iPhone 4 released to widespread anticipation

Apple logo.

“I was tired, not too excited; I just wanted to go back to sleep,” 14-year-old Tyler Staker of Huntington, West Virginia, said about waiting four hours to purchase the newest iPhone, released June 24^th.

Staker was not the only one anxiously waiting in line to receive his or her iPhone 4. Some eager customers had camped outside the local AT&T store since 12:30 a.m. in order to get their hands on one of the 40 available phones. There were similar stories all over the country as well; when the morning of the iPhones initial release came, many had been camping out for days to be amongst the first to get the phone.

“I had wanted one for probably two months. I wanted it mainly because it had more features and was cooler looking [than my old phone, the iPhone 3G],” Staker said.

Some customers have complained that when ones finger is placed on the bottom left-hand corner of the phone while making a call, the call is dropped (for that is where the internal antennae is placed). Still, reactions have been generally positive.

“I like it more than I anticipated. I saw pictures and thought it looked cool, but when I got it and saw how thin it was, and how great the display was, I liked it more than I thought I would,” Nick Pulcrano, also of Huntington, said.

Improvements over the iPhone 3GS include Facetime (where a camera is placed on both the front and back of the phone, allowing for more convenient video chatting), HD video recording, multitasking, and a 5 mega-pixel camera with a flash.

Staker admires the phone also for its Plexiglas screen, which allows for greater durability than its glass counterpart, and the folders feature, where one can store many apps in the same place.

Although neither Staker nor Pulcrano have put many apps or songs on their phones yet, they plan on loading their 16 GB phones to their full capacity.

“I just have to switch over all my apps and music from my computer to my phone, then I’ll be good,” Staker said.

While Apple is sure to come out with a “new-and-improved” product, be it an iPhone or iPad, at some point in the near future, iPhone fans all over the world at least have something to play with for a while. And if the hysteria leading up to the iPhone 4’s release was any hint, they will not stop playing and critiquing until that next shining beacon of technology is released.

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