Ok, yea, so I got caught in the Reality Distortion Field and bought a new iPhone last week. In 2007 I went from using a Sony Ericsson T-610 to an iPhone, then upgraded to a 3GS, so my comparisons and impressions are going limited to other iPhones. There are already a bunch of great reviews by better writers and tech pundits than I, so this simply my initial thoughts and feelings rather than an in-depth analysis.

The display is fantastic, it’s like watching HDTV for the first time. It’s got a nice solid hefty feeling to it. My old iPhone 3GS’ screen almost looks blurry and feels like a cheap plastic toy.

Camera takes much better shots and the LED flash works out really well in very low light. The video is a major improvement, but unless the scene is very well lit, there is some  noticeable compression artifacting going on.

Had a single Facetime call, it worked awesomely. When someone requests a Facetime chat, the front-camera turns on while it’s ringing, so you see a live video of yourself trying to figure out who is calling, which was very, very startling.

The reception problem is kind of real. I can drop a call consistently, within about 20 seconds by holding the tip of my finger on that black band on the lower left corner. This only happens at home, where my reception is normally marginal at best. I can duplicate this on the 3GS only if I wrap my entire hand around the bottom of the phone. I cannot reproduce this problem at work, with either phone.

With the rumors of a future antennae fix, and a Verizon iPhone, I considered returning the thing and waiting until the dust clears and the rumors are laid to rest. My wife, who inherited my 3GS (at least until the white iPhone 4 is available) refuses to go back to using her old phone (my old 1st generation iPhone) so it looks like I’m going to hold on to this fancy new phone for a while.