Apple iPhone 4 32GB review

Of course, the new ‘Retina’ display is another of the iPhone 4’s biggest draws. The resolution of 640×960 is incredible – it’s very difficult to see the individual pixels even if you’re looking for them. What it means is that text is smoother than ever (you don’t have to zoom in to elements of a web page if your eyesight is good enough), and photos appear sharper with no jagged edges. Contrast has been improved to 800:1, and it makes a noticeable difference. Looking at the same photo on a 3GS and iPhone 4, it’s clear that blacks are deeper and colours more vibrant.

One of the reasons for this is that the display is laminated to the front glass cover, leaving no air gap. This helps eliminate light refraction, and helps to make everything look even sharper. The other reason for the improved colours is the use of an IPS LCD panel, the same as used in the iPad. This has better viewing angles than the iPhone 3GS’s screen and means colours and contrast don’t change as much when you’re tilting the phone to play a game, for example. As there’s exactly four times more pixels than before, apps designed for a 480×320 screen upscale with no issues.

While iOS 4 isn’t unique to the iPhone 4 – it’s a free upgrade for 3G, 3GS and third-generation iPod touch owners – it runs smoothly thanks to the 4’s A4 processor. Currently, it runs extremely slowly on the iPhone 3G, which doesn’t support the multitasking feature, which is angering owners that have upgraded. iOS 4 adds a feature that people have been calling out for: multi-tasking. Now, it’s possible to run more than one application at a time. Switching between apps is simple: you just double-tap the button on the front to bring up a task-bar, then you select the app you want. Switching between apps is smooth and responsive.

Multitasking might not sound all that useful, but it means you can now carry on listening to Spotify, for example, while checking email or browsing the web. Plus, navigation apps that use the GPS receiver can continue to track your position and give you spoken instructions while you jump to another app. It’s worth noting that many apps will pause, so a Twitter feed will still have to update when you switch back to it – this is to save battery life.

Battery life, of course, is one factor that many iPhone users aren’t happy with. Apple has put a larger battery into the iPhone 4 and in our tests, it’s certainly an improvement. Our light-use test ran for a stunning 49 hours before we had to recharge. Plus, in normal use – with a mixture of calls, emails, web browsing, downloading, taking photos and videos – we got almost two days’ use. If you’re using the screen at full brightness and using the phone heavily, we’d imagine you’ll need to recharge a littler after a day, but this is no worse than any other current smartphone.

Another new feature is the screen lock, which prevents it rotating to landscape mode. This is useful in many apps, but particularly in the free iBooks. Oddly, you have to download this from the App Store as it’s not installed by default. The interface is identical to iBooks on the iPad and you can turn pages by slowly dragging them, or by quickly swiping your finger across the screen. We love the attention to detail as you can see the text and images of a page showing through the ‘paper’ as you turn it over. You don’t have to buy books from the iBookstore – you can transfer any PDFs to your device through iTunes.

You can now set a wallpaper to appear behind app icons – a feature we think is long overdue – and create folders in which to store apps. When you tap a folder, the apps within are displayed and other icons on screen are dimmed. Creating a folder is easy: tap and hold an app until it wiggles, then drag it on top of another app. The folder will be automatically named based on the type of apps, but you can rename it to whatever you like. It all means you can have over 2,000 apps in up to 180 folders.