Should I buy an iPhone 4?

macfanuk

macfanuk

macfanuk

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I've currently got a 16GB iPhone 3GS but it's failing miserably. The phone met the corner of my table and the screen got shattered and the back housing was all bent. I bought replacement parts off ebay so the phone is now useable but the wifi doesn't connect (even though it sees the wifi networks), the camera no longer works and it's just not a nice experience using the phone anymore.

I'm trying my hardest to hold out for the iPhone 5 but with the possibility of it not being released now until towards the end of the year, I don't know what to do. I also want to make the move from Pay as you go to contract when I change phones.

I've just checked the prices of iPhone 4's on contract and they've dropped drastically. The 16GB iPhone 4 can now be got for £29 on a £35/m contract which is very tempting indeed.

What are your thoughts?

Will the iPhone 5 bring anything that's really worth waiting for?
 
I love my Iphone 4 never went an hour since I got it a month agow, I was also thinking about waiting for the five but decided not to becuase it can be late this year untill it comes and it wont be that much better but will be much more expencive and harder to get a decent contract for it. Go for the 4, i got mines for somthing like £70 upfront then £35 a month with 2000 min 3000 3 2 3 5000 txts (bit i get 6200??) and all I can eat data.
 
Deku said:
Buy yourself the cheapest phone money can buy and wait for the iPhone 5.
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Not really an option seeing as I've already got a 3GS that'll hopefully last til the iPhone 5 comes out.

stiv121 said:
I love my Iphone 4 never went an hour since I got it a month agow, I was also thinking about waiting for the five but decided not to becuase it can be late this year untill it comes and it wont be that much better but will be much more expencive and harder to get a decent contract for it. Go for the 4, i got mines for somthing like £70 upfront then £35 a month with 2000 min 3000 3 2 3 5000 txts (bit i get 6200??) and all I can eat data.
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Yeah, that's exactly my thinking. The one I've seen was on 3 and they've got the package you mentioned or one with 500 any network minutes for a £29 upfront cost (and £30/m). They've also got the 32GB one for £119 upfront.

I just keep thinking that every year the iphone has been updated, it's got more expensive. My first iPhone was a 16GB 3G which cost me £342 on PAYG but the 16GB iPhone 4 on PAYG now is £510 :o
 
No. The iPhone 4 is bettered by the Nexus S and even more so the Samsung Galaxy S II which totally trumps it.

Android has caught up with iOS now, iOS has a few more select apps but the general must haves can be found on Android. Android 2.3 is better than iOS in its current state. By far.

/15 month 3GS and 2 week 4 user.
 
Margaret said:
No. The iPhone 4 is bettered by the Nexus S and even more so the Samsung Galaxy S II which totally trumps it.

Android has caught up with iOS now, iOS has a few more select apps but the general must haves can be found on Android. Android 2.3 is better than iOS in its current state. By far.

/15 month 3GS and 2 week 4 user.
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My old phone was a Samsung Galaxy with android 2.2 and I hated it. After a week or so, it got really slow. Might not be the same for the new phones/os but definately won't be switching from iPhone to Android again.
 
Wait until the 6th of June for WWDC.
The difference between a single core A8 and a dual A9 is quite big and it'll get the massive GPU upgrade too.
 
Margaret, can you just give me a heads up and tell me if you're planning on spamming just about every iPhone 4 thread with your tired rhetoric?

This must be about the third time now?

I mean, after all...

Margaret said:
No. The iPhone 4 is bettered by the Nexus S and even more so the Samsung Galaxy S II which totally trumps it.
Click to expand...

Only the SGS2 betters the iPhone 4 and that's simply because it's packing better hardware. Then again Android benefits from not having a yearly release cycle on it's phones - HTC, Samsung et al are all in competition with one another and constantly improving their designs.

Android has caught up with iOS now, iOS has a few more select apps but the general must haves can be found on Android. Android 2.3 is better than iOS in its current state. By far.
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Okay, this is just untrue. It took me just days to sling my Desire up for sale and spend the resulting cash on an iPhone 4. Android is a good phone OS but it's nowhere near as intuitive, smooth, or all around comfortable to use as iOS. The App Store is just a sea of unfinished, buggy trash and Google really need to go in there and start fumigating it. It's also a malware risk.
 
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Tute said:
Only the SGS2 betters the iPhone 4 and that's simply because it's packing better hardware. Then again Android benefits from not having a yearly release cycle on it's phones - HTC, Samsung et al are all in competition with one another and constantly improving their designs.
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Sure Android still doesn't properly utilise graphics capability for animations within the OS. No wonder they have to force feed specs in peoples faces to try and cover up their sub par software.
 
I love my android phone but I may change to an iPhone 5 when they are released. As mentioned, the hardware of a computer, phone, car, pretty much anything, is just an indication of its performance.

My nexus one works well most of the time but the OS is not as polished as it could be and the app store is full of junk. I bought it for the fettling potential but I may now get rid of it for the same reason. Once you start playing around with it too much you tend to find the broken bits and crap apps.

There is a good reason people who like macs don't care about the tech specs on their computers and phones. They are largely irrelevant. My macbook hasn't got the best specs in the world but still runs really quickly and I never have any issues.
 
RKO said:
Sure Android still doesn't properly utilise graphics capability for animations within the OS. No wonder they have to force feed specs in peoples faces to try and cover up their sub par software.
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Well we're not at the stage where phone performance is proportional to gaming performance. All it's going to do is give you a more "responsive" phone - but then have phones such as the Nexus S, DHD, SanFran, 3GS, iP4 etc. had problems with not being fast enough to cope with their OS?

Nope.
 
I'm a long-time iPhone user. My brother got an HTC Desire the other day, so I had my first proper play with an Android phone. It certainly has a lot to recommend it. The notification system felt like a breath of fresh air after years on iOS, I'm envious of the widget capability, he can have Firefox, he can use the mobile hotspot without paying extortionate charges, and having Flash somehow adds more to the browsing experience than I thought it would. It definitely feels like a less limited device than my iPhone.

That said, I doubt I'll be buying one. Why? Because the UI just isn't very nice. How can scrolling feel less choppy on my 3-year-old iPhone 3G than on a fast Android phone? The icons are ugly and inconsistent, the animation is poor and the menus feel like phone menus did before the iPhone came out. The entire interface feels like a third-party UI layer attached to an OS with a completely different design language - because that's exactly what it is. And the touch response is markedly inferior. I don't think it's a hardware issue - the software just lacks all the nice iOS touches like inertial scrolling.

Until Google gets somebody in who knows a thing or two about UI design, I'm not touching Android.
 
Tute said:
Well we're not at the stage where phone performance is proportional to gaming performance. All it's going to do is give you a more "responsive" phone - but then have phones such as the Nexus S, DHD, SanFran, 3GS, iP4 etc. had problems with not being fast enough to cope with their OS?

Nope.
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Apple's stuff didn't because they wrote the software correctly in the first place. ;) A little mobile processor isn't going to cover its normal work plus doing the graphics wizardry which is why Android has lagged behind in this spot. It's up to Google to pull their finger out.

Mattus said:
he can use the mobile hotspot without paying extortionate charges.
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Wireless Hotspot is now free on new O2 contracts.
 
I'm not sure how much better the iPhone 5 will be, I have a feeling it will be more of a iPhone 4GS, so to speak, so I'd just get the Ip4 and be done with it!
 
Just moved from an iPhone4 to a Samsung Galaxy S II

I am much happier with the Galaxy. Tech speaks for itself but I also find Android more powerful AND more user friendly
 
Mattus said:
I'm a long-time iPhone user. My brother got an HTC Desire the other day, so I had my first proper play with an Android phone. It certainly has a lot to recommend it. The notification system felt like a breath of fresh air after years on iOS, I'm envious of the widget capability, he can have Firefox, he can use the mobile hotspot without paying extortionate charges, and having Flash somehow adds more to the browsing experience than I thought it would. It definitely feels like a less limited device than my iPhone.

That said, I doubt I'll be buying one. Why? Because the UI just isn't very nice. How can scrolling feel less choppy on my 3-year-old iPhone 3G than on a fast Android phone? The icons are ugly and inconsistent, the animation is poor and the menus feel like phone menus did before the iPhone came out. The entire interface feels like a third-party UI layer attached to an OS with a completely different design language - because that's exactly what it is. And the touch response is markedly inferior. I don't think it's a hardware issue - the software just lacks all the nice iOS touches like inertial scrolling.

Until Google gets somebody in who knows a thing or two about UI design, I'm not touching Android.
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I agree completely. Android phones seem to boast about specs and people fall for it, whereas the iphone and other iOS devices are about the user experience and amazing OS.

As I said earlier, my Samsung Galaxy that I had was sluggish with the animations and like Mattus said, the icons were inconsistent and a lot of the time felt 'out of date'.

RKO said:
Wireless Hotspot is now free on new O2 contracts.
Click to expand...
When I bought my iPhone 3G (when it first came out on PAYG) it had free access to o2 and BT Openzone hotspots. It now also includes Cloud I think.
 
I just bought myself a Orange san francisco and did a clean install of android 2.2 to remove oranges bloatware and unlocked, the best part is you can install custom roms. It's MY phone not apples if that makes sense.
It's a hell of a lot better than iphone and only cost £58 on pay as you go.
 
I would recommend the OP to wait for the iphone 5 or whatever it will be called.

I would not spend £35 a month on a 2 year contract until I knew how much the Iphone 5 was. I made the mistake of buying a Nexus S (free) on a 2 year contract for £21.80 a month for 2 years when I could have waited for Galaxy s2!
 
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