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A year ago I wrote about The iPad — My First Apple Computer. I have been surprised over the last year at how much I have used my iPad. It is an amazing device for consuming Internet content. I spend less time on my laptop and overall more time on a computer (laptop + iPad).

I recently dropped my three year old mobile phone and it promptly broke in two. With the renewal up on my mobile phone plan, I decided to take the plunge and renew for another three years and purchase an iPhone 4. I was curious how my iPad experience would translate to the iPhone 4.

Setup was straight forward. All of the free apps that I have downloaded for the iPad were automatically syncronized to my iPhone 4. This included all the apps that I have explicitly asked not to be downloaded to my iPad. Hard to fault Apple on this as they do treat each device and the device settings as unique in iTunes.

The smaller screen size has taken some getting used to. I spent a lot of time fussing around getting all the apps organized, in order, and arranged on the screen the way I wanted. Since there are fewer apps per screen on the iPhone 4 than on the iPad, it has taken some thought to figure out the right organization.

As I wrote about in Flipboard, iPad, and Customer Experience, I enjoy the Flipboard application and the experience it gives of reading a magazine for my Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader feeds. The whole point of Flipboard is that it takes advantage of the generours screen real estate of the iPad. Without the same kind of screen space on the iPhone 4, I have had to use individual iPhone apps to read my feeds.

My iPad skills have been easily transferred to my iPhone 4. The biggest surprise has been how I use the iPhone 4 as a phone. Having used mobile phones for over fifteen years I am used to the quirks of the various handsets that I have owned over the years. Apple’s more integrated experience on the iPhone 4 feels different. On the whole, I think that the experience is going to be better. For now, it is just different.

A bonus for me is that I recently needed to make a lengthy call to Dubai. My mobile plan has really expensive long distance within North America and fantastically expensive long distance charges to the middle easy. I knew my contact had Skype and the night before our call I installed the Skype app. All my Skype contacts were immediately available and my call to Dubai worked the first time. Very impressive.

So far, the Apple experience is another enjoyable one.