ios4 announced by steve jobs
Apple’s announced its new iPhone operating system iOS 4.0 yesterday during Steve Job’s keynote speech at WWDC as on of the main updates. The iPhones 4 will come with the latest iOS and will be out in the US, Germany and UK on the 24th June 2010. It comes in 2 hard drive sizes 16GB and 32GB and will cost $199 and $299 respectively with a new contract.

The announcement of the previously leaked iPhone 4 saw us confirm the details of video calls, what Apple calls Face Time, and the improved 800×480 screen resolution as well as the new camera specs of 720p recording to bring quality to HD. The resolution means that old apps will still be able to run on the new iPhone by using the 2x stretch filter, but it eventually will lead to apps developers improving the resolution of their apps and recharging for the upgrade. Let’s hope it come at a reasonable price to justify the double charge for essentially the same thing.

The new iPhone comes with a re-design of the traditional shape and hence makes it less of an upgrade, as the 3g to 3gs was and more of a new product model. It features clearly visible buttons and got rid of the rounded back. The new design of the iPhone 4 is big and bulky, but more in terms of positioning not in size. Apple clearly want to emphasise its market dominance in the smartphone market and clearly differentiate from the ever increasing number of phone running on the Android platform.

A free operating system upgrade for existing for iPhones and third gen iPod Touch should be available on 21st June. However the 3g versions won’t support the multitask functions. Apple said iOS 4.0 for the iPad will be available later this fall, which means anyone who already got their hands on this device will need to wait to tab into the new features till then. Apple sates that It didn’t won’t to complicate the launch of the iPad at the moment and hence held off on the upgrade. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Apple charge for it as well, but its more likely that the developers required a little more time to test customised iPad apps on the new OS before rolling it out. Let’s believe that for the moment.

All in all Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC disappointed slightly in terms of breaking news, as most of the announcements were leaked in advance. Nevertheless the range and speed of Apple’s releases this summer is encouraging and should ensure an interesting second half of 2010 in the gadget world.

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