own how to make this happen. It seems to happen in both high and low coverage areas, though it happens more severely in areas that are less 3G-saturated.

The trick seemed to work better when we moistened our hands, but it’s hard to tell whether this was directly related to the signal-dropping effect or not. We also tried it with the phone wrapped in saran wrap, and signal still dropped, but seemingly not as much as with bare hands. Regardless, the end result is the same: this is a real phenomenon and a very disappointing development, though how it affects you personally could vary wildly. During our testing, this did not seem to affect our actual phone calls outside of when we were explicitly trying to degrade the signal.

The wireless antenna experts at AntennaSys have written on their blog about the issue after having been contacted by numerous news orgs to try and explain whats going on. The basic gist from AntennaSys is that the iPhone (and other phones, such as Google’s Nexus One, a smattering of Nokia phones, and the HTC Droid Incredible) may suffer this problem partly due to FCC restrictions on antenna design, which happen to force antenna placement in an area where people are likely hold the device.

“Just about every cell phone in current production has the antenna located at the bottom. This insures that the radiating portion of the antenna is furthest from the head. Apple was not the first to locate the antenna on the bottom, and certainly won’t be the last,” wrote AntennaSys. “The iPhone 4 has two symmetrical slots in the stainless frame. If you short these slots, or cover them with your hand, the antenna performance will suffer… There is no way around this, it’s a design compromise that is forced by the requirements of the FCC, AT&T, Apple’s marketing department and Apple’s industrial designers, to name a few.”

There’s also rumor running through the grapevine that Apple plans to release an update to the OS (iOS 4.01) soon that will help recalibrate the baseband frequency of the antenna. Let’s just say that we here on staff are very skeptical—it certainly doesn’t seem as if this is a problem that can be remedied through software, especially when you consider the input from experts about antenna design and the fact that other phones have shown the same problems. We’ll reserve judgement until such an update comes out, but we’re not holding our breath.
But otherwise…

When it came to actually making calls and pulling down 3G data, the phone performed well. Phone calls sounded good and we were actually able to hold phone conversations in areas where we previously got poor reception and/or dropped calls in the past. There are still black holes, though: my upstairs bathroom is a notorious Faraday cage for phones and carriers of all kinds (don’t ask how we all know this), and the iPhone 4 miraculously got working voice and data signal up there. However, a favorite restaurant of mine in downtown Chicago is also notorious for poor phone reception, and the iPhone 4 did not pull through in that case. Some places are still just hopeless, even in major cities.

Data on the iPhone 4 can be very fast—it now supports High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) in addition to the High-Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) introduced in the 3GS. This translates to theoretical speeds of 5.76 Mbps uploads and 7.2 Mbps downloads in areas where the protocols are supported, and the faster upload speeds are noticeable. Putting a 15-second video on YouTube was near instantaneous when we tried it in downtown Chicago—much faster than uploads typically are on the 3GS.

Overall, we found performance as a phone to be much improved over previous models. However, the signal-dropping antenna issue gives us pause—despite the fact that it didn’t affect us much in real-world usage, we hesitate to recommend that people buy a phone with such a flaw until there’s some kind of fix that doesn’t involve giving Apple another $30 for a bumper. Customers deserve better than that, so buy at your own risk.
Battery life

One of the major complaints about recent iPhones (the 3G and 3GS models) has been battery life. Indeed, Apple’s most recent effort before the iPhone 4 had a pretty poor showing, especially compared to the original iPhone. Apple is trying to remedy that with the iPhone 4—the device has a bigger battery and Apple claims it can get up to 7 hours of talk time on 3G, up to 6 hours of Internet use on 3G (10 hours on WiFi), up to 10 hours of video, up to 40 hours of audio, and up to 300 hours of standby.
General use: 25 hours

The first test we tried was a general use test aimed at simulating how most people use their phones in an average day. Most people don’t sit around watching 10 hours straight of video unless they’re stuck on a plane across the Pacific. You usually do a few calls, post some tweets, maybe catch a YouTube video or two, put it down for a while to work, answer a text from your kid, check Yelp for a review of that one restaurant, put it down again, listen to music for a couple hours, read Ars, etc.

We did all of the above activities on and off for a full day, took the iPhone along on a night out with friends, and didn’t plug it in overnight. Doing all this (which I would categorize as moderately high usage, but not insanely high), the phone lasted almost exactly 25 hours on a full charge. Based on our regular experiences with both the original iPhone and the 3GS, this basically falls in between: much better performance than the 3GS (I not-really joked to someone that the 3GS would die, recharge, and die again during that same period of time), and not quite as good as the original iPhone. The original iPhone doesn’t have a 3G radio, though, so this isn’t surprising.
Video: 11.5 hours

We also ran the iPhone down several times watching a video playlist. During this time, we left 3G and WiFi on and kept things like e-mail pulling down new messages in the background. We did this both at home and traveling around the city so the phone was making use of both WiFi and 3G, but otherwise it did nothing but play video. Screen brightness was roughly in the middle and set to auto-brightness. Again, Apple’s claim is that the phone can last for up to 10 hours for video, but in our tests, we actually came up with about 11.5 hours, given all these factors.

We should note that we have regularly been getting better-than-advertised performance when doing video tests on Apple products in the last year or so, so this isn’t as surprising to us as it might be to you. We have no doubt that you’ll be able to extend your video-watching battery life beyond that 11.5 hours if you keep the screen brightness low and turn off as many radio antennas as possible.

One strange behavior we noticed while doing battery testing is that the phone appears to stop making use of WiFi—but not 3G—when the battery level gets below 4 percent. This happened several times when we ran it down. The phone can still make calls, send texts, and view locally stored content, but forget trying to check e-mail, bring down tweets, or load webpages. That 4 percent doesn’t seem like much, but that’s a good 10 or 15 minutes of extra data usage that we can’t seem to get before the phone dies.
Music: 25-30 hours

Similar to the video test, we ran the iPhone 4’s battery down while playing locally-stored music through the iPod app. We left 3G and WiFi on and the same activities running in the background, with the same screen brightness settings (but since listening to music is mainly a screen-agnostic activity, that element is basically irrelevant). We only fiddled with the screen very occasionally to check the battery levels and choose new songs. Volume was set at just over halfway up on the slider.

Apple claims up to 40 hours of audio, and we ended up getting an average of somewhere between 25 and 30 hours. Although we have consistently gotten longer-than-advertised life in the video area, music is a different beast. Still, 30 hours straight is decently good (if not extremely unlikely to happen in one giant block—you do need to sleep, after all). And again, this can undoubtedly be extended if you were to turn off WiFi, 3G, and GPS, or simply go into airplane mode.
Recharge cycle: ~1.5 hours

In testing, the phone usually took about 95 minutes or so to fully charge while plugged into a computer.

Gyroscope

Past iPhone models have already come with a number of sensors: accelerometer, compass (new in the 3GS last year), proximity sensor, and ambient light sensor. New to the iPhone 4 is a gyroscope, which joins these other sensors—particularly the accelerometer—in offering even more possibilities when it comes to gaming. Using the CoreMotion APIs, developers can make use of the gyroscope to roll, pitch, and yaw, making the iPhone sensitive to motion on six total axes.

When Steve Jobs demoed this feature at WWDC (YouTube video posted by TouchArcade), he demoed a custom Jenga-like app that he could control by tilting and turning his whole body. There’s clearly great potential for this capability, as has already been demoed by the Wii Motion Plus.

At the time of this writing, there are very few games available on the App Store that make use of the gyroscope. One such game is Eliminate: GunRange by ngmoco, which allows you to fire weapons using the gyroscopic controls. A video demo posted to YouTube shows how the user can move around the scene and control guns by tilting and moving the phone. Another one is the Rubik’s Cube app by Magmic, Inc, which allows you to use the gyroscopic controls to twist and turn the cube to solve the puzzle.

There’s great potential here: the iPhone already has a huge following when it comes to gaming, and that popularity only continues to grow. As more developers take advantage of the gyroscopic capabilities of the iPhone 4, we’ll continue to see growth in this area. Whether the iPhone is the best mobile gaming platform remains up for debate, but it’s one of the most convenient (you almost always have your phone with you) and it’s certainly good enough to stay among the top contenders.
Speed

by Clint Ecker

The iPhone 4 runs on Apple’s A4 processor that was debuted in the iPad—with an extra 256MB of RAM, for a total of 512 (503MB which is available to the OS and applications). The A4 is fairly well understood to be an ARM Cortex A8 processor with fun tweaks made by Apple. However, unlike the iPad, we’re pretty certain at this point that the A4 in the iPhone 4 is not running at 1GHz as it is in the iPad. Querying the processor speed from an application results in a value of 0.00GHz being returned, which is no help. Since the iPad outperforms the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4’s processor is probably clocked somewhere around 800MHz. This is despite the fact that the iPhone 4 has double the memory and is running iOS 4, which squeaks out some extra performance from being largely compiled with LLVM instead of GCC.

That being said, the new processor, while slightly slower than the iPad’s, is a big jump up from what 3G and even 3GS users are used to. With this new processing capacity comes the ability to do more complex operations in applications and games. Zen Bound developer Jani Kahrama has talked about how iOS4’s hardware AA support is fast enough to be usable on the iPhone 4.

“It’s fantastic that iOS4 finally adds hardware AA support to iPhone and iPod touch devices. There is a performance cost… ultimately it depends on the game itself if this can be used or not”, Kahrama said, adding the caveat, “I personally expect AA to be enabled in most upcoming iPhone games, the visual benefit is simply too great to ignore… [W]hat remains to be seen is if game developers in general will stick to native resolution in their iPhone 4 support or go with 480*320 with AA enabled for their 3D games. The latter should look darn good and allow the GPU on iPhone4 to work on nicer graphical effects or simply guarantee a smoother frame rate if the game so requires.”

In addition to the CPU boost, increased memory capacity, and better compiler, the iPhone benefits from improved network speed in areas—generally top-tier markets—where AT&T has deployed 7.2Mbit/sec HSDPA. It’s immediately noticeable that webpages load quicker and network-intensive operations, such as uploading videos to YouTube or MobileMe, are much faster. We’ve performed some vanilla speed tests and webpage rendering tests that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the iPhone 4 is operating on this high-speed HSPDA network.

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