No matter how good the battery life is on a smartphone there will be those days where you use it more than others and in those cases you're probably going to run out of juice before the day is out. This isn't a problem if you are in your car or going to be stationary long enough to charge up. However, if you are on the go and don't have access to a charger you can charge up from an external battery. Before the iPhone 4 I was happy with the FastMac battery for the iPhone 3GS. Although my iPhone 4 still fits in this battery it really wasn't designed for the iPhone 4's form factor. I wasn't really looking for a new battery, but Mophie had a before Christmas sale that I couldn't pass up. They were selling the Mophie Juice Pack Air – iPhone 4 for only $59. I jumped on the offer. I ordered the black/silver model and when it arrived I was impressed by how light weight it was compared to my older battery. It's designed to be a case for the iPhone 4 so that you can still use your phone while it's attached. You charge up the Juice Pack via a standard micro USB connection. There is an on/off switch that I like as well as a push button to check the battery charge with 4 LEDs.
Double the iPhone 4 battery life
These batteries are designed to give you anywhere from 1.5 to 2 times the battery life depending on the model you get. Of course it was just after i got the Juice Pack Air that they introduced the Juice Pack Plus for only $20 more you get a 2000mAh battery vs. the 1500mAh battery on the standard Juice Pack Air. In either case though you will definitely have a longer talk and internet use time with your iPhone 4 with these batteries. My primary use for this battery is when I'm traveling and I don't always have access to an outlet. I've used this one once to date and it worked as advertised. I keep it charged and in my coat pocket ready to go when needed.
You can get the Mophie Juice Pack Air for iPhone 4 here for about $79
You can get the Mophie Juice Pack Plus for iPhone 4 here for about $99
my FaceTime chat with my friend and Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak (this was Mac to Mac)
One of the things Apple introduced in their "Back to the Mac" event last week was a public beta of FaceTime for the Mac. I'm very pleased to see this happen as many of were scratching our heads as to why this wasn't introduced as a feature of iChat. I'm actually glad that Apple chose to make it a stand alone App. Why? The reason is I've had very hit and miss luck (mostly miss) with connecting with people over iChat over the years. To the point that I completely gave up on it. Whereas FaceTime almost always works for me. Actually FaceTime was one of the reasons I upgraded my immediate family to iPhone 4s. I'm on the road for work all the time and I have a kid away in school, so FaceTime was a great solution for keeping in touch without having to sit in front of a computer. With that said, there are some that will NEVER buy an iPhone or even an iPod touch. Now we can FaceTime with those folks from iPhone to Mac, Mac to Mac, Mac to iPod touch, etc. This makes FaceTime even more useful than it was before.
How does it make calls if it's not a phone?
FaceTime on the Mac, like the 4th gen iPod touch doesn't have a phone number associated with it. Therefore it relies on your registered email address. When you setup FaceTime on the Mac for the first time you log in with your Apple ID and then you can set it to use any email address(es) you want. By default if anyone tries to FaceTime you with that email address your Mac will "ring" and you can choose to accept the call or decline it. FaceTime still monitors for incoming calls even if the app isn't running. You can of course disable this feature.
How well does it work?
In my first test I was setting it up and I actually accidentally clicked on my daughter's name and it started to place the call. I quickly disconnected as it was a mistake and I wasn't trying to call her in that moment. However, she called me right back and we were FaceTiming. (yes that's a word now). She just tapped the call back feature on her iPhone without even thinking about it and since that call originated from my MacBook Pro at first, it (she) dialed me back to that location. The video and voice were very clear and of course the call was FREE!
Although you can setup a Favorites list you still have to scroll up and down your contacts or start to type a name. I would really like to see a standard Search box at the top of the window in the next version. Will there be a Windows version? Your guess is as good as mine. However, if you think about it Apple never released their own iChat client. iChat uses AOL and therefore a Windows user can just use that. They may do the same for FaceTime (as they have published the protocols used) and let someone else do the Windows client. Again, just guessing.
Like most "betas" this product is still under development and therefore there could be bugs in using it and we could see more features come along the way. My assumption is that Apple will roll the final version into Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in the summer of 2011.
Snow Leopard (yes it requires Snow Leopard) users can download the FaceTime Beta here.
I was VERY HAPPY to see the iOS 4.1 update hit the streets last week. Although I had already had my iPhone 4 replaced for the yellow photo white balance issue, I was still having annoying proximity sensor issues and sometimes people would complain that my voice was very garbled while talking on my bluetooth headset. iOS 4.1 really hit the spot in a big way. First off, for most people it corrected the "taking an indoor shot coming out all yellow problem". I did some tests with another iPhone 4 here at my house that hand't been replaced and I took a shot while it was running iOS 4.0.2 and then took the same shot after applying the iOS 4.1 update and well, see for yourself:
click the image above if you want to see it larger.
Although my replacement iPhone 4 is still slightly better than the other iPhone 4 here, the iOS 4.1 is a drastic improvement.
As a long time user of Apple products I for one really appreciate the amount of time that goes into not only the functionality and ease of use of their products, but also the industrial design. I think a lot of users choose Apple products because they do what they are supposed to do, but they also look cool! The iPhone is no exception. It's a beautiful product. As a person in both the graphic design and photography industry, looks are important to me too. I upgraded to the iPhone 4 for all the obvious reasons. However, there was one feature that was very high on my list and that was the improved 5MP camera that also shoots 720p HD video. I had already pretty much stopped carrying a point and shoot camera. If the video was as good as Apple claimed on the iPhone 4 I figured I could pretty much stop carrying a separate video camera too. After I got my iPhone 4 setup, naturally one of the first things I tried was the camera. I gotta say that I was extremely disappointed. My photos appeared to have a very very very yellow/orange tint (color cast) to them. As a professional photographer, I knew the problem revolved around the iPhone 4's auto white balance. However, with the iPhone camera there are no controls for this. It's factory set to auto white balance and there was definitely something horribly wrong with mine.
For the sake of doing a sanity check, I compared my new iPhone 4 to my iPhone 3GS and the difference was night and day. This problem also only seemed to affect the rear (5MP camera). Shots taken under the same lighting with the front camera were fine. As a matter of fact, the rear camera is fine too under natural light situations. The shots taken outside are gorgeous. No complaints there!
I wasn't alone
My family bought four iPhone 4's (some from Apple, some from AT&T) on launch day. All four were having this problem. I went to Apple's Discussion Forums to see if others were having this problem and unfortunately there are dozens if not hundreds of users having this problem. I also saw an article on Macworld's website about the problem too. At first it appeared to be a problem with ALL iPhone 4s. However, after a little more digging I found people that were starting to chime in and saying that their iPhone 4's were fine. Even a few friends of mine said that they weren't having the problem. I wasn't quite convinced yet because unless you were shooting under the right conditions, you wouldn't notice the problem. It wasn't until someone on Apple's discussion forums posted side-by-side shots from two different iPhone 4's (one having the issue and one not having the issue) that I believed that this wasn't a problem that affected all iPhone 4s. This meant that I now had a decision to make. The decision was to either live with the problem until Apple fixes it via a software update or try for an exchange. The problem with an exchange is that some people in the forums had tried for exchanges (some as many as 6 times) and still hadn't got one that worked. I decided to wait for the July 16th press conference to see if Apple would even acknowledge the issue. While they did acknowledge the Proximity Sensor issue, unfortunately they didn't mention the white balance issue at all (and to this date, still haven't publicly said anything about it). I called AppleCare that afternoon and setup an advanced return.
Apple made their case on July 16th (like it or not) during their press conference about the iPhone 4's reception problems that some users are having. They offered their explanation and theories backed by their research data, FREE iPhone 4 cases (order your FREE iPhone 4 Case using Apple's FREE App here from 
)and a no restocking fee return policy. In my opinion that should be the end of it. Either you want an iPhone 4 or you don't. If you got one and it's not working for you, take it back. What more could you ask for? Yet they (Apple) insist upon continuing to fuel this (in their own words "blown out of proportion story") by posting NEW videos regularly to Apple.com/antenna on how other manufacturer's phones lose signal when you hold them too.
In my opinion this is a MISTAKE. Apple just LET IT GO!
Your motto/stance should not be "look, see the other guys lose signal too. Their phones are just as bad as ours."
The real problem – It's not about the bars!
My take on the whole signal loss/bars display thing is that the only time someone even bothers to look at the number of bars they have is either when they drop a call or can't make one. The "death grip" as it has been called means that someone holds a phone in a fairly natural way (not as tightly Apple demonstrates in some of their videos) up to their face and they talk. If the call drops they then pull the phone down and look to see why. That's the "real problem" and not the number of bars. Saying that other companies lose bars too is not really telling the whole story (and it's one that no one is arguing). I know that Apple says with numbers to back it up that the iPhone 4 doesn't drop that many calls. However, it does drop more calls (by their own admission) than the previous iPhone 3GS. Even if it's by a small percentage, it does drop more.
Prior to the iPhone 4, when was the last time you looked at or cared about the number of bars on the display of your phone? It comes down to you can either make calls reliably or you can't!
Apple if you want to impress me about how the iPhone 4 holds up against the competition then make videos of someone holding all the various phones the same way while on calls in real world environments (outside, inside, on a train, etc.) and not just in your testing labs where the conditions are optimal.
As far as your customers are concerned it doesn't matter what the other phones do or don't do when you hold them. It matters what YOUR iPhone 4 does and whether or not the call will drop? According to AT&T out of their recent 3.2 million iPhone activations only 27% (yes, a very nice number) were NEW accounts. This means to me that a large number of iPhone 4 owners are upgrading from previous iPhone models and that's what they are comparing the iPhone 4 to. Not your competitors. iPhone 4 users are using their iPhones the same way that they did with their iPhone 3G/3GS case or no case and expect to have the same if not better call quality. Speaking of AT&T, it appears that 73% of iPhone users are VERY SATISFIED with AT&T. Wow! So apparently we can't blame them for everything.
I would also dare to say that a large number of perceived dropped calls that some people are experiencing is due to proximity sensor issues "FaceDialing" if you will. If you were to fix that issue as fast as you fixed the cosmetic signal display issue, you might have less people complaining.
As an iPhone 4 user overall, I'm happy. I don't need for you to continue to show me how every other phone loses bars when you hold it. I do care about not dropping calls. Spend that time and energy improving your own products.
Here are 3 hot issues affecting some of your iPhone 4 users:
Bluetooth Sound Quality/Disconnects
I'm sure they would appreciate these issues being addressed much more over another video of another phone dropping signal.
UPDATE 8/1/2010: It's redeeming to see that Apple pulled down the videos from their Antenna Page. I guess I wasn't too wrong after all 
On a lighter note…
I was extremely disappointed about one thing with the new iOS 4 Software Update and iPhone 4. With the iOS 4 update on my iPhone 3GS and then ultimately going to the iPhone 4, Apple took away one of my favorites features and one that made me think: Apple – It's a PHONE first! That feature was one that appeared in iPhone OS 2 (after my complaining about it not being on the original iPhone OS) and it was a simple double tap of the Home button to get to your Phone Favorites List. I feel that ALL phones should have a ONE TOUCH SPEED DIAL feature and since the iPhone doesn't have physical keys to assign contacts to, the next best thing was the ability to double tap the Home button to get to that short list of Favorites so that you can quickly dial someone that you call all the time. Instead Apple chose to reassign the double tap to the NEW multi-tasking feature. Again, I thought since multi-tasking is the NEW thing, why not give that feature a different command such as triple tap or double tap and hold, etc.? I couldn't believe that such a fundamental PHONE feature had taken a backseat to running multiple apps at the same time. After all the iPhone is a PHONE first! Note: double tap still works to get to Favorites (or whatever you have it set to) on the iPhone 3G since the iPhone 3G doesn't support multitasking.
What about Voice Control?
During a dinner conversation my buddy and fellow columnist Jack Beckman, we started talking about Voice Control. Voice Control is not a new feature. It was there on my iPhone 3GS. However, I almost NEVER used it because quite frankly it just didn't work with my voice. As I've said in the past voice recognition software ether works really well for me or not at all. On the iPhone 3GS Voice Control was in the "not at all" category. I would say "Call Jack Beckman" and the iPhone would say "Calling Phyllis Evans". If I have to say it 3, 4 or 5 times to get it to work, then I'm better off just doing it manually and that was just how bad Voice Control was for me. However, since one of my favorite features had been thrown to the side like yesterday's news I figured what did I have to lose by giving Voice Control another shot? So I tried it and OMG it worked! First time, no hesitation. I tried it again with a different name and it worked again. I spent the entire next day forcing myself to only use Voice Control to make any calls that I needed to make and son of a gun, it worked with EVERY NAME I threw at it. Yesterday, I tried more difficult names like Kwesi Aquil and Rentata Stojcevski and it got those right too. As a matter of fact it has yet to not get it right on the first try for me! WOW!
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