DETAILS OF IPHONE 4

                                              

In addition to the normal microphone, Apple has added a second one on the top edge, finally giving the iPhone noise cancellation. This greatly improves the phone's ability to suppress background noise and bring clarity to your voice when making calls. In our tests it proved very effective, successfully filtering out the noise of passing cars and other background din. It's a welcome feature, but it would of course be remiss of us not to point out that this is a feature other decent phones have had for many a year and the iPhone is really just playing catchup here.

As for the phone's speaker, it remains mono and of the same quality as previous iPhones, so watching video and listening to music is limited in scope. However it's still impressively loud and adequate for listening to quiet music in bed, showing your mates a YouTube clip, or of course making a speaker call. Incidentally, the earpiece appears to have improved, with it being less sensitive to how you press it against your ear. One oddity is the speaker and microphone have swapped places on the new phone, with the speaker now behind the left grill and the mic on the right.

After its class-leading build quality and design, the iPhone 4's next standout feature is its screen. Sporting 960 x 640 pixels, it has four times as many as previous iPhones and more than most other smartphones out there. Apple calls this its Retina screen as its pixel density of 326px per inch is greater than the human eye can distinguish. Marketing jargon though this is, the new screen is undoubtedly sharper than any we've seen previously and is quite something to behold.

However, in practice it didn't actually make a huge difference to how we used the phone. We'd still generally zoom in to about the same level to read a block of text simply because having it any smaller would require holding the device three inches from our faces to make out the words. Obviously it's a great feature, but if you've been touting this as the reason to upgrade be prepared to be slightly underwhelmed.

Perhaps of more import, Apple has also quadrupled the contrast ratio, giving images a greater sense of depth and punch. Viewing angles are also excellent and a notable improvement over previous gen devices. All told, this is the best LCD screen we've seen on a phone.

As for the fact that Apple hasn't used OLED display technology, well it does mean the display's viewing angles aren't quite as flawlessly impressive and colours aren't quite as saturated as they could be. However, colours instead look more natural than on most OLED screens we've seen and, because of the transflective nature of LCD panels, the iPhone's screen is much easier to see in bright sunshine, if you can avoid reflections of course. One final note on the screen, it has a much blacker background, when off, than previous iPhones so the screen almost completely disappears from view. It's a small thing, but it definitely adds to the phone's feeling of quality.

Though not as revelatory as the introduction of video and auto focus seen on the 3GS, the camera on the iPhone 4 is still a notable upgrade. With a five megapixel sensor and including an LED flash, its core specs are merely inline with most smartphones and still trail most dedicated camera phones. However, a camera is about more than just its megapixel count; there's the lens quality, sensor size, image processing, ease of use, and performance.

As such Apple points out the sensor in its camera is of the new backside illuminated variety that are supposed to have inherently better lowlight performance than conventional sensors. This was certainly borne out in our tests, where we noticed less grain and colour distortion in the iPhone's photos. It also seemed to reproduce detail and colour better overall than many standard phones we've tried. Be under no pretence, though, it is still well within the realms of phone-camera quality.
                                      
What really helps the iPhone's photo taking abilities is the camera application, which is wonderfully easy to use with just a flash on/off/auto icon in the top left and an icon in the top right that flips between the front and back facing cameras, in addition to the existing three icons along the bottom for the picture gallery, shutter, and switching between video and stills. The app also loads pretty quickly and you can rattle off around six shots in ten seconds, which is very impressive for a phone.

As for that video mode, again the app is impressively easy to use and quick to respond. However, much as with the first phone we reviewed with 720p video, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, the resulting footage leaves a lot to be desired. It is of course good for a phone and looks okay on the phone's screen, but watch it on a decent screen and the footage's dull colours and inability to deal with high contrast situations (like bright sunshine) really show up.

Clips can be combined into a timeline along with pictures and you can even overlay music or a voice over. There are multiple transitions to choose from, all manner of overlays and titles, and you can even apply effects, like the Ken Burns effect, to keep your footage interesting. Once complete you can export your video at 360p, 480p or 720p quality and from there you can then upload it to youtube or send it to a friend.

You can also choose from five preset themes, which determine introduction screens, overlays, and transitions and you can just drop your footage in to create a quick film. Particularly clever is the Travel theme that will reference the geotagged info in your video footage and show the location on a map in the background. It's a seriously neat bit of software that's so easy to use, and for the money it's an absolute steal.

The final piece in the iPhone 4's video related puzzle is its video calling application, Facetime. Announced with much fanfare, it allows you to seamlessly flip between video calling or voice calling and between the VGA front facing camera and the main camera on the rear so the person you're chatting to can see your face or what you're looking at. It's very easy to use and quality is excellent. In fact, it's so nice to use, we could even learn to see the benefits of video calling. However, at the moment it's only available from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 and only over Wi-Fi so a killer feature, it certainly isn't. Moreover, the front facing camera can't be used at all for conventional video calling.

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