Apple iPhone 4 user reviews

Reviewed by Damien McFerran on 25 November 2011

Our rating

4.0 stars out of 5

Read our full review

Average user rating

3.5 stars out of 5

Your rating

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User reviews175

0.5 star out of 5

Aysco40 7 February 2013

Good: Looks good

Bad: Everything else

Comment: The iphone is over hyped and having just purchased one after owning it for one day its going back, my xperia does everything the iphone does and plays music much better than the iphone, iphones are s**t.

Not for me

timburner 20 November 2012

Comment: iPhone is great with two exceptions:
a) the Home button is now broken and needs to be pressed twice to function
b) the camera lenses is scratched since I am not using a protective case and have had it replaced at an apple store

The upside is that I found www.myiphone4wallpaper.com and I've had fun creating custom name badges and using shell wallpapers for my Home Screen.

I own it

4 stars out of 5

Arsenalfan9999 24 October 2012

Good: Great design, iOS 6, features, retina display

Bad: No Siri, some features won't work because of age

Comment: Even today I still wouldn't mind an iPhone 4. It's a very good phone, maybe not the best but it has most of the features of an iPhone 4S/5 and its a gorgeous design. I know quite a few people who still have the iPhone 4 and they love it. If you can find a bargain, I'd definitely recommend this phone :)

I want it

1 star out of 5

Kerry Brubeck 9 September 2012

Good: bettery life

Bad: dodgy headphone socket and over sensitive water detectors

Comment: As with many other users I found the iPhone frequently failed to detect that I had removed headphones so the speakers would not work. After 3 or 4 reboots eventually the sound would return until recently when the phone started behaving erratically - no sound - cutting off calls and a floating volume control screen that would never go away. Since it was 3 months old I took it to the local Apple dealer who took it away to a back room and emerged minutes later to tell me that 2 of its 4 water sensors were pink, meaning I had dropped it in water and therefore outside the warranty. This was utter BS as it never been anywhere near water however from reading similar stories on other forums it appears these sensors will turn pink if the phone is near anywhere with high humidity. So basically rule out taking the iPhone into a bathroom or any sub-tropical climate (e.g. Thailand) otherwise you end up with a useless piece of equipment.
Due to the stupidity of its design i.e in a virtually sealed case – there is no such thing as a minor repair. Total waste of money.

I own it

champrizi 13 July 2012

Comment: The iPhone 4S is part of an interesting tale. It was the device thought to come in addition to a new iPhone 5. The 4S was supposed to incrementally increase the specs found on the iPhone 4 and offer a lower price point, while the iPhone 5 would provide a huge jump in design and power. When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S with no iPhone 5, it was clear that for at least the next ten or twelve months, it would be considered Apple’s flagship phone. While many were disappointed, the iPhone 4S has gone on to be one of the best selling phones of all time in just a few weeks. But with more choices than ever for smartphone shoppers, does the iPhone 4S still have a place as a premium device? Unboxing the iPhone 4S is no different than unboxing an iPhone 4. You get the same accessories (a wall charger, USB cable, and white ear buds) in virtually the same box. The only point of differentiation is the “S” branding (reused from the days of the iPhone 3GS) plus an iCloud logo. The iphone 4s is powered by the A5 dual-core 1GHz chip found in the iPad 2, though our guess is that the chip might not run at the full peak 1GHz speed, and instead probably cap out at 800MHz. Apple claims that the A5 provides 2x the CPU speed and 7x the graphics prowess than the iPhone 4 (take a look at our comparison video below to see whether this is true). Beyond that, the iPhone 4S has 512MB of RAM, 16/32/64GB of storage, 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, a digital compass, gyroscope, cellular data provided by HSPA+, HSDPA, or EVDO Rev-A (depending on whether you version you choose). The screen is unchanged–it is 3.5? with 960×640 resolution, providing a 326ppi pixel density, which is still unrivaled by any other phone on the market right now. Powering everything is a battery that is slightly larger than the iPhone 4, providing 8 hours talk time. More on battery life later. From day one, the iPhone 4S is available in white, unlike the iPhone 4 where it took many months for the white version to start shipping. Why choose white over black? It’s a matter of personal preference, but white does a better job at hiding finger prints. While the iPhone 4S has the same design as the iPhone of last year, it’s still a handsome device thanks to colored glass that opposes the metal bands of the antenna configuration. New to the iPhone 4S is an improved dual-antenna system: no more “grip of death”. Apple says the camera optics of the 4S are vastly improved over the 4. We agree. It has a larger f/2.4 apperature to allow more light into the sensor, providing improved performance in low light situations. The iPhone 4S ships with iOS 5, which brings forth a lot of new features. Chief among them is a new notification system, iCloud, Siri, iMessage, Reminders, improvements to the photo app, and some other goodies. Let’s dissect each of these new features in more detail. Previously, notifications in iOS were very disruptive. They’d come in as pop-ups that would interrupt you from what you were doing. Now, notifications have three ways of being customized. First, you can choose whether a notification pops in as a banner, a pop up, or you can turn them off completely for a given app. The banners are great except that they obscure UI elements when they appear as shown above. And because you can’t “wipe” them away like in Windows Phone 7, you have to wait until they disappear, which takes several seconds. As you can see in the screenshot above, the notification is covering up the “Messages” back button. Very annoying. Update: after some experimentation, we found a way to dismiss banner notifications in iOS 5. Second, you can utilize the Android-like Notification Center to manage all of your notifications which is accessible if you swipe down from the top. The trouble with this is that you cannot selectively remove notifications. Rather, you can only clear entire categories of notifications with the tiny X button. I didn’t find the notification center particularly useful, so I left it turned off by selectively entering the Notification setting for each program, and turning Notification Center to off. Third, you can have notifications appear on your lockscreen. Not only that, but the program’s icon becomes a slider so that you can instantly enter the program that has sent you a notification. This is very useful, but if you’re streaming a lot of notifications, this area might become cluttered.

I own it

4 stars out of 5