Apple iPhone 4S Issues and Comments

Last night I upgraded my iPhone 3Gs to an iPhone 4S.

The VERY GOOD NEWS is that I’ve had no reception problems with the iPhone 4S. My friend had terrible trouble with his iPhone 4 (I could tell every time he used it instead of his iPhone 3GS).

Dead data services

Data services went AWOL this morning— no mail, no stocks, etc — I had to reboot the iPhone 4S whereupon it worked again.

Backfocus

100% of the self-portraits I took were backfocused (focused at infinity) instead of me, even though I occupied half the frame. This is awful performance.

Heavier phone

At 141 grams, the iPhone 4S is 9g heavier than iPhone 3Gs (134g).

That is not progress— I carry my phone while cycling an average of 4000 vertical feet per day, so a 60g phone that is half the size would be nice. While 9g is trivial, it's 18g more than 9g less. In a cycling jersey, the heavier an item, the more it can “bob” during a bouncy mountain bike ride. Anyway that’s for the future, a 1/2 size phone would be nice.

Bye-bye voicemail

AT&T warns that the voice mailbox contents will be toast, but what is up with that, being the anti-Apple experience (non seamless)? The hassle of having to set one up again, while admittedly minor, is just Stupid. And losing voicemails is even stupider.

Funny, when I listened to the AT&T voice menu, I could have sworn one of the choices was “voice mail hell”. I must have just been hearing things.