iPhone 4 Is Catching Up With The Present - The UpStream

iPhone 4 Is Catching Up With The Present

posted Saturday Jun 12, 2010 by Jon Wurm

iPhone 4 Is Catching Up With The Present

Apple claims to be changing the game again with their new iPhone 4 which recently made its debut at the 2010 World Wide Developers Conference that took place June 7th-11th. Jobs had a lot to say during his lengthy keynote where he first started off talking about the iPad before getting to the star of the show, the iPhone 4. Below are some notes that will help summarize the latest and greatest iPhone according to Steve Jobs.

Physical Architecture

- .37 in thick making it the thinnest smart phone ever.

- Two steel bands encompass the sides of the frame and serve to amplify the phone’s antennas enhancing Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GSM while providing structural support.

- The new design of the phone is a little squarer than the previous models, which makes it feel less like the previous iPhones. (I think it more closely resembles the G1 now, which is funny.)

- The external buttons consist of On/off, Sleep/wake, Volume up/down, Ring/silent, and Home.

Display

- The new "Retina display" is supposed to make viewing text and photos as clear to the eye as is possible.

- 800:1 contrast ratio.

- 3.5in. (diagonal)widescreen, Multi-Touch display.

- 960x640 pixels, 4 times more than 3GS.

Hit the break for the rest of the new and exciting features!

Hardware

- iPhone 4 runs on the A4 chip Apple developed.

- The bigger capacity battery allows for:

7hrs. talk time

6hrs. web browsing

10hrs. Wi-Fi browsing

10hrs. video

40hrs. music

300hrs. standby

- up to 32GB of storage

- Quad-band with theoretical 7.2Mbps down and 5.8Mbps up.

- Dual mic with noise suppression

- 802.11n Wi-Fi

- GPS + Accelerometer + Compass

- 3 axis gyroscope. (Perfect for gaming? Why?)

- 5MP camera with backside illuminated sensor, 5X digital zoom, and LED flash.

- The camera records HD video at 30 fps and has built in video editing called iMovie. (I can't think of a reason why I would ever want to edit video on a phone.)

iOS 4

- The OS for the iPhone and iPad.

- > 1500 developer APIs

- 100 new features like copy and paste! (Which according to Jobs has taken them this long to perfect. Way to go!)

- Multitasking! (iPhone users rejoice! Does anyone else find it strange it took Apple just as long to "perfect" their multi-tasking architecture as it did copy and paste?)

- Folders! (O my gosh this is just too much!)

- Exchange servers.

- Google Search, Yahoo Search, and Bing. (Apple giving users a choice? No way).

- PDF bookshelf for e-books called iBooks. (Apple knows that PDFs are an Adobe product right?)

- The same e-book can be downloaded to all your Apple devices at no extra charge. All your bookmarks and current places will be synced between all your devices.

- iAds. (Why are they doing it? To compete with Google Ads. I mean, to help developers earn money.) Apple hosts all the ads and developers get 60% of the revenue.

- FaceTime video calling is iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only where there is Wi-Fi available. The user can switch between the front and rear camera in portrait and landscape orientations. Apple plans to make FaceTime and open standard for the industry.

The 16GB version runs $199 and the 32GB version runs $299 on an upgrade. Pre-orders start June 15 and the official release is June 24th. So if you live in the U.S., France, Germany, U.K., or Japan and feel inclined to get one. You can.

Those of you not used to seeing me show such interest in Apple products may be wondering why I am doing so now. Am I turning to the dark side? Well, no. The truth is that the new iPhone 4 and iOS 4 are the platforms on which Apple is going to be developing off of for a long time, so it would greatly benefit all of us to understand what it's all about. That being said, there are some good things and not so good things to take away from this.

Apple finally, although seemingly reluctantly, addressed some long standing issues with the iPhone OS by adding a task manager, the ability to create folders, and copy and paste. They also made the normal Apple improvements by improving the screen and making the device itself more shinier(both sides are shiny now). The 5MP camera is a big improvement as well as the ability to record 720p video at 30 fps. iMovie for iPhone is interesting since one of Apple's big issues with multi-tasking was its effect on battery life. It seems to me like having your phone create, edit, and render HD video is an even more effective way to kill battery life and much less practical. Exchange servers for e-mail make the phone more useful for business as well as the 802.11n Wi-Fi. They seem to be particularly proud of FaceTime

which is what all of us have wanted to see on phones for a long time now. Of course it's only iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 and over Wi-Fi but they promise to make it an open standard in the future.

So overall there are some impressive elements to the new iPhone 4 but Apple is mostly just playing catch up. Multi-tasking, copy and paste, file management, choices, and the 5MP camera are all features that every other smart phone OS has had for years with the exception of the 5MP camera which numerous other phones have had recently. There is still no Flash support so you are still restricted to Apple's Internet but at least they still support PDFs so you can get your e-books no problem. I would be lying if I didn't say that the iPhone 4 looks cool and is a big improvement over the 3G and 3GS but I'm not going to be getting one anytime soon.

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