iPhone 4 Announcement and Information

As most of you know, The Spot is a PC, through and through. Be that as it may, I know a cool piece of technology when I see one, and I have to say, the iPhone 4 is most assuredly piquing my interest. As I write this, Steve Jobs is on stage at the WWDC 2010 (Apple's World Wide Developers Conference) discussing all the specs and perks of this next-gen device. While you can follow the live blog of the event on CNET, the basic improvements are as follows (I am writing this at 2:00pm EST, and since I don't have clairvoyance, anything that hasn't been announced yet will not be listed here): first of all, the device is 1/4 slimmer than the iPhone 3GS ("thinnest on the planet"). As per consumer demand, it has both a back facing AND a front facing camera, which is huge news as it will presumably allow for super easy video conferencing. The back facing camera also has a LED flash and will record videos in full 720p HD. The device now uses a "retina display," upping the phone's display resolution fourfold, well beyond the maximum threshold of pixels that the human eye can see. Apparently, this is a good thing, and Jobs is touting that text on the screen will be in no way visibly different from text in a book or magazine. All current apps will apparently scale up to this new resolution automatically. The phone also has more processing power, utilizing the A4 chip found in the company's iPad device. Other notable improvements include two built-in mics, extended battery life, and a built-in antenna that wraps around the entire device (presumably remedying any service-related problems).

Again, check on the live CNET blog for more information as it occurs. But as a funny side-note, at one point in the presentation, while attempting to demonstrate the differences in visual fidelity between the 3GS and 4, Jobs attempted to access the NY Times application on both phones. However, he couldn't, and received error messages like "cannot activate cellular networks," to many laughs from the audience. His continue efforts proved futile, and he remarked: "I'm sorry guys, I don't know what's going on. Got any suggestions?" Then, someone shouts from the audience: "Verizon!" Haha, good stuff.

[A special thanks to IGN.com for the image above]