iPhone 4 The Tie

I reserved an iPhone 4 the day preorders opened – I didn’t actually order one since I couldn’t get through Apple’s website; I reserved one via the Apple Store iPhone app instead. Turns out this was about as good an outcome as waiting for it to just be available, since I wouldn’t have had to wait in a 6-hour line, like I did. I even made fun of the people waiting overnight to get their iPhone so they don’t have to wait during their workday, but there I was. I am such a tool.
Now whether I’m a tool for actually BUYING the new iPhone is debatable. Getting a new phone usually results in me MAKING money, because I can sell the old one, sans contract, for about the same price of a new one, plus AppleCare, plus tax. Disregard the fact that I took time out of my work day to get this phone, which cost me almost that amount in lost pay. It’s not lost! I’m on contract! I can make it up whenever I want! Ugh!…
No, the reason I might be a tool is because of Early Adoption Syndrome. The new iPhone has two flaws, both of which I’m not sure if Apple will have a solution to anytime soon.
First, it’s the infamous left-handed signal loss issue, which does affect me, because I am left-handed. Almost all of the calls I’ve made so far have required that I move my hand from the natural phone-holding position, lest the calls be dropped. It’s a real shame. I can’t start holding it in the other hand because it’s still difficult to lift my right hand to my face. I really don’t want to buy a case because I keep the phone in my pocket and I can see the rubber conflicting with the ease of taking it in and out of my pocket. That, and I don’t feel as if I need to buy something extra to correct an inherent design problem.
Second, it’s FaceTime: it might work right out of the box, but it doesn’t when you restore your old iPhone’s backup onto the new phone. You can’t re-enable it: the option just plain disappears from the phone settings screen. The only way to get FaceTime to work is to restore your iPhone to factory settings and start from scratch, which would be fine, if it wasn’t for one thing: Final Fantasy II. The game, and many other games I have on my phone, have save data which I want to keep around (the data screen reports I have spent 23 hours and 18 minutes on the game so far). So basically, I need to finish up the game – which, by the way, runs just amazingly on the new phone compared to my old one – before I can restore and enable FaceTime. Which is fine, because I don’t know anyone else with an iPhone 4 and the feature is a gimmick just like video chat has always been.
Overall I’m glad I upgraded, mostly due to speed concerns. The OS and apps just blaze along. The new higher-resolution screen is pretty, but doesn’t really affect my experience that much. Due to the reception problem, I might have been better off buying an iPhone 3GS, which is also pretty fast. But I’ll deal with it. Maybe Apple will come out with a software update that will solve both problems. Probably not. But there’s always hope.