Steve Jobs took the stage this morning at the Apple World Wide Developer's Conference to give the opening keynote presentation. The primary point of interest was the iPhone 4. The new phone boasts over a hundred new features, eight of which were covered in the presentation.
Jobs claimed that the iPhone 4 is the thinnest smart phone on the planet. A claim that I actually find difficult to believe (I can think of some pretty thin smart phones that most people have never seen or even heard of). The device has a front facing camera, microSIM tray, five megapixel camera with an LED flash, two microphones - each having active noise canceling, and a better antenna system. Some theories have started to crop up that the problems people are having with the iPhone dropping calls are not all that related to AT&T's network and are more related to hardware issues on the iPhone itself. This idea is bolstered by the fact that there are few complaints about dropped calls on other smart phones on AT&T's network. So the new antenna system, which is primarily external (if you've seen photos of the device, you'd have noticed the metal ring around the edge - that is the antenna system), is a way to address this problem. Hopefully it works.
The first real new feature Jobs discussed was the screen. The iPhone 4 will ship with a 326 pixel per inch screen. Based on the photos of the presentation in the live blogs all over the Internet, this bump in resolution makes a pretty big difference. Icons and text appear significantly sharper. A side benefit of cramming more pixels per inch is screen response. Supposedly, the iPhone 4's screen is much more responsive to touch.
Also new in the iPhone 4 is the central processing unit. The iPhone 4 uses the same Apple A4 chip that is in the iPad. For users, this means a faster experience (the iPad is incredibly snappy, so the iPhone should scream), but also longer battery life. Battery life will break down as follows:
Talk Time: 7 hours
Web browsing over 3G: 6 hours
Web browsing over WiFi: 10 hours
Video: 10 hours
Music: 40 hours
Standby: 300 hours
Note that, while several companies tend to bloat their battery life claims, Apple has been very good, particularly of late, of releasing realistic battery life estimates.
Remaining on the hardware front, the iPhone 4 will come in two variations and two colors. You will have a choice of either black or white and 16GB or 32GB models. In addition, it is a quad band phone with compatibility with HSDPA and HSUPA 3G bands which results in 7.2 Mbps download and 5.8 mbps upload speeds. Also included is support for 802.11n WiFi networking (a very welcome addition), GPS, an accelerometer, a compass and, new to the iPhone, a gyroscope. The addition of the gyroscope allows for six axis motion sensing (as a PS3 fan, that sounds familiar ;) ). Developers will have access to this new feature through a new API called CoreMotion. Still, despite Jobs' claims to the contrary, no device that lacks physical buttons can be referred to as "perfect for gaming."
The new camera is a five megapixel part, which keeps the iPhone about two generations behind competitors' highest end camera phone technology. The camera has a backside illuminated sensor, supports 1.75 micrometer pixels, 5X digital zoom, tap to focus functionality, and an LED flash. In addition to still images, the new camera can capture 720p HD video at 30 frames per second. Alex Lindsay of the TWiT network notes that the probability of the camera being able to actually capture 720p video is pretty slim. More than likely there is some interpolation being done internally in the phone, much like what happens on a Flip HD video camera.
Announced alongside the new camera was iMovie for the iPhone. This is a stripped down version of the iLife application for Mac computers. It allows video editing, mixing of iTunes music, and uploading to the Internet. And at $4.99, it did look quite impressive.
Once Apple tackled the lack of copy and paste functionality, probably the next most clamored for feature was multitasking. Now Apple has addressed that as well. The iPhone 4 will support a form of multitasking. From reports, this will be a limited feature, most likely for particular applications. The demonstration Jobs' gave was a useful one, though. He streamed a Pandora stream (after making the audience shut down all of their WiFI connections - they were interfering with the demonstration) while checking email. A pretty good demo of a useful feature.
An announcement that will likely get buried under the weight of more significant features is the addition of Microsoft's Bing search engine as an option. Google, however, will remain the default search provider on the device.
Before moving on, Jobs tossed out some more numbers. And they are pretty impressive. To date, Apple has sold 100 million iOS based devices. iOS, incidentally, is the new official name for iPhone OS. iOS devices include iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. That's a lot of iStuff.
Apple also announced that the iBooks feature and store introduced with the release of the iPad will be making their way to both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Unfortunately, there is still no indication that they are bringing them to the Macintosh, though. And I really wish they would do that. On the plus side, iBook purchases are tied to your account rather than the device on which you made the purchase. This means that you can buy a book on one device and then download it to another device with no extra charge. Great move, Apple.
The final (not really, but...) feature that Jobs discussed was something I know we're all super interested in - iAds. Yes, iAds. I realize this is a developer conference, but I'm not sure I'd have put this into the opening keynote. It brought the entire presentation to a screeching halt. Basically, you will have graphical banner ads on your phone's screen. I don't even like banner ads on my web browser screen on my computer. I really don't want them on my phone. Fortunately, while this portion of the presentation seemed interminable, it was fairly short.
And just when you thought the presentation was over, Jobs reached into his traditional bag of tricks and pulled out a "One more thing..." Unfortunately, the "One more thing..." was not a surprise to anyone that has been following iPhone news for the last several months. The iPhone 4 has a front facing camera (which many other phones outside of North America have sported for years, incidentally). With that front facing camera, you can call someone else with an iPhone 4 and carry on a video chat with them over your WiFi connection (I initially had this listed as the cellular connection, but more details have since been released and it turns out that it's WiFi only. Bummer.). You can also incorporate video from the back facing camera. The video chat feature is, surprisingly not being called iChat. Instead, it is called "FaceTime." It's a cool feature, but I suspect that it will not be heavily used.
The new iPhone goes on sale June 24th and will be $199 for the 16GB version and $299 for the 32GB version (each with a two year contract). Again, it will be available in black or white. At the same time, the iPhone 3GS will be reduced to $99 and the 3G will be completely retired. Pre-orders are being taken now. Initially the phone will be available in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Japan.
Apple will also be releasing a new dock for the device as well as a new case. The iPhone 3G, 3GS and second generation or newer iPod Touch devices will be upgradable to the new operating system for free.
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