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Ok, here’s the summary: Wow!!

Overall I really love it so far, and although I experienced the famous disappearing bars issue first hand, I am really not concerned. One negative so far I noticed is the camera. There are comparisons to other smartphone cameras that say iPhone 4 is better, so maybe I just expected too much… Here’s best shot I managed today, judge for yourself (click for original). This one was outside, but inside photos not as nice, even with flash…

I listed below main positives that I did Not see in mainstream media. I feel that these are really Biggest innovations and they don’t get nearly enough coverage:

• Long Battery Life – Yes, it easily lasted 3 days with pretty heavy usage, including WiFi on all the time, steaming video over 3G and over WiFi, games, surfing, etc. This is amazing technological achievement and was main selling point in my considerations versus Evo and other competitors.
• Fast Internet – I felt that surfing is way faster, but couldn’t explain it. Today I found technical details, and I immediately ran my own SpeedTest to confirm: 4 Mbps down and 800kbps up!! Just in a random mall location! Interestingly enough, there was HTC Evo on Sprint 4G network on display at the mall today, and Internet on it didn’t feel any faster; in fact whole phone didn’t impress much…
• Reader Friendly Display – This is the Secret Feature; Sure everyone is talking about Retina display, but the truth is the screen is not only very sharp, it also feels softer, lending itself to effortless reading! The fonts are paper quality, think laser printer, and the backlight can be adjusted to soft luminance, making reading a joy! This definitely makes iPhone an ePaper competitive reading device – think 10 hours battery life, beautiful soft display AND colors! And of course interactions and video, what more do you need?

Overall – Amazing device and so far I am really satisfied with my purchase. Organizing icons into folders is fun and allows for quick access as well as ability to see what Apps I have in each category, to help me cleanup things I may not be using. I didn’t try the voice recognition features yet, but certainly planning to. I also noticed that typing is easier for some reason. Somehow it is even better at recognizing buttons I want to click, and I find myself able to type faster. Another win for Apple and shows us that closed hardware/software combination can achieve some amazing heights.

Yep, my iPhone 4 arrived via FedEx today and so far all I did was Shamelessly Fondle It all over. It is in the long process of synching with iTunes, and filling it up with Apps and Stuff.

So, Not much to report yet, but you know now that I decided to lock myself in with Apple and AT&T again, for perhaps as much as two years. Yes, Android EVO 4G from Sprint was really tempting option and I even tried to have educated discussion about it on Twitter. But my big concern was battery life and with my heavy usage it most likely wouldn’t last a full day even…

Versus advertised 10 hours video and Wi-Fi surfing on iPhone 4 with their custom CPU! And yea, there’s an App for almost anything, hard to resist that aspect also. And Gazillion games, many of which I paid for and now get to enjoy on two devices.

The new packaging is small yet still impressive – see picture with Sprite for perspective.

Stay tuned for actual usage reports!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled (aka: nonexistent) blogging to bring you this special message.

I raved about Mass Effect 2 in the past, it’s a Movie gone Game, or Game gone Movie, either way makes for amazing Sci-Fi experience. I also love Steam, with their sensible license allowing you to install the game you purchase on your PC and on your Laptop, and play on either one, depending on what you happen to be on at the time.

If you are not reading this on June 19th, the sale offering this game for $23.95 is likely gone, and so I am sorry.. But, I am sure with time price will come down to even lower level! Or just pony up the extra cash, it’s Worthy Investment (ahem…)!

Adobe Flash Platform got some bad press lately, and its exclusion from iPad is a major slap in the face to Adobe by Steve Jobs himself. Even though millions of sites out there (including this one) use Flash to liven up things and provide extra interactivity, Apple is willing to leave users to stare at Big Empty Boxes on iPad, rather than add Flash support.

To be fair, I myself did a lot of Flash/Flex development and still do! I really like what ActionScript can achieve, much more so than messing with JavaScript and CSS/HTML. But, times are tough, so here is my proposal:

How about we setup an Open Source project to build Flash alternative based on Dalvik VM and some existing Android platform components. We already know that it’s very capable, and if Google is true to its mantra, they wouldn’t mind sharing! Why not reuse the great UI library and 3D API’s, and others, and bring them into the browsers on all platforms – Windows, Unix and of course, Mac and iPad/iPhone! Can’t we all just get along?! Plus with JIT for Dalvik, and potential for native hardware video acceleration on Windows/Mac/Ubuntu/Handsets, I see very bright future!

I am not ignoring Silverlight or HTML 5, I just don’t see either as viable solution. Silverlight is still proprietary and you need specific Microsoft tools to develop for it, while HTML 5 feels like a bit “future-ware” and even when materializes, it’s unclear that it can provide all the richness of visual effects, 3D support, overall speed and pixel level manipulation which we expect in this day and age.

But what about JavaFX you ask? Feels like DOA to me, sadly. I love Java, which is yet another reason why I think Android approach is great, but JavaFX is just “overweight” out the door, and many posted about other major shortcomings.

Plus true modularity is still not there with neither technology! Why are we (developers) still forcing users to go through complex installation ritual to get new software on a system? Why does it have to be a gamble, especially when installing complex applications, whether it will interfere with other applications on the system and break things?!

So, I want to see comments! I know it’s rather big project, so without some people weighing in as to it’s merit (or with offers of participation), I am not going to bother starting even. Besides, probably Googlers are already doing it, whether in their 20% or even as main task, who knows…

UPDATE: I just discovered that someone implemented Flash player in JavaScript!? I didn’t think it was possible, but it is seemingly done using HTML5 browser features in modern browsers. More details and browsers compatibility list on the Gordon project on Github.