On Thursday, June 24th I woke up at 5:45AM.  If you know me, then you know that is insane for me.  I’m lucky to wake up before 10:30 AM on weekends, and no earlier that 7:45AM during the week – and I’m not one bit happy about it!  I told myself I would only be willing to wait for one hour in line.  Any longer than that, and I would just go home.  I get to the Apple Store in Southlake, TX and start counting how far back I am.  The Apple store people come tell us they have 30 people ringing sales at about 7 minutes each.  Awesome, that should be about 1 hour!  4 and a half hours later… I get two new iPhone 4s (32 GB models).  Ugh.

So let’s begin…

The Design of the iPhone 4

It’s beautiful!  The glass front and back, solid black, with an aluminum band around the outside.  The buttons are metal and all recesses (speaker, microphones) are protected with a silver wire mesh.  This thing is gorgeous.  In fact, who couldn’t look at this thing and fall in love with it?  But Apple failed at elegant design with this thing, because elegant design is supposed to look nice and function well.  More on that later.

FaceTime

Apple is touting FaceTime as the biggest new feature of iPhone 4.  I have to disagree.  For me, the screen resolution and processor speed enhancements are by far the best new features – but FaceTime is a big deal – and it will change the way we communicate, but not today.  FaceTime is Apple’s video conferencing solution for mobile phones.  It’s incredible, but has two major flaws:

1) Right now, only iPhone 4s can video call with each other. FaceTime is based on open standards, and Apple said they are going to open the entire protocol to other vendors.  We’ll see over time if the adoption of other vendors takes off.

2) Wi-Fi only.  Leave it to AT&T to take something so life changing, and F#$K it up!  Can you imagine sitting at a store, calling your spouse and showing them a product or article of clothing before you buy it?  Yes, that’s awesome.  But you can’t do it today unless the store has free Wi-Fi and doesn’t block the FaceTime ports!  AT&T manages to fail at every opportunity you give those geniuses.

However, with all that said, I’ve used FaceTime a lot.  I love it!  It’s smooth, fluid, and high quality.  The audio and video are synced well, and it all around just works.  Great job on this Apple.

Facetime Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Retina Display

With iPhone 4, Apple also introduced the Retina display.  The Retina display touts four times the number of pixels on previous generation iPhones, resulting in a 326 pixels per inch screen.

What can I say?  The Retina display is a home run!  The quality of the text, accuracy of the colors, and the wide viewing angle makes this screen brilliant!  Before I actually laid my eyes on this screen I thought to myself “the screen resolution won’t make much difference.”  Was I ever wrong…

When reading iBooks, or Kindle, or when browsing the web the increased resolution and sharpness of the fonts really takes away the eye strain and makes reading on this device a pleasure.  The small screen size becomes less of an irritant when the text is easy to read at any font size.

Big win here Apple!

Retina Display Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Antenna in the Frame

When I first heard about the antenna in the frame I really thought this was genius.  On the iPhone 4, the frame of the phone doubles as the antenna and a structural backbone of the phone itself.  This allowed Apple to make the iPhone thinner, while packing it with yet more features .

It turns out, there is a bug in this design.  What’s not known is whether Apple knew about this or not before they shipped it.  What’s also not known is if they didn’t know about it, how is that possible?

The Antenna in the frame is in three distinct segments.  The left frame section is for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS.  The right frame section is for UMTS and GSM.  The bottom most frame section is not antenna, but completes the frame.  The problem is that when you ground the left antenna with the bottom base portion of the frame with your hand, your signal strength goes from 5 bars to one or none in a matter of a second.  Or does it?

When I first heard about this problem I couldn’t duplicate it.  I tried and tried to no avail.  I simply could not recreate it on either of my phones.  Finally I stumbled onto the problem.  My hands needed to be slightly moist.  I had just finished swimming in the pool.  I could easily recreate the problem on both phones.  Slide the phone into any case, and the problem disappears.

Steve Jobs’ Answer: “This is a non-issue.  Don’t hold it like that.”  My response: “Are you kidding me?”

Antenna in the Frame Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to iPhone 4 than these three things.  In fact, there’s over a hundred new features in iPhone 4.

• Front Camera
• Rear 720p Video Camera with LED Flash
• Multi-tasking
• Folders
• Apple A4 Processor
• Noise Cancellation Microphone
• and a lot more!

So how do I rate the new iPhone 4?  I certainly think based on my personal usage and experience, that iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market – hands down.  It’s better than Droid.  It’s better than Microsoft.  But this phone is the 4th generation iPhone.  It shouldn’t have issues with the antenna.  Dropped calls and AT&T’s terrible network should have put this at the top of Apples quality control list.

So where does that leave us.  If Apple hadn’t messed up this antenna design I would have given the phone a solid 4.5 stars.  If Apple had dropped AT&T and moved to Verizon, even with the bad antenna design I would have found a way to make a six star rating.  But as it stands, I can only give the iPhone 4 a 4 star rating.  That’s a shame.  Because this is the best phone I’ve ever had.  Hands down.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Ooma’s flagship product is the Ooma Telo.  The Telo provides the following features:

• VoIP Internet Phone Service
• Instant Second Line
• Up to four integrated handsets
• Traditional POTs interface for additional handsets
• Voicemail for each user
• Two phone numbers for free for Premium users ($9.99/month)
• One phone number for Standard users ($0/month free)
• Free long distance in the United States
• One time purchase price of $199
• Community telemarketer black lists
• Individual black lists
• A whole lot more!

I purchased my Ooma Telo from Bestbuy last week and I have to say I am super impressed.  Sure, there’s a few things that are bugging me, but as a soon to be former Vonage customer, I’m singing Ooma’s praises!

In order to install Ooma, you simply unpack the Telo (and any optional handsets that you purchased) and plug it into any port on your home switch or router.  Then you simply log on to http://my.ooma.com and create a new account.  Ooma’s website will ask for your serial number and a few other bits of information.  In less than two minutes, Ooma lights up and you can make and receive phone calls.  I was thrilled that the service lets you use their web interface to pick your phone numbers.  I picked three numbers all in a row (the third number is $4.99 a month extra) with the idea of using one for Fax, one for Home, and one for my Home Office.

I purchased my Telo with two handsets at Bestbuy.  I then opted for the free Handset at signup (which was delivered in two days by UPS).  The handsets are a little silly in their design, but work well and a feature packed.

So far, I am very impressed with the reliability and the call quality.  Now, to be fair, for those of you who don’t know I have some of the most rock solid Internet service on the planet.  I’m a Verizon FiOS business customer with 35/35 business class service.  I would love to hear feedback from some of you on slower, less reliable Internet connections.  Regardless, the Ooma quality has been fantastic.  I’ve not yet experienced the dreaded Vonage crackle (when packets get dropped, quality goes straight to hell quick on Vonage).  I’ve also sent several faxes without a single dropped call.  With Vonage at least 50% of my faxes had to retransmit.

Currently, my only complaint with Ooma has been their support people.  For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to get my shared lines setup correctly.  I called Ooma support and got what I am sure is “Bob” from India.  He was zero help.  I tried asking my question in several different ways to no avail.  Finally I asked for a supervisor which took forever, but I am sure he was in America.  He was able to answer my question in a matter of seconds.  When are companies going to learn that it doesn’t save money to outsource to India????

If you’re looking to ditch your landline or Vonage service you can get Ooma Telo for FREE with Standard service or $9.99 for Premium.  The differences are negligible (extra number and voicemail) but regardless when compared to the price and features of Vonage or traditional landline service is well worth it!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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The Stick acts as an auto-router listening for CNG Fax tones (the noises your fax machine makes when it is dialing out), touch tones and pulse tones to route an incoming call to the correct device.

This technology allows a small office or home office to send and receive faxes, connect with modems, and make and receive voice calls all on a single phone. The best part is that it is invisible to both the originator and the receiver of the call. This makes it an ideal solution for saving money as the Stick which costs as little as $85USD (one time cost) can offset the recurring cost of a $50 a month telephone or dedicated fax line. In the world of small business, every penny adds up.

The Stick works on a standard POTS (plain old telephone service) by listening for ring voltage and automatically answers the incoming call. After answering the line, the Stick listens for CNG and/or touch tones (DTMF). During this listening period (which is about 5 seconds) the caller hears a standard ringing sound (bell spec). Once the CNG tones are heard the call will be routed to the fax port, or after the timeout defaulted to the voice line 1 port. Outbound calls are routed on a first come, first served basis, and protected by a “barge -in” feature. The Stick is easily programmed by touch tones using a standard keypad on any telephone. The Stick is fully compatible with Caller-ID services and DSL services. And the best part is, if you aren’t technically savvy, just call their free technical support, they will program it for you, right over the phone.

This is one product your home office shouldn’t be without. We tested The Stick with Vonage VoIP services and Linksys PAP2 and found them to be compatible with no issues at all.

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