Simon’s Blog

The iPhone antenna is getting a lot of negative press, but I think it’s a double edged sword. The antenna is very large and exposed on the edges of the phone. You can strangle it by covering it with your hand and slow down your data speeds. But you can also get amazing download speeds in areas of AT&T’s HSDPA coverage. There is no map of this coverage area but it seems to be he entire DC Metro area and at least 25 miles into the western suburbs. 4 megabits down is damn fast. That’s as fast as cable Internet, I don’t wait for downloads on this phone in this area. 1.5 megabits up is ridiculous, that’s above the upload speed of most people’s Internet service.

I like the FCC mobile broadband app much more than the Xtreme speedtest app I was using before, cleaner interface, no ads, and the test lasts a few seconds longer allowing the iPhone more time to ramp up to impressive download speeds. The Xtreme speedtest would end as the download speed was still increasing so I didn’t get as fast of a result.

This weekend I’ll do side-by-side comparisons with a 3GS.

iMovie is $4.99 and only works on the iPhone 4. Earlier iPhones do not have the CPU power to edit 720p video. Here is a one minute video I cut together. It demonstrates all the features of the app. Theme transitions, background music, titles, titles with geotag information (Washington Monument), and Ken Burns style pictures.

I uploaded this video from the phone. Unfortunately the iPhone 4 can not upload 720p video to YouTube, for shame. The video on my previous post was uploaded from my computer which is why it looks so much better (720p > 360p). A Macrumors forum post mentioned an app that can upload to YouTube in 720p.

Throughout the first part of the video I am demonstrating how you can tap-to-focus to bring any part of the video into focus as you shoot. The 3GS had tap-to-focus but after you hit record the video remained fix-focused. I can get incredibly detailed macro shots of those bees with my iPhone 4.

iMovie is pretty good for short simple videos. It’s feature set is quite basic considering I can demonstrate every feature in a one minute video. I start off with the default cross dissolve transitions then later use theme transitions. The modern black theme is the only one that doesn’t have lame fruity effects, it’s got slick transitions and sleek titles. One of the titles uses the geotag information in the video added by the GPS when it was shot, I was about a mile from the Washington Monument.

I added some awesome background music and I noticed iMovie performs automatic audio ducking. You can really notice how it decreases the volume of the music when the fountain is making noise, this would preserve dialogue clarity over music.

There is very little fine control and NO audio control. I can’t control crossfades between clips so undesired audio might spill over into the next clip. I can’t decrease the volume of a clip but I can disable it completely like I did for the water fountain because it was super loud. The music has to start at the beginning of the movie, why can’t I slide it over to start at some later point? They could easily add this with an update.

I can however trim video to specific frames by moving my finger really slowly. I can also position beginning and end placement of photos for the Ken Burns effect to get that perfect Batman reveal.

Overall I really like it. The amazing camera in the iPhone 4 deserves a video editing app.

In the city and in the suburbs, depending on where I am I’m getting 3mbps download speeds and almost a megabit up. That’s significantly faster than I ever got with my 3G or 3GS. The 3GS HSDPA antenna is capable of these speeds but I’ve only gotten two megabits, maybe the difference was due to network conditions. I’ll do a side-by-side sometime. I never got more than 1.5mbps with my 3G.

How fast is that? That’s twice as fast as a T1 DSL connection and almost as fast as cable. Enough to play 720p YouTube with no waiting.

I uploaded that speed test picture in about one second. There is no waiting while surfing and large email attachments download in a few seconds.

Update: HOLY CRAP. I just broke my record and got 3.5mbps in a vehicle moving 60mph. I did another test a mile or so down the road and got 2.5mbps even while gripping the antenna “that way”.

I can’t reproduce the antenna problem outside but inside I have dropped two calls until I adjusted my hand posture. I’ve tried strangling the antenna in the middle of a speed test and it doesn’t slow down at all, sometimes it goes faster (tested in a moving vehicle).

On a side note don’t let some Sprint fanboy tell you their network is better because it’s 4G, it’s not. Whether or not WiMax is faster than HSDPA I don’t know because I haven’t tested it yet. Sprint commercials that say they have the first 4G network is false advertising. There is no 4G protocol and there are no 4G networks, their won’t be for years. WiMax is a 3G protocol as is AT&T’s HSDPA Verizon’s LTE. At least AT&T and Verizon don’t claim that these 3G enhancements are 4G. Wikipedia has a good explanation of 4G. A Sprint engineer I talked to confirmed that their network is not 4G but he did mention that WiMax offers much greater coverage radius per tower as WiMax was designed for very long range.

I watched Apple’s WWDC keynote today.  You would think Apple would have foreseen a clogged wifi spectrum and adjusted their presentation accordingly.  Jobs must have been pissed when he couldn’t demonstrate the web rendering speed or smooth video chat of the iPhone 4.  Hey Jobs, why not enclose a wifi hotspot and the demo iPhones inside a faraday cage?  The whole control and isolation thing, that’s your thing, do it.

Likes

• unified inbox
• multiple exchange accounts
• iMovie app
• 720p
• gyro
• 802.11n (not sure if the iPhone could take advantage of the speed though…)
• chassis doubles as antennae

Dislikes

• no mention of game center
• no unified file system for apps
• name is iPhone 4, so boring and un-apple, how about iPhone HD?

I’m installing iOS 4 on my iPhone now, I’ll let you know how I like it.

UPDATE: I like it.  The game center wasn’t mentioned on the keynote but it’s on my phone and it works.

All the app transitions and home screen animations are snappier, I didn’t think even snappier was possible.

You know what’s awesome?  Folders in your dock.  Having a folder with 12 handy apps inside your dock is BADASS.

Finally you can spot focus while shooting video, previously if you focused on some ones face, then hit record, then panned to a distant landscape it would be out of focus.  Now you can spot focus while recording, I’m not aware of any other video camera that allow spot focusing, Apple win.

There are no apps in the app store which support multitasking yet.  TomTom just announced they will update their navigation app to run in the background, they are the first to announce a background capable app.

I’ve had some success getting Apple’s apps to function in the background.  The app state is paused so you can quickly return to a photo you had open in the photos app, and back to the same page of the settings app, but I wanted to experience true background functionality.  I tried all the 1st party apps and found one that works.  Record a long sound with sound recorder, play the sound, then multitask it and leave the app.  The sound will continue to play.  Epic! Epic for Apple at least.

I was really surprised the YouTube app didn’t continue to play the video in the background, it would be nice to continue to hear audio.  At least they added vertical orientation so you don’t have to hold the phone on it’s side, and the video will rotate to both left and right landscape instead of just the left.

You know how when you scroll large distances in the contact list or iPod library the iPhone will speed up exponentially to get you through that large list quickly?  No?  Apple implemented this way back on the very first iPod.  Well iOS 4 brings exponential scrolling to Safari and it greatly speeds up navigating very tall web pages.

Another thing, in the settings app you can see and toggle which apps can track your location.  Sometimes when I get a new app I’m clicking the menu to get started when the “This app would like to use your location yes/no” message appears and I choose yes by accident.  Who knows what the sketchy app is doing with my GPS location, very unsettling.  Now I can easily see what apps are tracking me.

Orientation lock

I can finally read web pages in Safari lying down.

Download UStream Live Broadcaster from the app store for free.  Then point your phone at something and click broadcast.  A live video stream will be streamed to UStreams website where it can be shared with the world.  Quality varies and video size is only 320×240 but hey it’s free live video streaming from your phone.  I’ll let you know next time I broadcast a live cat vs. dog battle royal.

I’m in the car driving to family for Christmas eve.  Unfortunately we had to leave our puppy at home tonight.  But that won’t stop me from video chatting with my puppy and then blogging about it all from I-95!

Instructions

• place a laptop near your pet, set the preferences so your laptop never goes to sleep
• have two Skype accounts who are buddies
• turn on Skype, login and set the preferences to automatically answer calls and start video for people on your buddy list
• download fring (free) to your iPhone from the app store
• open fring and sign into your other Skype account
• call the laptop you left next to your pet

Now you can call home from your iPhone or computer whenever you want to see what your pet is doing!  Since the iPhone does not have a forward facing camera your pet will not be able to see you, just hear you.  Fring will only let you perform video calls over wifi, so I am using a jailbreak app which fools the iPhone into thinking it is actually on wifi when using AT&T.  3G Unrestrictor will let you make VoIP calls, watch high-quality YouTube, use the Slingplayer, download large apps and podcasts on AT&T’s 3G network. 3G Unrestrictor is $3 on the Cydia store.

The first time you call your pet it’s really funny how confused they are.  I did this last Christmas with my two cats.  I VPN’d to my iMac and made the video of my face very large for my cats but they didn’t seem to recognize that I was on the screen talking to them, but they did look around the room when they heard me talking to them.  The first time I video chat with Mitsy she was so cute with her eyes wide open staring at the computer then looking around then back to the computer, man I wish I had recorded that, it was classic.

Yay my iPhone works inside some metro stations. I tested the network performance at each station on my way from Ballston to L’enfant Plaza. True to their word, WMATA has completed installation of 850 mhz cell service in major metro stations.

I had signal in all but three stations (filled red), the stations filled green had great signal, and I pulled decent download speeds at all of these stops. The slowest download speed was 618 kbps at McPherson Square. 1400kbps speeds at L’enfant Plaze and Foggy Bottom are just shy of the maximum download speed of the iPhone. All speed tests were conducted from inside the train car. There is no signal in the tracks, unlike with Verizon your signal drops as soon as you enter the tunnel.

Surprised by receiving a call, I immediately tweeted. These tweets indicate service started 3 days ago.

Update: I tested a few more stations.  Gallery Place, Archives, and Farragut North are indicated on the map.  Service inside tunnels is planned to be complete by the end of 2012.

Google is now using a Microsoft Exchange server to provide push mail, contacts, and calendars to iPhone users. Contacts sync to the address book app and Google Calendar syncs to calendar app.  Rejoice.

Instructions

From the BBC:

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country’s biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles – in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

I calculated that transfering 4% of 4 gigabyte in 2 hours came out to 184kbps, the same as the very slowest DSL (my connection is over 100 times faster).  The pigeon actually delivered the stick in 1 hour, and it took another hour to load the data.  That’s less than 1 megabyte per second from a USB stick, are they using abacusus over there?  If anyone wants to check my math please a comment.

From AT&T’s press release:

AT&T plans to begin deployment of HSPA 7.2 in six major U.S. cities, including Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami, with initial service availability expected in these markets by the end of the year. All told, the company plans to deploy HSPA 7.2 in 25 of the nation’s 30 largest markets by the end of 2010, and to reach about 90 percent of its existing 3G network footprint with HSPA 7.2 by the end of 2011.

Gee I’m so glad I bought this new iPhone that supports HSDA, which won’t be available in my area until after the next iPhone is out. Way to go AT&T.

High Speed Data Access will be about twice as fast as existing 3G speeds. 3G is capable of a little more than 2mbps on most devices, though the iPhone is capped at 1.3mbps to limit power consumption. HSPA has a theoretical limit of 7.2mbps, though in reality you will get half that which is still very nice. Though by the time AT&T gets it rolled out Verizon will probably already have 4G deployed in major areas. I expect a mass exodus from AT&T back to Verizon when they get the iPhone.