Taking the Punge with iPhone 4S

I've made my choice.

On impulse, I have taken the plunge with iPhone 4S.

I did not pre-order as millions did. I did not get up early and stand in line.

Nope. I got home from work Friday evening at 5:30. I ate dinner. I decided to drop by McDonalds for a sweet iced tea, and there was the Verizon store.

On a whim, I decided to go inside and see how long it would take receive delivery of an iPhone on order. Of course they'd have sold out by now.

But to my surprise, they still had phones in stock. It was 6:05 p.m  After picking the white 32GB model, I was out the door with within 30 minutes (it took a little longer than expected to transfer my contacts).

All I can say is, "Wow, what a great phone."  It was definitely one of the smoothest upgrades I've encountered...and I've upgraded many times (Let's face it, my Verizon buddy Kailyn knows me by name! :-) )

After bringing the phone home and doing an initial tether sync with my Macbook Pro, I was set to go.

Super Speed
So far, this phone is FAST. It is faster and smoother than any smartphone I have ever owned. My wife has an iPhone 4 and this phone is noticeably smoother and faster than hers.

Camera
The camera on the phone produces super fine pictures. I'll take some video and share soon.

Battery
The battery life blows my Samsung Fascinate away. The Fascinate with Froyo was a power suck. You could watch the battery charge go down as soon as you turn on GPS or BlueTooth. Not so with the iPhone 4S. I'll keep you posted on battery life.

Siri
The "cool" factor for iPhone 4S is Siri. Like the demonstrations and the reviews, Siri is pretty convenient to check the weather or to find a nearby restaurant. But beyond that, I haven't found additional uses. I hope that changes over time.  I didn't buy the phone for Siri, and I'm glad I didn't because it feels kind of overblown.

Twitter Integration
The other thing I want to explore a little bit more is the "deep Twitter" integration built into iPhone's iOS5. I own an iPad, and iPad2 and a MacBook Pro. So far, I'm not seeing the value of the "deep Twitter integration", but I'm willing to give it time.

Retina Display
The Retina display on iPhone 4s (like iPhone 4) is spectacular. I was reading a book on the Kindle app while waiting to get my hair cut this morning and the letters on the screen were as rich and clear as on my wife's Kindle app. When the iPad get's Retina display, it will be like going from regular to HD TV.

Phone Call Quality
I've made a few brief phone calls on the iPhone 4S. Funny, you don't hear much about phone call quality in the reviews. It's OK, but I'll have to admit that the Fascinate is on par, maybe better. The iPhone 4S has a better speaker phone than the Fascinate.

Speakers
The speakers built in to iPhone 4S provide rich sound. They are located on the bottom of the phone and it actually has better sound quality than the iPad 2. I don't like the speaker on the back of the beveled side of the iPad 2. You have to cup your hand around the speaker or set it next to a solid backdrop to get rich sound while watching the screen (but that's a different review, right?).

My one bit of advice for anyone considering a purchase of the iPhone 4S: if you can afford it, go for the 32GB version. My experience with iPod Touch, and iPad is that 16GB is just not enough when you load apps, video, music and photos together. Go bigger. You will be disappointed if you don't.

So far so good on iPhone 4S. I'm simply delighted by the speed and responsiveness of the device. I'm also delighted to be entirely on the Apple platform with my devices. iCloud and wireless synching seem to be very natural. More on both of these coming soon.

Update: Here are some pictures I took with the iPhone 4S camera:

Sustainability and Social Media

I'm not certain how many people who participate in social media can be so active, so often over time.

In my life, I find that when I'm actually busy at work, or at home, or in other areas of my life, the social media presence is likely to take a hit.

Sure I have my Samsung Fascinate to keep me plugged into the digital world, but having the actual time to put in the effort to maintain a presence in my Twitter stream or my Facebook world is challenging when life in the real world get's busy.

I look at these Twitter feeds where content is being shared every 10 minutes and I scratch my head wondering how in the world some folks make this happen.

The answer is obvious:

a) Scheduled posts:  This is what drives a lot of the individual Twitter accounts I follow. There's no way a person can keep up the 24/7 presence without using scheduled posts. Which begs the question: where's the dialog?

b) Unemployment:  I continue to think that a lot of the folks who have a heavy Twitter presence have a lot of time on their hands.  In the past several years, as Twitter has grown up and as the age of the "social media evangelist" has increased, one just has to wonder how much of this content is just a show.

All I know is that when I get busy (and I've been tremendously busy the past few weeks), my social media presence tends to suffer.

I'm not too worried about it. I have a real job and a real life, after all.

Is Twitter Changing or am I?

Is Twitter changing or am I?

Tonight I watched my first baseball game of the season. (The Reds bullpen handed one to the Cardinals.) But tweeting the game was different.

Last season, I enjoyed watching and participating in the #Reds hash tag community conversation. I met a bunch of great fellow fans and it was a cool experiment.

This year it is different. As I began to watch the game, I became self-conscious about flooding my Twitter feed (and my followers feeds) with commentary about the game. After all, I don't want to lose precious followers, right?

So I laid off the commentary for the sake of my Twitter sphere.....and the game wasn't nearly as fun to watch. It was like I was watching it alone.

Is the evolving nature of Twitter and the cultivation of followers sucking the life out of the medium? Should I just go ahead and Tweet the game and cast care to the wind regarding my followers who could give a rip about the Red Legs?

I'm not sure. And that lack of certainty has sapped some of the fun out of Tweeting the games.

Sometimes it stinks to grow up. I'm just not sure if it is me or Twitter doing the growing.