iPhone 4

After a Sharp IQ-7000 electronic organizer, Psion 3MX, Psion 5MX, Nokia N73 and an HP iPaq 2210 it was time for a new personal digital assistant, or smartphone as they are called nowadays.

Choosing my next smartphone was easy. My experience with Windows Mobile 2003 on the iPaq was mixed. A lot of Windows Mobile software was available, but you had to be an IT expert to install the applications and keep the system running. The successors WM 5 and 6 were not much different. Nokia was pretty good, but the screen was too small. iPhone 3 was a big step in the right direction, and the multitasking support of iOS 4 and Retina display of iPhone 4 won me over.

Apple got the main things right. The LCD screen is one of the most important aspects of your handheld / PDA. You interact with the screen the whole time. The iPhone 4 display called Retina display is amazing. No more tiny black lines through the characters on your screen. It also reacts very quickly to the gestures you make with your fingers.

iPhone 4 and iOS 4 still have some rough edges. There is no profile support to quickly set your ringtone, SMS tone and vibration to predefined settings (like silent, vibration only, meeting). Losing track of notifications is easy, especially when multiple push notifications are fired off at the same time. The Retina display does not react when you are wearing gloves (this is a problem in cold weather).

In a series of blog posts I will describe how you can use and configure your iPhone 4. For instance, I will share with you how to have profile support on your iPhone 4, and how to get (near) real-time email notifications without polling your inboxes all the time (no, I am not using push email! :-).