We’re sure that 99% of know all about the iPhone 4. Or at least what you could tell from all the live blogs. But to be as redundant as all the other tech blogs on the www. , we’re gonna do a quick round-up of what just happened at WWDC10.
Design
Although I prayed to Joe Pesci for a month, the design looks exactly the same as the ‘stolen prototype’ . We are (still) glad we didn’t follow the herd by covering the story, and even if the new iPhone 4 looks good, we can’t say were 100% happy with the design. Size-wise, the new iPhone 4 is 34% thinner than the iPhone 3Gs but 3 grams heavier. The extra weight is not that bad , considering the fact that our souls weight 23 grams.
The iPhone 4 is 4.5 x 2.31 inches, and 0.37 inches thick. It weighs 4.8 ounces (137 grams).
Hardware
As expected, the new iPhone 4 features the same A4 chip as the iPad. The A4 chip contains a a few interconnected chips:
- Cortex-A8 – main processor unit
- PowerVR SGX 535 ( paired with Cortex-A8 chip ) – handles the graphics
The chips above are directly connected with each other and two low-power 128MB DDR SDRAM chips. The A4 chip consumes less power because its sub-components can be switched on and off when they are not needed, shaving watts whenever it’s possible.
Display:
The new iPhone 4 features a 3.5inch multitouch screen with a resolution of 960×640 pixels ( Apple calls it the Retina Display ). The new screen has four times as many pixels as the current iPhone 3Gs display. The screen has 326 pixel per inch resolution.
Front camera:
As predicted/expected iPhone 4 has a front video-conference camera, with standard VGA resolution.
Back camera:
iPhone 4 has a bigger sensor for the main backlit camera. The new camera has bigger lenses and counts 5MP with a higher ISO. We also get a LED flash for the main camera which can be used for photos and video ( you can video record in HD now )
Gyroscope:
Probably the only hardware feature no-one expected. The new iPhone 4 has a built-in 3-axis gyroscope capable of detecting pitch, roll, and yaw. Couple with the accelerometer, you have 6-axis motion sensing.
Misc:
- iPhone 4 uses a Micro SIM
- additional microphone on the top used for noise cancelation
Battery life:
- Talk over 3G: 7 hours.
- Browsing over 3G: 6 hours.
- Browsing over Wi-Fi: 10 hours.
- Video: 10 hours.
- Music: 40 hours.
- Stand-by: 300 hours.
Software
We pretty much covered OS 4.0 with every beta release but there’s a couple of new things we need to cover here:
iPhone OS becomes iOS:
Apple decided to drop the ‘phone’ part from the name. If prior 4.0 we said iPhone OS x.x.x and iDevice(s) , now the proper name will be iOS x.x.x and iOS device(s)
Video calling:
Something we expected for a long time: iPhone 4 finally brings video calls thanks to its front camera. Apple calls it FaceTime ( horrible name ) , and it ONLY works iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi—at least for 2010. Apple claims that in the future it will be available over 3G. ( yet another reason to jailbreak )
iMovie for iPhone:
You will also be able to edit your recording directly on the iPhone , with iMovie for iPhone which bring over 1,500 new features. The new iMovie for iPhone works on high definition 720p right and when you are done editing you can export your masterpiece to 360p, 520p, and 720p.
iMovie is not a stock app. It will be available in the app store for $4.99
Price and availability
The Phone 4 will be available in black or white on June 24, and will cost $199 and $299 for 16 and 32GB.