I’ll be waiting for the free case from Apple to come in around the end of September (if they don’t ship it early this time). I ordered the Speck PixelSkin HD after doing some research and looking at the kinds of features I want in a case—covers the buttons, non-sticky (unlike silicone), non-brittle (unlike hard plastic), non-bulky profile, bump and back protection, ample space for the ports, and finally, pretty/neat looking. Here’s a gratuitous gallery:

The actual review of the phone is after the break.

First impressions of the phone? It’s small. It’s really small. In a great way, too, since it fits comfortably in my pocket with headphones plugged in (which cannot be said about some larger music-phones… like my friend’s Ericsson). I believe this is mainly due to the fact that it’s only about 1 cm thick and flat all around. I knew before I purchased the phone that I’d love the clean, straight cuts along the sides and back, but holding it in my hand or whipping it out feels totally badass with such a nice form factor.

The screen’s beautiful. I think the screen may be the single most important change they made to the iPhone that really sold me on it (besides already looking like the ultimate katana of slickness over all smart phones). I mean, with a smart phone you can expect to be spending quite some time staring at the screen as you work, play, organize, and use your phone in general. That’s why it made so much sense for me when Apple announced the mega-awesome display (note: the new iPod Touch is going to crush everyone else’s balls with its own Retina Display—just watch). Colours are vibrant and contrast is awesome. High-definition videos (snagged off YouTube at 720p with jDownloader) are beauties to show to friends. To be honest, I haven’t done all that much reading on the iPhone so far but I imagine I’ll do more of that once my case comes in and it’s not so glaringly obvious that I’m being a total dickbag, pulling out my iPhone on the bus/wherever to read in public.

The sensor functionality is neat though not game-changing. The new gyroscope is kind of cool (I want to test this out on an airplane and on a boat sometime) and shooting stuff in GunRange with the gyro is pretty balling, I must admit. Still, maybe for lack of creativity I fail to see how many of these crazy sensors in the phone would come into play in day-to-day productivity use (e.g. use that doesn’t involve blasting Mokis into wormholes homeward).

The rear-facing camera is sweet. I’ve snapped a few photos (admittedly with the previous lemon iPhone) and some videos, and they are all surprisingly good for a handheld’s photographs. I’m not a photograph buff so I don’t really know how to hold an intelligent discussion about quality photos. I do know, though, that taking a good photo != taking a large photo (i.e. having over 9000 megapixels doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get good photos). All I can say so far is that the camera takes photos that look good to me—won’t pass for anything professional, but it probably could pass for something taken with an average-to-above-average, dedicated digital camera. Front camera doesn’t seem to take photographs that are as pretty, but that may have more to do with them being of me than the camera’s fault (I do know it’s lower MP on the front-facing camera though). Flash is there, and it works. Don’t know how great the results are (under Swiss Chalet’s lighting photos of my mom looked kind of  really freaking yellow, but she is Asian, so…).

As for attenuation, I’ve always had crap-tastic reception here in the condo (I live on the ground floor, until +18 floors of concrete and steel) so it hasn’t been hard getting the bars to go from 3 to 1 (under Fido’s Toronto network, by the way). I have not been able to get it to completely lose reception (i.e. I can’t get the phone to go into “Searching…” mode) and I can’t even get any attenuation in places with decent-to-good reception (like downtown). So, for all those nay-sayers and haters, there’s that.

Anyway, all in all,  I’m much more than pleased with the new iPhone (I sort of have to be, having paid that kind of money + hassle for it). No Flash is still kind of a “WTF, seriously?” issue, but I have yet to browse onto a  web site that hinged upon Flash to run so I guess it’s kind of not a problem. I guess. Can I recommend the phone to others? Well, if you are like me, and enjoy having all your stuff (phone, music, camera, and more) in one place, then it’s definitely worth considering. Some people really hate on Apple for the sake of not looking like a fanboy—sadly for them, the Anti-Apple Club is biggest fanboy club out there—and those people should just get an Android phone or a Blackberry. Or, wait for the Windows Phone 7 by end of 2010.

If you plan on getting a data plan, you should just get the subsidized one through a carrier. If you don’t want the data plan and the extra $360 (minimum) + tax per year, and know how to do math, get the unlocked phone from Apple directly. You’ll probably have to wait a few weeks since everyone’s apparently crazy for this phone, but you won’t regret it (unless you’re paying for the phone by starving your children and not paying your utility bills).

• watched Audrey Hepburn’s “Charade” with Amy
• got Ulrich the iPhone 4 set up with Fido through a nice Québecois lady, and ended my stay with Koodo
• went to IKEA looking for a bed frame, left with a can opener and a potato peeler
• checked out Buskerfest with Amy (Friday), and then with Adwin and Shawn (Saturday)
• Distillery District for coffees and gelato with Amy

Notes: The original audio track was supposed to be Kaela Kimura’s “Level 42″ but because the folks at Columbia Music are dicks sticklers about people promoting their artists on their behalf for free illegal use of their “property” they wouldn’t let me use it on YouTube and the audio got nuked. I then used an audio-swap feature of YouTube’s to substitute a pre-licensed song (the “I’m Feeling Lucky” automatic song finder gave me Finger Eleven’s “Paralyzer” after two tries).

I hope you enjoy the video, without the original, nicely cut and faded audio. Thanks be to Karen for helping me with the cutting of the pages, and Amy for her genius idea on how to bind and seal the pages together. Oh, and thanks be to Columbia Music, just for being the kind of company they are. Please, continue to set this kind of precedent for all those in the music industry and do for your artists what only you can do, and I’m almost sure you will have a flourishing business model on your hands. That, or crash and burn like the bags of fecal matter in airplanes low on fuel that you so desperately wish to resemble.

Hate for petty and childish business models aside, I’m loving the phone and loved making the case. I have indeed been able to replicate the attenuation problem (to crush the dreams of all those who were hoping some magical fix had been implemented in the second batch of iPhones), but it seems that it is only an issue in inherently weak-signaled places, and I do think the reception overall is actually better on the iPhone 4. For example, I get 3 bars that will drop to none or 1 when applying the death-grip to Ulrich from within my condo. As a reference, I normally get zero/no reception at all with my previous handset in the same spot. This proves that attenuation is still a problem. However, the fact that the phone even gets any reception in that spot at all indicates that the antennae actually performs better if not being cheated.

Soon, soon my lovely little periwinkles, I will be free of this.

5 things I still want to do before summer ends:

• rock out with Adwin and Stephen (and Melissa too, I guess, but she’s a girl so she doesn’t count)
• head down to Burrito Boyz for lunch with the 1990 guys and back to Rafael’s place for gaming
• find a way to play “Wings of Liberty” Starcraft 2 campaign on Mac or PC
• go on a variety of dates
• see a yet-to-be determined concert

Oh yeah, Linear Optimization. Time to get back on that before day dreaming of dates and video games.

Anyway, Thor has this totally badass hammer, named Mjöllnir. Here is an excerpt (taken completely out of context) from the Wikipedia page:

At a banquet Þrymr holds in honor of the impending union, Þrymr takes the bait. Unable to contain his passion for his new maiden with long, blond locks (and broad shoulders), as Þrymr approaches the bride by placing Mjöllnir on “her” lap, Thor rips off his disguise and destroys Þrymr and his giant cohorts.

Read more about Mjöllnir here.

Update: Here’s a video of me, making a Chibi-Mjolnir:

Apparently, my claim on the domain had expired on the 25th but the notifications were never received by me. The WhoIs information was never changed with respect to my email address. To make things worse, I had assumed I was on an automatic renewal setup, so I never bothered to check when my lease expired.

You can imagine the shock I had when I went to make a post last night (probably about how much Statistics I’ve been doing over the week—a lot) and instead found a squatter on my page, with links redirecting to pole dancing lessons and pole barns. When I ran a WhoIs check, it said the “people” at Enom.com had swooped in and gobbled up my domain. I went there, and test-registered the domain. They wanted me to pay the $69 for something intangible that I owned a few days ago.

I asked a few people who’d know about this sort of thing (thanks Tim, Adwin, Stephen, and David) and the general consensus was that I was not getting my domain back. I contacted Hostgator about the problem, sort of in a panic, and the helpful support guy told me he’d do his best to snag it back on my behalf, and all I have to do is pay for the renewal for the coming year (since after all my lease did expire). So, $15 and one night’s worth of sleep later, www.the-ppole.com is back in my rightful possession, with all the WordPress installation + databases intact (I checked first thing this morning when I woke up).

Let this mark the start of a new age, where domain squatting bastards like Enom Inc. can cram it with their business model.

Re: Amy – The squatters’ asses have been soundly kicked.