Apple announces the iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010

During the keynote at WWDC 2010 today Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4 & iOS 4. Jobs started the keynote by stating how well the iPad is selling. The iPad has sold 2 million devices that’s one iPad being sold every 3 seconds. Jobs also stated that the iPad is being sold in 10 countries & will be sold in 19 countries by July. He also announced that there are 8,500 iPad applications in the app store & have been download over 35 million times. Jobs also went into how the iBooks service is doing with 5 million downloaded e-books in the first 65 days. And that iBooks has 22% share of total of e-book sales. Jobs also showed of an update for iBooks allowing users to view PDF’s files, highlight information, bookmark a page & create notes.

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Steve Jobs compared the iPhone’s mobile browser usage to Android & RIM. With the iPhone having 58.2% of the US mobile browser usage, Android having 22.7% of the US mobile browser usage & RIM having only 12.7% of the US mobile browser usage. Jobs also noted that the iPhone has 28% of the US smart phone market share. And RIM having 35%, Android having only 9 %, Windows Mobile having 19% of the US smart phone market share.

The most anticipated announcement & the most leaked device on the web was the iPhone 4. Which is only 9.3 mm thick that is 24% thinner then the iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 4 will have a front facing camera, a second mic for noise cancellation, a 5.0 MP camera with LED flash, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (802.11n) & GPS. The device has the antennas built into its stainless steel frame for improved cell signal quality. Jobs also pointed out that the iPhone 4 would have what he calls “Retina Display”, which will allow the device to display more pixels. And give the users a shaper, clearer view of images & text on the phone. Apples own A4 processor will power the iPhone 4.

The device will use a micro SIM card to save space & will have a lager battery, which will offer up to 7 hours or 3G talk time, 6 hours browsing the web on 3G, 10 hours browsing over Wi-Fi, up to 10 hours of watching video, up to 40 hours of music & up to 300 hours of standby. The iPhone 4 will compatible with HSDPA & HSUPA networks for up to 7.2 Mbps download speeds & 5.8Mps upload speeds. The handset will have up to 32 GB of storage for your music & video. The camera on the iPhone will allow for 720p HD at 30 fps video recording. Apple has also created a version of the iMovie for the iPhone, which allow you to edit your video right from the device. iMovie for the iPhone will cost 4.99 on the App Store and is now available.

The most interesting feature of the iPhone 4 would have to be the announcement of FaceTime, which will allow for video calling. During the keynote Jobs demoed the feature by calling Jony Ivy the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc. FaceTime works by using the front & rear camera to send video calls. And will automatically switch to the rear or front camera depending on which way the handset is held. Video calling will work in both portrait & landscape mode. Video calling will only work with other iPhone 4 owners and is only ran over Wi-Fi networks. FaceTime will be an open industry standard.

The iPhone 4 will come in two colors white & black and will cost $199 dollars for the 16GB model & $299 dollars for the 32 GB model. The Phone 4 is available for pre-orders starting June 15th & will be on sale June 24th in the US, France, Germany, UK & Japan. Apple will be adding 24 more countries in August & 44 more countries in September that will carry the iPhone 4. If you happen to have a contract with AT&T with your current iPhone you can get up to 6 months early eligibility to upgrade to the iPhone 4. And if your contract is up during 2010 you are eligible to upgrade to the iPhone 4. The iPhone 3GS & iPhone 3G will be sold at $99 dollars.

Jobs also introduced a new version of the iPhone operating system called iOS 4. The new operating system will have multitasking that will allow the user to run up to seven applications at once. iOS 4 will have “Folders” that will allow you to organize your applications on your home screen. By simply dragging applications on top of each other will create a drop down menu of all the applications. The iOS4 will have improvements to its Mail application allowing for multiple email accounts to be threaded to the application. Apple is allowing the user to choose what kind of search engine they want to use Google is still the default but now you can choose Bing or Yahoo to search the web.

The iOS4 will also have a version of iBooks. The iPhone version will have the same functions as the iPad version PDF reading, bookmarking, highlighting. If you buy an e-book from iBook using your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch you will only have to buy it once. The application will sync your notes, places, and bookmarks to all of your devices automatically & wirelessly for free. The iOS4 will be available for the iPhone 3GS, 3G & iPod Touch but will not support all the features that are supported on the iPhone 4.

Jobs also mentioned the current state of the App Store he stated that it’s a curated platform with 225,000 apps. Apple gets about 15 thousand apps & 95% of the applications are approved with in 7 days. The 5% that are not approved are rejected for the following three reasons. The first reason is the application doesn’t function as advertised by its developers. The second reason is the use of private API’s by the developers. And the third reason is the applications crashes, which in turn cause unsatisfied customers The App Store has had 5 Billion applications downloaded, which 70% of the revenue goes to developer. Apple has paid out one billion dollars in revenue to application developers.

Netflix, Activison & Zynga also announced applications for the iPhone. Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings demoed Netflix for the iPhone. The application will allow you to download movies and watch them on the iPhone. The Netflix iPhone application is due out this summer. Zyanga the company that created ever so popular Facebook game Farmville has created an iPhone version. Using the iPhones push notifications to alert users when their crops are starting to die. Activision showed off Guitar Hero allowing you to use a swiping motion to strum each instrument.

Steve Jobs also talked about iAd Apple’s mobile advertising service. This service will allow application developers to earn money. And still create low cost & free applications for the iPhone. Apple has partnered with companies such as Nissian, Citi, AT&T, and GE & Liberty Mutual just to name some of the companies. Steve Jobs is looking at up to $60 million of ad dollars during the second half of the year, and 48% of the US mobile ad market.

I would have to say the most impressive announcement at WWDC 2010 would be the iPhone 4 & the iMovie. Although I was hoping to hear about Mac OS 10.7,but I guess we will have to wait until the next WWDC for that announcement. So tell me what do you think of the new iPhone? And will you get it? Feel free to sign off on our comments section.

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Josh Uhlemeyer

Former Author of Mobile NewsNow

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