iPhone - page 429

A sensationally-titled piece over at Gadget Lab posted on Wednesday asserted that Jobs’ claims about the iPhone 4’s Retina Display being so dense that individual pixels were unobservable to the naked eye was “false marketing.”

Not so, says the Bad Astronomer himself, Phill Platt, who uses what he knows about optics and resolution from his years spent calibrating cameras aboard Hubble to prove that Jobs’ (mostly) told the truth when it comes to how the iPhone 4’s display looks from twelve inches away.

On Monday, Apple made a big deal about exactly how tough the new iPhone 4 glass was, bending it almost thirty degrees on stage without a sliver of a crack webbing across the glass.

Pretty impressive! Too bad you can’t even drop an iPhone 4 from waist height onto the ground without it shattering, finds repair shop iFixYourI (who don’t have an iPhone 4, but do already have replacement parts).

Where’s the blame, according to iFixYourI? The bezel. Previous iPhones had counter-sunk glass flush with the bezel, while the iPhone 4’s glass actually extrudes a little bit, so the bezel can’t protect it.

iFixYourI says design flaw. Possibly, but as a commenter points out below, it’s worth noting that a hollow iPhone 4 (as we have here) is going to have glass more vulnerable to drops than one supported by an interior hardware architecture. Furthermore, Apple seems aware of just this vulnerability: their new cases seem almost sole-mindedly designed around eliminating the exact sort of shock impact being discussed here.

Either way? Whether your fingers exude butter or not, you’ll probably want one of Apple’s new iPhone 4 bumpers. Probably the pink one, too.

As a big fan of the sport, I’ve played a lot of soccer games on the iPad – from full 3D soccer sims like Real Soccer, to little 2D 1-on-1 games. However the most addictive pick-up-and-play soccer game I’ve played so far is easily Deadball Specialist HD by Full Fat Productions Ltd, which pushes your finger flicking skills to the limit!

We’ve known for some time that the iPhone and iPod Touch are not as secure as we would like them to be — and unfortunately the same can be said about the new iPad. The lack of built-in encryption leaves our personal data on any of these devices at risk. Luckily for iPhone and iPod Touch users third party vendors are supplying apps that help fill some of these gaps in security. One such app, which was popular on the Palm OS platform, is SplashID from SplashData, Inc., which stores all your passwords, logins, and banking details.

Cult of Mac reader Till Kresslein alerted us to this DIY paper version of the iPhone 4.
It’s a cute promo for a German Premium Reseller that gives the iPhone 4 desirous something to play with until the latest device is unleashed in Germany on June 24.

Just download, cut and paste.Till has already made one and assures us it looks pretty cool. For sure, it’ll look great beside your Steve Jobs paper doll.

Or wrap it around something, leave it in a bar, watch hilarity ensue.

With Motorola behind one of the main challengers to the iPhone (at least, the current ones, anyway — the emerging iPhone 4, for now, seems fairly peerless), one doesn’t get much chance to observe the iPhone and the Motorola M in close proximity outside, perhaps, some smartphone cage match, or on the bedside table of two star-crossed lovers.

Apple has set up the most astounding wall we’ve ever seen. It is filled with 30 24-inch Apple Cinema displays that are synchronized and powered by 30 Apple Mac Pro workstations is a Matrix movie like waterfall that displays the top 50,000 apps in the iTunes App Store.

Providing you’ve got the wherewithal to jailbreak your iPad, Apple’s tablet makes a fine SNES emulator, thanks to SNED HD for iPad, which looks absolutely amazing at the iPad’s 768p resolution. Even better, you can pair it with the ControlPad app for iPhone for more convenient controlling with your iPad docked or balanced on your knees.

Psst. We’re not going to tell you where to get it, but if you happen to have some seedier connections, we can tell you that yesterday’s Gold Master Build of iOS 4 works on any iPhone or iPod Touch, whether or not its UDID has already been reported to the dev center. That means, if you know where you’re looking, you can install iOS 4 on your device right now… provided your device is a 3G, 3GS or second or third gen iPod Touch. Make sure to grab the right IPSW for your device.

Better? If you’ve got a 3Gs, you can already jailbreak it, although we recommend being cautious and if you don’t know what you’re doing, wait until the Dev Team releases the new 4.0 compatible PwnageTool… which they swear should be available within the month.

Rhythm-based gaming isn’t new to the App Store – for a while now, there have been several games that offer players the ability to play along and ‘jam out’ to their favorite music. However the largest, most successful game in the genre is Guitar Hero. With huge success on pretty much every console available, the biggest music video-game franchise has finally found its way on to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and my God does it rock!

Steve Jobs rolled out Apple’s iPhone 4 Monday at the WWDC 2010 Keynote in San Francisco, calling his company’s “new baby” a device that “changes everything. Again.”

But does it?

When Apple introduced the original iPhone in 2007, it altered the entire mobile phone market by emerging into a near vacuum, creating need and desire in millions of consumers who had no idea they needed or desired what the iPhone had to offer.

Today, some believe the iPhone has become passe based solely on its relative ubiquity across the landscape it both created and has managed to dominate for three years.

Others believe competitors such as Google, Palm and Blackberry have in the meantime produced equally effective, if not superior products that will, over time, equalize the distribution of market share among Apple and its rivals.

We mentioned earlier today that the secret behind the iPhone 4’s Retina Display isn’t just the quadruple pixel density over the iPhone 3Gs, but Apple’s amazing new process that completely eliminates empty space between the LCD and touchscreen, resulting in a display that looks like the pixels have been painted directly on the glass.

Want to see what we’re talking about? The above comparison shot comes from Engadget and compares the iPhone 4’s Retina Display with one of the previously cited industry bests, the HTC Evo 4G’s display.

Granted, the HTC Evo 4G is throwing 38% less pixels at the display than Apple, but even so: look at how those app icons are basically throbbing through the iPhone’s glass, while the Evo 4G’s display looks like it has been submerged in a thin layer of dirty water.

Steve Jobs himself described AT&T’s early update pricing for the iPhone 4 as “generous,” and generous it is — suspiciously so. How generous?

Well, if you qualify for an upgrade before December 31st, the 16GB iPhone 4 will cost you just $199 while the 32GB model will cost you $299. Things get a lot steeper if your upgrade is after the start of 2011, though, with prices jumping to $399 and $499, respectively. Don’t want to sign a new contract, but still want an iPhone 4? Prepare to pay $599 to $699.

Those who have had the luck to play with an iPhone 4 before it’s official June 24th launch have all confirmed that the new handset’s quadruple-density Pixel Display is just as gorgeous as Apple is boasting.

But over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber points out another reason the iPhone 4’s display is so bright, crisp and lurid: a new production process that eliminates the space between the LCD and the touchscreen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah5S7R-h208

Here’s the promo video Steve Jobs just showed of during his WWDC keynote.

We’re 100% chugging the Kool-Aid on the iPhone 4 upgrade. What an amazing package:

• The high-res screen looks astounding
• The gyroscope may lead to a host of fun applications, like an air mouse for the upgraded AppleTV
• 300 hours of standby battery life looks like a big kick in the teeth for Android.
• The only misstep is no 64GB version.

We’ll be upgrading for sure, especially thanks to AT&T’s new upgrade plan.

What do you guys think?

[polldaddy poll=3312803]

Jobs has just completed outlining all of the iPhone 4’s revolutionary new features. Now to reveal what it’ll cost your wallet.

Coming in black and white, the iPhone 4 will cost $199 for the 16GB models, the same price as the 3GS. $299 gets you the 32GB iPhone 4.

Already in a contract? AT&T is allowing anyone with a contract expiring this year to be immediately eligible for a new iPhone at the same $199 – $299 price, as long as they top up their contract for two years.

Predictably, the 3Gs is becoming the new sub-$100 model, and will cost $99.

The iPhone 4 will be available on June 24th, with pre-orders starting on June 15th. It will immediately ship 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.

[image via GDGT]

It’s almost over, but like usual, there just “one more thing” and while we all knew it was coming, it’s the first time it’s been directly confirmed: a front-mounted camera on iPhone 4 that allows for user-to-user video chat.

Calling Jonathan Ive on his iPhone 4 to demo the new iPhone’s video chat capability (after first having issues with a connection and yelling at the audience to turn off their WiFi), Jobs reminisced about growing up with the Jetsons and Star Trek, “dreaming about communicators and video calling. Now it’s real!”

Apple’s calling their user-to-user video calling solution FaceTime.

In addition to utilizing the front-mounted cam, 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 lansdcape.

FaceTime is iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only (no other iDevice has a front-mounted video camera yet), and it works anywhere with WiFi. What a shock: AT&T’s 3G network just can’t handle it. Apple claims they’ll work with their carrier partners to get it ready later in the year, but look at AT&T’s abysmal record implementing tethering, and my guess we’ve got a long wait ahead of us.

[images via GDGT]

It’s made a huge splash on the iPad, so naturally, iBooks is coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch, with the same controls, same note taking features, same highlights, same PDF reading and same bookmarks.

Like the iPad version, you can purchase and download a book to all your devices for no charge, and automatically sync your place, bookmarks and notes.

Not so surprisingly, on the iPhone 4 retina display, iBooks looks gorgeous. And to think: this coming from the man who said that people didn’t read anymore.

It has made less and less sense by the day that the iPhone OS would continue to be called that as non-iPhone devices begin to run it. Jobs has just confirmed the earlier rumor of an iPhone OS rebrand: starting with iPhone OS 4.0, it’ll just be called iOS4.

From a humble blogger’s heart directly to Cupertino: thank you, my benefactors. You don’t know how confusing it was to talk about iPhone OS for the iPad on a daily basis. Having “Phone” plugged into the name of an increasingly non-Phone operating system was just ridiculous.

Anyone else wonder if this is the first blush of a reveal of a new iOS-capable Apple TV?

[image via GDGT]

We all knew the iPhone was bound to get a better camera this year — it’s long flagged behind competing smartphone’s offerings — and so it has: Jobs has just announced the details of the iPhone 4’s new camera: 5MP, capable of 720p video recording.

Great news here is that Apple’s sticking to a sane five megapixels. Instead, they are trying to improve low-light photography on smartphones, which is typically abysmal, by getting more light to the sensor through back-illumination and an LED flash.

Additionally, the iPhone is getting HD video recording, with the new camera capable of 720p footage at 30 frames per second. To harness that power, Apple is also building building video editing software into the iPhone 4… with iMovie for iPhone!

Confirming that Apple’s not just dabbling in the chip game, Steve Jobs has just confirmed that the iPhone 4 uses the Intrinsity-designed A4 CPU, just like in the iPad.

But that’s not where the hardware changes stop. Revealing the back of the device, Jobs shows that it is backed to the gills, and just like in the Gizmodo prototype, most of the iPhone 4’s internals are made up of battery.

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

What kind of battery life are we talking? Seven hours on 3G, six on browsing through 3G, 10 on WiFi, 10 on Video, 40 on music and 300 hours standby.

The iPhone’s also about to get a lot more interactive with the addition of a three-axis gyroscope, which in combination with the accelerometer provides 6-axis motion sensing. Amazing! I can’t wait to see what app developers do with it.

The second big thing about the iPhone 4, according to Jobs, is the revolutionary new display.

They’re calling it the retina display, and it quadruples, as reported, the pixel density of the last iPhone. You now get an industry leading 326 pixels per inch in the iPhone 4. It’s a marked improvement on the display in the 3GS in both brightness and clarity.

“There has never been a display like this on a phone,” says Jobs. “People haven’t even dreamt of a display like this. It turns out there’s a limit around 300px per inch that the human eye can’t differentiate between the pixels — text looks like you’ve seen it in a fine printed book, unlike you’ve ever seen on an electronic display before.”

“Once you use a Retina Display,” Jobs confidently brags,”you just can’t go back.”

[image via GDGT]