Eye on the new iPhone
If it's June, there must be a new iPhone coming. Steve Jobs didn't disappoint this morning when he took what was left of the wrapper off the new iPhone 4 during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Here’s what matters: The iPhone 4 will go on sale starting June 24; preorders will be taken online starting June 15. The cost is $199 for a 16-gigabyte model and $299 for the 32 GB model. There is no 64 GB model.
Jobs also said the operating system, which powers the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, has been renamed "iOS." That's much simpler than the old name: "iPhone/iPad/iPod OS."
Other iPhone 4 hardware details:
— Two built-in cameras, including a 5-megapixel camera with a light emitting diode (LED) flash (Or illuminator, as Jobs, perhaps thinking of Adobe, doesn't like the term "flash.") and a front-facing camera for videophone conferencing.
— The camera will record HD video and also have longer battery life. The claim is two hours more than 3G talk time.
— Antenna that wraps around the entire device.
— Three-axis gyroscope for improved motion control in apps and games.
— 9.3 mm thick
— Two microphones and a noise-cancellation button.
— Display is 4x resolution of previous models and has 800-1 contrast ratio.
— Features the same A4 chip found inside the iPad.
IPhone 4 software details:
— IMovie video editing software, letting users create videos from multiple shots using transitions, themes and pan/zoom effects.
— IBooks software that will sync with other devices. Users will pay once to have a book on any or all of the devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad).
For more on today's iPhone love-in, see Cnet.com:
http://www.cnet.com/apple-iphone.html?tag=smallCarouselArea.0
