Today at Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference to address the iPhone 4 antenna problem, Steve Jobs announced that Apple will be giving away free Bumper cases and will be refunding those who have already purchased the $30 case.

Steve announced that because they simply can’t make enough Bumpers, iPhone 4 owners will be given the choice between a select amount of cases to receive free of charge.

Personally, this is what I was hoping for. It is good to see Apple finally recognizing the fact that  the iPhone is flawed and that they must do something about it. Would I rather see the phone be recalled? No.. That would screw things up not only because a recall would be very expensive, it would also bring back those long Apple Store lines that we saw on launch day.

What do you think? Is this the right thing for Apple to do? Should they have totally recalled the phone?

You can watch the full video from Apple’s press conference here.

I woke up at about 5 a.m. the day of the iPhone 4′s launch and walked over to my neighborhood Apple Store. As I had already pre-ordered the phone, I didn’t expect there to be that long of a line. But boy, was I wrong. By 6:45 a.m. (before the store was even open) the line stretched way out of view of the store. I stood in line for a few hours. My dad called at about 8:45 to remind me that I had a 9 a.m. doctor’s appointment. I left the line that I had already waited in for two hours to go to my appointment. I got back at about 10 a.m. and got straight back in line. The line ended on the other side of the mall and the Apple Store employees warned us that there was a 4-5 hour wait. After about seven hours of standing around and listing to Leo Laporte’s “This Week In Tech” podcast I finally made it to the front of the line. I purchased the phone and got the heck out of that mall.

So that was a breif summary of my buying experience. Now, let’s start the review now, shall we?

Hardware

Unlike the 3G S, the iPhone 4 brings many new hardware features to the table including the new design with the metal band, the front facing camera, the A4 chip and the 5MP camera with flash. The iPhone 4 feels a lot sturdier and less fragile then the previous iPhones, the 3G and the 3G S. Also, the glass in the iPhone 4 is said to be less fragile than the glass in previous iPhones.

Camera

The camera in the iPhone 4 is stunning. It takes 5MP pictures and records 720p video. It absolutely blows away the cameras in the iPhone 3G and 3G S.

Here are some sample photos taken with the iPhone 4: (Click to enlarge)

A4 Chip

Even though the frequency of the new A4 Chip is still unknown, it sure does increase the speed and power of the new iPhone. As you can see here, the new processor makes the new iPhone 4 a lot snappier than the iPhone 3G.

Retina Display

One great new feature of the iPhone 4 is the Retina Display and the higher resolution. Steve Jobs pointed out at the announcement of the iPhone 4 that the pixel density of the new phone is so high the human eye can’t even recognize the pixels from the average viewing distance; however, there has been some debate as to weather or not this is true.

The Antenna Issue

As of today, June 29, 2010, the issue with the iPhone 4′s new antenna has still not been fixed. When holding the iPhone in the bottom left corner the cell signal drops dramatically. As of now, the only way to fix this is to use a case such as Apple’s Bumper case or to simply hold it differently.

Software

Multitasking (Fast App Switching)

One of the biggest features of iOS 4 (Previously known as iPhone OS 4) is multitasking. I think multitasking on the iPhone 4 is great; however, most iPhone apps in the App Store right now do not support it. Even though it works with out-of-the box apps and around a dozen third-party apps from the App Store, the fact that Apple gave developers little time to update their apps to support iOS 4 and the iPhone 4 really kills the feature. Overall, the feature has a lot of potential and could become quite useful once developers update their apps.

Mail: Unified Inbox

One of the downsides with the Mail application before iOS 4 was that you had to go back in the menus quite a bit to change inboxes. Now, just like Mac OS X’s Mail application, you can view e-mails from all your accounts in one inbox.

Folders

As Folders are not the biggest feature in iOS 4, they are still welcome. Folders are a great way to simply clean up your homescreen. Until iOS 4, there was no simple way to do this so people like me with over a hundred apps would have to scroll from page to page to find the app they wanted. Now, you can keep your homescreen nice and tidy with folders

Custom Homescreen Wallpaper

Finally, Apple lets you change your homescreen wallpaper! Jailbreakers have had this option for years, now Apple decides to catch on.

iMovie for iPhone

No, iMovie is not included in iOS 4, neither is it free. It costs $4.99 and it’s available in the App Store for iPhone 4 only. I downloaded it right after picking up my iPhone and I have to say, it’s not all that great. It’s basically a really, really skimmed down version of iMovie ’09 for Mac OS X. Unless you are BIG into movie editing on your iPhone 4 you might as well sync your iPhone with your computer and edit it on there.

Rating

Overall, I have to give the iPhone 4 a 4.25/5 stars because of the antenna issue. Once Apple fixes this, I will give the phone a perfect score, 5/5 stars.

What do you think? Do you have a iPhone 4? Are you getting an iPhone 4?

The next day when I went to visit the Genius Bar, a red-shirted Apple employee quickly took a look at my iPhone while I told him what was wrong and that I don’t have AppleCare. He then took my iPhone into the back and looked at it. When he walked back to where I was standing, he told me that the only thing they could do to fix it would be to replace the screen and that Apple would charge me $200 for that. He also told me that I could just buy a new iPhone 3G for $500 or a 3G S for $600!! NO WAY am I paying that much money for a phone!

So now I am using a Samsung a177 as my primary phone. I plan on getting a new iphone around next June/July when Apple is probably going to come out with a new iPhone.

What kind of phone do you use? Have you ever broken a phone?

This means that you can now make calls from your Skype, Vonage or other VoIP iPhone apps over 3G and not have to be connected to WiFi.

We still will still not see a Google Voice iPhone app anytime soon because Apple is saying that it copies the iPhone’s functionality and has nothing to do with AT&T’s network.

What do you think? Do you think that this was smart of AT&T?

To enable MMS on your AT&T iPhone just plug your iPhone 3G or 3G S into iTunes and click “check for update”. After downloading the new carrier settings, restart your iPhone and you will have MMS!

It has been working quite well for me on my iPhone 3G but it does take a few minutes to get picture messages sent. Remember, MMS only works on iPhone 3G and 3G S…

Click here fore more information about MMS for iPhone.

What do you think? Have you enabled MMS on your iPhone yet?

What do you think? Is push Gmail working for you?

UPDATE: Push Gmail is now working great on my iPhone.

Please fix your network. You’re making the iPhone no fun.

1. Still no MMS
2. Still no tethering
3. Bad coverage

Don’t blame us iPhone users on your bad network either. We are the ones that are paying you over $70 a month and what do we get? Bad coverage. Just the other day my friend was trying to call his parents on my iPhone and what do you do? You apparently don’t have service in a theme park.

When all of the other iPhone carriers support MMS from day one you decide that you are going to wait a couple of months and just kick back and relax.

You godda be kidding me!

Comments welcome.

AT&T has announced on its website this morning that MMS will become available via software update to it’s customers who own an iPhone on September 25th. FINALLY!! There is still no set date for tethering, however, the company is ensuring that tethering will be available in “the future”.

What do you think? Are you happy that you know when to expect MMS?

Right now Apple and AT&T are asking $199 for the iPhone 3G S. The real question is, is it really worth the money to get the 3G S instead of the 3G? When you compare the 3G and the 3G S you start to think, what is the point of buying a 3G S?

Well thats what I am thinking. First of all becuase the only difference between the two is that the 3G S has a 3.2 megapixel camera w/video camera instead of just a 2.0 megapixel camera with no video camera and it is also supposed to be faster. I mean how much faster can it get? A couple of milliseconds is not going to make a huge difference in your life if your like me.

Personally I think it is just a waste to spend $100 more for the 3G S because it’s not like we mainly use the iPhone for the camera. I mean if you wanted a camera, with those $100 you saved buying a 3G instead of a 3G S  you could go ahead and buy yourslef a way better camera than the one on the 3G S.

Then there is the video camera, which I think is a huge gimmick. I mean so most of you guys have heard of people jailbreaking their phones and stuff like that. When you jailbreak your iPhone there is supposedly an app store where you can get all these cool apps and you can even get an app that enables the video camera! Even on the iPhone 3G!

Oh, and lets not forget the compass: the most gimmicky thing of all!

Those are my reasons on why the 3G S in my opinion is a waste of $199. You might as well buy an iPhone 3G and save $100! In this economy we are all looking for ways to save some money here and buying a 3G S is not going to save us any money.

The Facebook 3.0 app for iPhone and iPod Touch is here! What do I have to say about it? IT’S FAST!

Here are some of the new features:

- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See your friends’ birthdays
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Upload photos to any album
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Zoom into photos
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
- See mutual friends
- Easily search for people and Pages
- Make friend requests
- Become a fan of Pages
- Quickly call or text your friends
- Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
- Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
- Chat friends sorted alphabetically

I think that this is a great upgrade and it is defiantly faster than the Facebook website! One of the cool little features is that if any of your friends have their phone numbers on their Facebook profile you can easilly call them from your Facebook contacts list. I also love the new navigation screen! If you have a iPhone 3G S you can now upload video too! Also, a feature I know I will use is that when you upload photos or videos you get to choose what album they go in to.

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, what are you waiting for? its great!