Apple today presented the new iPhone 4 featuring FaceTime, which makes the dream of video calling a reality, and Apple’s stunning new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, resulting in super crisp text, images and video. In addition, iPhone 4 features a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, HD video recording, Apple’s A4 processor, a 3-axis gyro and up to 40 percent longer talk time—in a beautiful all-new design of glass and stainless steel that is the thinnest smartphone in the world. iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, the newest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, which includes over 100 new features and 1500 new APIs for developers. iOS 4 features Multitasking, Folders, enhanced Mail, deeper Enterprise support and Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform. iPhone 4 will be available in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan on June 24, starting in the US at just $199 for qualified buyers with a two year contract.*
“iPhone 4 is the biggest leap since the original iPhone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “FaceTime video calling sets a new standard for mobile communication, and our new Retina display is the highest resolution display ever in a phone, with text looking like it does on a fine printed page. We have been dreaming about both of these breakthroughs for decades.”
FaceTime is as mobile as your phone, so you can see your loved ones and friends anywhere there is Wi-Fi. Using FaceTime is as easy as making a regular voice call, with no set-up required, and you can instantly switch to the rear camera to show others what you are seeing with just a tap.
Apple’s stunning 3.5 inch Retina display has 960 x 640 pixels—four times as many pixels as the iPhone 3GS and 78 percent of the pixels on an iPad™. The resulting 326 pixels per inch is so dense that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels when the phone is held at a normal distance, making text, images and video look sharper, smoother and more realistic than ever before on an electronic display.
iPhone 4 is the thinnest smartphone ever—9.3 millimeters—with an all-new design and build quality like no other mobile device. The front and back are made of aluminosilcate glass, chemically strengthened to be 30 times harder than plastic, more scratch resistant and more durable than ever. The front and back glass have an oil-resistant coating that helps keep it clean, and encircling iPhone 4 is a highly finished stainless steel band made of a custom alloy that is forged to be five times stronger than standard steel.
iPhone 4 features a new 5 megapixel autofocus camera with a 5x digital zoom, a backside illuminated sensor and built-in LED flash that allows you to take amazing pictures even in low light and dark environments. iPhone 4 lets you record and edit incredible HD video and the popular tap to focus feature now works while recording video. You can use the iPhone 4‘s LED flash for both still photography and video recording. The new iMovie® app for iPhone lets you combine movie clips, add dynamic transitions and themes and include photos and music, and users can buy it for just $4.99 through the App Store right on their phone.
iPhone 4 is the best mobile device ever for games and entertainment, with access to tens of thousands of games and entertainment apps on the revolutionary App Store. Every iPhone 4 has a built-in 3-axis gyro that when combined with the accelerometer provides 6-axis motion sensing such as up and down, side to side, forward and backward and pitch and roll, making it perfect for gaming. Developers can access the gyro using the new CoreMotion API to make games and other apps that go well beyond what other mobile devices offer.
iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, the newest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system. With over 100 new features, it includes Multitasking, Folders, enhanced Mail, deeper Enterprise support and Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform. With Multitasking, users can now instantly switch between any of their apps while preserving battery life. With Folders, users can easily organize their apps into collections by simply dragging one app on top of another. A folder is automatically created and named based on the category of apps selected. Users can change the name of any folder at any time. In addition, users can now customize their lock and home screens with an array of supplied wallpapers or with any of the photos on their phone.
The new iBooks app will be available for iPhone 4 as a free download from the App Store and includes Apple’s new iBookstore, the best way to browse, buy and read books on a mobile product. The iBooks app will sync 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. There are now over 60,000 books available in the iBookstore, and users have downloaded over five million books in the first two months.
More than five billion apps have been downloaded from the revolutionary App Store and more than 225,000 apps are available to consumers in 90 countries. Almost 100 million iPhone and iPod touch users around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.
iPhone 4 delivers an amazing seven hours of talk time on 3G networks, up to 10 hours of web browsing on Wi-Fi and up to six hours on 3G, and up to 10 hours of video playback and up to 40 hours of audio playback.** iPhone 4 is powered by Apple’s new A4 processor that provides exceptional processor and graphic performance along with long battery life. iPhone 4 features a second microphone and advanced software to suppress unwanted background noise for improved call quality when in loud places. iPhone 4 also offers 802.11n Wi-Fi networking and adds quad-band HSUPA to provide 7.2Mbps downlink and 5.8Mbps uplink capability.***
Pricing & Availability
iPhone 4 comes in either black or white and will be available in the US for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model in both Apple and AT&T’s retail and online stores, Best Buy and Wal-Mart stores. iPhone 4 will be available in the US, France, Germany, Japan and the UK on June 24 and customers can pre-order their iPhone 4 beginning Tuesday, June 15 from the Apple Online Store or reserve an iPhone 4 to pick up at an Apple Retail Store. iMovie for iPhone will be available on the App Store for just $4.99 (US).
Also on June 24, a new iPhone 3GS 8GB model will be available for just $99 (US). iOS 4 software will be available on June 21 as a free software update via iTunes 9.2 or later for iPhone and iPod touch customers.****
iPhone 4 will roll out worldwide to 88 countries by the end of September. iPhone 4 will be available by the end of July in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
*Qualified customers only. Requires a new two year AT&T rate plan, sold separately.
**Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.
***Speed is dependent on cellular network capability.
****iOS 4 is compatible with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, second and third generation iPod touch (late 2009 models with 32GB or 64GB). Some features may not be available on all products. For example, Multitasking requires iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or third generation iPod touch (late 2009 models with 32GB or 64GB).
Source: Apple Inc.
Bloodbath….. all the way.
Just make sure we get a link to the video on apples web site as soon as humanly possible.
They got rid of the plastic shell. that was shit.
Now we know what the seams are for.
Impressive, the HD video and iMovie sold me. Hope iMovie will come soon so I can try it on my iPad.
All the engineers working for the rest of the mobile industry are now officially put on overtime.
It probably kills Adobe to realize that this is the first phone that is actually powerful enough to handle full Flash, but Adobe cannot do anything about it.
If you have seen how new iMovie works on the iPhone (and likely soon the iPad), then you know how it will work on the future mouseless and keyboardless Macs.
iOS4 is growing into a full desktop OS. I can guarantee you, iOS5 will have support for some sort of a user-accessible file system, and will become a default OS for the newest line of multi-touch iMacs.
Any word yet on FaceTime <-> iChat compatibility?
I heard that IOS4 won’t come to the iPad until September. Anyone else hear that?
@Sarasota,
No official word on an exact date. A while back when Apple did a preview of iOS4, they said it would be available for the iPad “Late Summer”, so unless they make an official announcement that contradicts that, I’m estimating an August release.
Finally we get the new iPhone sooner – rather than later – to Finland to, we had to wait over a year for the originalone, ty Steve this is gonna be sooo good I am drooling.
What does this add?
5.8Mbps HSUPA
The 3GS does not have it according to the Apple comparison page.
So the white or black-colored parts of the phone are opaque glass? Cool. It says the camera is a 5x digital zoom.
Does the new phone also have the capability for optical zoom?
Awesome! I did have higher hopes for the battery life though, not that it’s bad or anything. Hope to see 3G video calling ASAP
Bongo
How would 3G do video conferencing? Use a mirror or something? Don’t you need a front facing camera?
No worry to me, I am ordering 6/15 for the 4. Glad I am qualified for upgrade. Yeehaa
Fine great phone etc., but disappointed no mobile me info.
Bongo
Duh, I realized too late that you meant video conferencing OVER 3G network, right? I often get mixed up with all the 3s and Gs and stuff.
If I remember well, iChat uses H.264 for video. FaceTime seems to support a fairly wide variety of encoding techology (in addition to H.264, SIP, AAC and others, as well as, most importantly, STUN and TURN, to let it run behind NAT firewalls).
The more important question is, will it require as many open ports as iChat does? The only reason I’ve been using Skype more than iChat is because it can squeeze its traffic through port 80, if everything else is buttoned down. iChat demands several dozen open ports, which most IT security officers are more than happy to keep closed forever.
I think quite the opposite about the engineers for the competition. They are taking a breather for the day and preparing to go back to war with the other Android devices for the rest of the year. Thats their only competition at this point.
Just like I said, we’re never going to see OS 10.7. It’ll be some totally crippled iOS crap instead that you clumsily use with your finger on a glass shield balanced on your knees instead of high tech pointers and key boards sitting on a physical desk in your office.
The days of the Mac are slipping away faster than sanity in the nation’s capitol.
I win the bet. Send me your money. I’ve got some MSoft PCs I will have to start looking into.
Was nice while it lasted. Thank you, lord Jobs, for the great run and curse you to hell for abandoning us!
@ Truckdriver
Settle down now, there big guy. Apple’s got a larger menu in the last few years than just the Mac. They are growing quite large, and there is much to talk about.
If they only made Macintoshes and monitors, and the rest of the tech industry was moving here and there, but Apple remained loyal to their only 1 product, they would not grow, and who knows the outcome. So, while you may not like that there is no talk of the Mac, understand that they are growing – which is great for all Apple products… Including the Mac.
Can someone make a basic comparison of iPhone 4 to the HTC EVO?
I’ve been using Macs exclusively since I bought a Mac 128 and an ImageWriter for $3500 in 1985. I’m also a quadriplegic, so iPads and iPhones don’t do me any good. But if ever there was an Apple “fanboy,” she would be me, and while I know full well the superior quality and technology of Apple products, I’m curious as to how people believe the battle of the line mobile devices will pan out. Is the EVO an iPhone killer?
@Truck Driver, you’re either a troll or a fool. Either way, I’m not going to waste my time refuting such nonsense.
Truck Driver,
You must be fairly new to the Macs (i.e. at most 9 years). Otherwise, you would have looked into PCs when Apple switched from the OS 9 to the completely different, weird OS X. Apparently, you fall into the category of people who are incapable of living through Apple’s desktop OS changes.
The primary difference between previous changes and the upcoming one is, the new iOS will be infinitely more intuitive, more precise, faster and easier to use than current Mac OS X. And you must be really, really short-sighted and unimaginative to actually think that a Mac running iOS wouldn’t allow you precision control of elements on the screen when needed. And could you please elaborate how you believe an iOS would be crippled on the desktop?
And, by th eway, are you really balancing your iMac on your knees??? Where do you keep it when you work? Is it by any chance on your desk? What possesses you to think a multi-touch iMac wouldn’t sit (actually, more likely lie) on your desk??? And what is a high-tech pointer? A mouse!!??? You serious?
(There! I took the bait)
@ Truck Driver
Now dont take on so. Nothing has been announced as yet. You sound like a kid with toys that have flat Duracells and its 20 miles to the store.
And remember, where Apple goes the others follow – eventually, so if you go darkside the experience may be hellish.
Your Mac will run for a decade yet.