Even while acknowledging the physical beauty of Apple’s latest design—yet another pocketable piece of art from Jony Ive and his legendary team, worthy of awards as much for its execution as the boldness of the chosen materials—it must be said that the glass and metal iPhone 4 has a certain impracticality that will turn off some users as much as it excites others. The challenges caused by its antenna system and scratchable, glossy body are ones that many users will want to mitigate with cases, which may have been beneficial for past iPhones but seem downright necessary now. For no good reason other than to look cool, iPhone 4 feels like it has taken yet another step down the “designed to be damaged and ultimately replaced” path, a point that Apple would surely spin as environmentally friendly due to the recyclability of its glass and metal. But if iPhone 4 was truly a nod to famed German designer Dieter Rams, as noted in the introduction to this review, it should respect his principles that good design is “long-lasting,” “environmentally friendly,” and “makes a product useful.” Products should be built to last rather than disposable, and items made to be moved in and out of pockets shouldn’t break after a few drops, or suffer networking problems when held normally in one’s hand. True environmental friendliness avoids the need for product replacement and recycling rather than exacerbating it; good design also makes a product useful, rather than making the user work around its limitations. As attractive as it is, iPhone 4’s case-dependent body design is the only reason it falls short of our high recommendation, and should Apple provide a reasonable remedy to the obvious problems here, we’ll take the rare step of revisiting our rating in light of that change.
That having been said, iPhone 4 is otherwise the best iPhone Apple has released: it surpasses every past model in horsepower, screen quality, data speeds and versatility while either rivaling or improving upon their feature-for-feature battery life, and the price points are reasonable given the quantity and quality of capabilities Apple is offering. This isn’t another G4 Cube, a product that looked incredible but didn’t outperform other Apple and competing products; it’s an incredibly powerful smartphone, so long as its body is protected. Were it not for the chassis concerns, and the variability of AT&T’s service, which continues to hold U.S. customers back from enjoying the data speeds and call stability they deserve—differentially on a city-by-city basis—this new model would be a close to no-brainer recommendation for all sorts of potential customers, including everyone from iPhone EDGE and 3G upgraders to first-time users. Instead, our advice is as follows: buy into the iPhone 4 solely if you’re in a city established to have reliable 3G coverage and are making the switch from an older phone. Get a case quickly and avoid dropping the phone. If you have an iPhone 3GS, you can probably afford to hold off on this one until next year’s update comes, but the camera and screen improvements may tempt you to jump in anyway. We’d wait, but we’d also understand if you couldn’t. Issues aside, the iPhone 4 once again inspires the kind of lust that will only seem foolish when it’s replaced.
That last line sums up Apple pretty nicely.