iPhone 4
Posted by elpabl0 on 9th June 2010
WWDC10 kicked off, as usual, with a cracking Keynote. As expected, we saw the launch of the iPhone 4 and the renamed software, iOS4. The phone itself is pretty much the same device that Gizmodo had its hands on a few months previously, leaving many with the guilty feeling of a kid that’s peeked at his Xmas gifts. Still, they pulled some surprises out of the box - here’s a quick breakdown of the key features:
Retina Display
Packing 4x the number of pixels of the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4 has the best display on the market. John Gruber of Daring Fireball sums it up perfectly:
Gyroscope
Probably the most surprising feature, the gyroscope enhances the compass and accelerometer functions of the device, and will primarily be used for games and augmented reality applications. It will be interesting to see how developers make use of this technology.
Cameras
As expected, the iPhone has a 5 megapixel back camera, with LED flash, and also a front facing camera. The latter is primarily going to be used for video calling. ‘FaceTime’ lets you see your caller and show them what you’re seeing, by flipping to the back camera at any time during your call. It will only be available to other iPhone 4 users and over wifi only, to begin with. It’s been created as an open standard though, so expect to see other services and devices implementing FaceTime in the future.
Design
Whilst most of us had had a pretty good preview of the overall design, we learnt a lot more about it during the Keynote. Firstly, the stainless steel band that forms the main body of the phone is actually the antennae for wifi, bluetooth and cellular connectivity. The device is also the thinnest smartphone on the planet at only 9.3mm thick. Quite impressive, and a great example of Apple’s brilliance in industrial design.
You can watch the full keynote here, and get more information from Apple’s website here. Once the pebble team have got their hands on the new iPhone later this month we’ll give you a full review.
Meanwhile…
Looking back at our ‘predictions’ post, we did pretty well. No iTunes Live or touchpad, but Apple have launched Safari 5 (download) with the developer APIs and the latest update to Snow Leopard is in the hands of developers right now.
