Exciting new features were unveiled with arguably the most anticipated product this summer.
For one, the design's different. At 9.33mm thick, it is 24% thinner than the iPhone 3GS. It is currently the thinnest smartphone on the planet. It is made of a glass and steel combo; the stainless steel is for strength and the glass is for optical quality and scratch resistance. On the design, there is a front facing camera, LED flash, microSIM, headset and a second mic for noise cancellation.
The display is better than ever. Apple uses what they call Retina display which uses 4 times the pixels in the same given space. There are 326 pixels per inch. The human eye can process not more than 300 pixels per inch. Once you go retina, you can't go back. The new display is all about precision. Existing apps will look better. Retina is better than OLED.
The battery life's better too. The phone promises 40% better battery. 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing. 10 hours video. 40 hours of music. 300 hours standby.
Next is the motion sensing. They've tied the gyro, accelerometer and GPS for 6-axis motion sensing. This makes gaming a way better experience than before. To demonstrate this, Steve played a game of virtual Jenga.
The camera's upped! It now is a 5 MP camera (up from a 3 MP camera). Comes with a backside illuminated sensor, 1.75 unit sized pixels, 5x digital zoom, tap to focus and LED flash. Here's the coolest part though. The camera now records in HD video. Wait, here's the cooler part. The video is EDITABLE on the phone. The iPhone 4 can carry iMovie which can cut, trim, edit, add music, transitions and geolocation information to video on the go. The application can be bought for $4.99.
The next part is the OS. The new OS will be called iOS4. A quick summary of its features: Multitasking, folders, Retina Display integration, Unified inbox and threading in Mail, enhanced camera and photo apps, deeper enterprise support, new features everywhere.
They've added both Google and Yahoo! as search engines as well as Bing!. Google will however, remain the default search engine.
iBooks is also coming to the iPhone. iBooks lets you buy books from the iBookstore, it will connect wirelessly to the iPhone, iPad and iPod, you can download the same book to all your devices at no extra charge, it automatically syncs place, bookmarks and notes. iBookstore connects to both the App store and iTunes store.
A new feature is iAds. This is primarily to earn developers money. iAds keeps you in your aps and is built into Apple iOS4. Apple sells and hosts the ads. 60% of revenues go to the developers. Payment via iTunes Connect. Some of the brands that are using iAds are Nissan, Citi, AT&T, GE, Target and Best Buy. Nissan will be giving away a car through their ad. iAds will be on all iOS devices on July 1st. $60 million has already been committed from advertisers.
A very exciting feature (and the major point behind changing the camera and design) is video calling. You can video call using Wifi only in 2010 while Apple works with cellular networks to make video calls. This feature is called 'Face Time' and can be had iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only. This is going to be an industry open standard. You can use both the front and the back cameras during the video call.
In terms of price and availability, the iPhone 4 comes in black and white and will be priced at $199 in the US for 16 GB and $299 for the 32 GB models. The phone will be on sale on June 24th. The 3GS in the meantime will go for $99 and 3G is no more. Pre-order will start from tomorrow. The number of countries will keep increasing by the month and by September, the iPhone 4 will ship to 88 countries. There are still speculations about when India will get the phone.
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