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Monday, June 7, 2010

iPhone 4 @ WWDC

After months of speculation, prototypes popping up in bars and remote corners of the globe, bloggers being booked by the police... finally the Jesus phone got a new iteration at WWDC, when Steve Jobs went up on stage to announce the iPhone 4 (thank God they didn't call it the iPhone HD).

So what does it do? Well it pushes the iPhone 3G into oblivion and relegates the current-gen 3GS model to a lower strata in Apple's stable when it releases on June 24th in the US, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. The iPhone 4 echoes some of the design cues I remember from the first generation iPod Nano, though much larger. It has a flatter back with squarish edges, not to mention more metal.


The pixel count stands at 960×640, which is higher than any other phone out there. The display (they're calling it a "Retina Display") is a 3.5" IPS Panel LCD with a contrast ratio of 800:1 and 326 PPI (that's pixels per inch) .

With a larger lens and a backside illuminated 5MP sensor complemented by an LED flash, the camera is sure to be atleast on par with other 5MP shooters.720p video recording at 30fps is a sweet feature to have, although that's one way to fill up your 32gb (it comes in a 16gb flavor too) of onboard space quickly. The front camera is a much needed inclusion, bringing video chat to the iPhone (and I'm certain the presence of Wifi-n on it will do it loads of good in this regard).



The processor inside is an A4, more than enough horsepower, but the phone still manages to conserve battery power better, showing battery time figures well in excess of previous iterations. It also has a Gyroscope within for
those who need their share of multiple axis gaming.



iMovie, an application meant to help you put together videos on the iPhone 4, was demonstrated along with iAds being shamelessly plugged all through the keynote. Jobs then pretended that it was still the year 2000 by being very excited while announcing to all us mere mortals about the revolutionary Facetime Video Chat, restricted only to iPhone to iPhone conversations and not on 3G (cos it would clog the crap out of AT&T's network) either. Facetime you say? Nope, this was Facepalm :/ instead. What it needs now is a jailbreak.



All the talk about iBooks had me really bored too. The iPhone 4 did indeed embarrass its maker at a point during the keynote with 3GS version loading a web page proper while the latest iteration struggled to overcome the interference from the hundreds of wifi connections in the hall. And they ended up changing some nomenclature too - iPhone OS 4 will henceforth be known as iOS 4. Apple sure have a tendency to come up with Cisco names for their products.



It wasn't quite the bang, bang, bang, bang pace that people expected the keynote to have, more like a few bangs and yawns interspersed. Netflix, for example, was personally a yawn for me. So there you have it - the iPhone 4 - at $199 for the 16gb version, and $299 for 32gb. Available in white and black. That price is, of course, the subsidized rate provided you sell your soul to AT&T for 2 years. They're evening offering their existing iPhone subscribers the latest iteration at just $18 if you lock yourself into a new 2 year contract with AT&T. And if you're planning to use it in a country where you can't get it directly from your carrier, do note that it uses the MicroSIM form factor for your SIM card (yeah, get your scissors out). So what are you waiting for? Go forth and satisfy your iCravings :D



Will there be an iPod Touch based on this model too? Who knows, maybe by September? But I'd sure as hell like one.

Most important announcement of the keynote though: Farmville is out on iOS for all you Facebook fanatics... Yup, everyone's a critic ;) .

PS: Do pardon a few mistakes or typos if they exist in this post. Almost fell asleep finishing this.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wtf was jobs thinking hyping facetime when nokia probably did it a long long time ago!

and eff AT&T, can't apple ink a deal with a better carrier that doesn't necessarily just aim to line Jobs' pockets for the privilege of having the iPhone in its stable???

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