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.

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 shot this at the Smithsonian garden.

What boggles my mind is Apple released a product with such a blatant design flaw. Cosmetics are
Great but not if it impairs the phones ability to function as a phone. Job’s reaction was essentially “don’t it with your left hand”. That’s 50% of my hands! I’m right handed like everybody but left handed freaks. What if I need to use a pen or grasp an object while using my phone. Did Apple foresee and test this use case scenario??!!!

It’s not too much of a problem in the DC metro area but still, ridiculous.

Here’s another negative. My hands hurt like hell after using it for 10 minutes. It’s so thin and so sharply rectangular that there is no way to hold it comfortably. Landscape is much better than portrait but most 3rd party apps aren’t landscape. I figure my hand muscles will get used to it and I’ll refine my grasping technique. This is a tolerable annoyance because it’s so damn thin in my pocket.

Overall I’m very happy, best phone yet. Another technological achievement of note by Apple. Their biggest product launch ever and then some.

I am very happy with the video playback capabilities. HD movies look great. Apple’s spec sheet says it supports h.264 video max 2.5mbps which is barely enough for HD video. A ridiculous claim because it records and plays back 720p video at 10mbps, plenty of bitrate. iTunes refused to sync anything over 8mbps not an issue as I’d never need more than 4mbps with my badass compression abilities. Despite Apple’s spec sheet h.64 high profile is supported. I’m planning a future post on how to encode high quality videos with small file sizes, chapters, 4 audio tracks and 4 subtitle tracks. I got full length standard def movies on my 3G/3GS down to 100-200 megabytes, my goal is to keep HD iPhone 4 movies well under 1gb.

Update: There are at least 300 in the reserve line with more pouring in, lucky bastards.

Update: Screw the Reston Apple Store. They are only letting in reserves and spending 10 minutes with each person trying to upsell MobileMe, one employee per person. That’s ridiculous, at Fair Oaks last year they processed reserves and normies at the same time, I got in line at 6am and had my phone at 8:15am. Today I just wasted six hours at the Apple store because they processed 50 reserves per one standby customer.  Employees came by periodically with snacks and lied to us about getting in the store while no one was let in the store.  We are customers to, only a few were able to pre-order or reserve iPhones because Apple’s website was crushed by unanticipated demand.

The Reston Apple store completely failed to provide iPhone 4’s to customers, I can’t imagine a worse failure.  This article sums it up.

Just drove to Best Buy, all units reserved. Called Radio Shack, they have a few extra units, check out the line:

I’m #3 in line, not bad for arriving 20 minutes before opening which was 10am.  The Radio Shack manager who looked like he was 17 said that per Apple’s instructions they can’t hold phones, they must sell them.  He announced at noon he would give away people’s reserves if they didn’t show and I scored a fancy new iPhone.  Glory.

I watch a lot of video on my 3GS and the highest bitrate it will playback is about 1600kbps, which looks great on a 640×320 screen.  Usually I can get away with just a few hundred kbps.  The iPhone 4 spec sheet says it will play back 2500kbps max, kind of dissappointing, I was hoping for at least 3 or 4mbps to pump high quality video to that retina display.

After analyzing the 720p video shot with iPhone 4 I’ve discovered it records at 10mbps! That’s a huge datarate.  10mbps is enough to encode a high quality 1080p video.  So doesn’t that mean iPhone 4 can play back 10mbps h.264 files?  It can obviously play back the video it just recorded.  I’ll test this and report back soon, but it appears the iPhone 4 is going to have no trouble playing back high quality video.  32 GB is not enough on my 3GS and it’s far too little on an iPhone 4 with 4 times as many pixels.