iPhone 4 - sweet features, high-def video tricks

In a keynote presentation at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers' Conference today, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 4.

It's powered by an Intrinsity-designed A4 chip (like the iPad), and it has a aluminosilcate glass front and back, and a new stainless steel around the edges. The stainless steel rim is part of the antenna system.

The whole phone is 24 per cent thinner than the 3GS - that's just 9.3mm thick! The iPhone 4 has a micro-SIM on the side, with a camera and LED flash on the back.

On the bottom, it boasts a microphone, a 30-pin connector and a speaker. On the top it has a headset port, a second microphone and a sleep/wake button.

The second microphone is for noise cancellation and a new three-axis gyroscope allows rotation and precision beyond that of the 3GS accelerometers.

The iPhone 4 will come with up to 32GB of storage, quadband HSDP/HSUPA with 7.2 Mbps down and 5.8 Mbps up, 802.11n WiFi and GPS.

The new iPhone uses what Jobs called a 'Retina display' - it's 960x640 pixels, at 326 pixels per inch.

It's called a 'Retina display' because there's a limit around 300px per inch, beyond which the human eye can't differentiate between the pixels - text will look like you've seen it in a finely printed book, which Jobs says is "unlike you've ever seen on an electronic display before".

The display has four times as many pixels as the iPhone 3GS, and 78 per cent of the pixels on a much larger iPad screen.

The battery is also bigger, for longer battery life. The new, bigger battery nets you seven hours on 3G, six on browsing via 3G, 10 on WiFi, 10 on Video, 40 on music and 300 hours standby.

That's 40 per cent more talk time on the same charge. (I have to charge my 3GS every night.)

The iPhone 4's camera is has a 5-megapixel back-illuminated sensor. It records 720p video at 30 frames per second, using tap-to-focus like the 3GS' still camera.

More light gets to the sensor through back-illumination and it has an LED flash for better low-light photography.

A new iMovie app allows users to easily edit videos on iPhone 4. You can record HD video on the new iPhone, then edit it with transitions and titles - pretty amazing for a pocketable device.

When you bring up the app, you see a list of the projects you have. You tap on a project to get into the editing environment.

Clips are viewed along the bottom of the display: when you rotate the phone to landscape, you can record directly into the timeline, or choose from existing clips, which you drag in. Finger-pinch to change the scale of the timeline.

Photos can also be added, as well as transitions (entered with a scroll box). The new camera records geolocation information and gets picked up automatically by iMovie and put into the screen as an option.

You can also add music tracks to your video from your iTunes library. The iMovie app should be on sale app for under NZ$7.

Steve's One More Thing was a feature called 'FaceTime' - that's live video chat from one iPhone 4 to another. It is Wi-Fi only at the moment, because AT&T - the iPhone's only carrier in the States - can't handle the data it causes. But Apple is 'working with carriers' to expand that in the future. So it only works iPhone to iPhone so far.

I think iPhone to Mac would be really cool!

In addition to utilising the front-mounted camera, FaceTime allows you to switch to the rear camera so the other person can see what you're seeing. You can use FaceTime in either portrait or landscape.

Jobs called premiere Apple designer Jonathan Ive on his iPhone 4 to demonstrate the new iPhone's video chat capability (after first having issues with the connection and yelling at the audience to turn off their WiFi).

He reminisced about growing up with the Jetsons and Star Trek, "dreaming about communicators and video calling. Now it's real!". Yeah.

Jobs also announced that iBooks, the ebook application for the iPad, will be getting a few upgrades - users will soon be able to make notes, and a bookmark button is on the way.

It will put bookmarked pages into the book's table of contents. iBooks is also gaining support for viewing PDFs. On top of that, it won't be just for the iPad anymore; it's coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch as well, and will sync between devices.

The new iBooks app will be available for iPhone 4 as a free download from the App Store and includes Apple's new iBookstore to browse, buy and read books.

The iBooks app syncs your current place in a book, along with any bookmarks, highlights and notes you have created, between copies of the same book on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.

iBooks users can also now read and store PDFs right in iBooks without a third-party viewer. (Users have downloaded over five million books in the first two months but it has only been available on iPad).

The iPhone 4 OS has been renamed 'iOS4,' since isn't just focused on phones anymore (it's iPad too). The release candidate will be made available to developers today.

At the WWDC keynote, Jobs demonstrated multitasking, a unified email inbox and folders for apps.

In the App Store, you can expect to see an iPhone version of Netflix soon, as well as Guitar Hero and FarmVille.

The device ships in the US on June 24th for a US starting price of $199 (about NZ$301) for the 16GB model while US$299 (cNZ$452) gets you the 32GB iPhone 4. The 4GS will become the second tier model with a price drop.

It will ship immediately in five countries: the US, France, Germany, the UK and Japan, with 24 more countries following in August, and 40 more countries following in September.

iPhone 4 will be available by the end of July in New Zealand! And also in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com