iPhone 4 announced

[H2O]

Well there are many ways they could've improved apon it. A bigger screen, built in fm transmitter, hdmi output, wifi 802.11N support "not sure if it has or not" and many other ways. Maybe a slide out keyboard model. Maybe even a dual screen display. How about a slide out LCD screen that can be used as a second screen or the standard keyboard "wishes :p". Anyway, maybe revolutionary was the wrong word and what I meant to say was innovative. To me it's the same old Iphone with a new name.

Bigger screen - Ok, but for most people, 3.5" is fine. I held an Evo the other day and (IMO) it was oversized and not something that I'd want to carry around on a daily basis. I like the route Apple took with increasing the resolution. I wouldn't mind seeing a small bump in screen size, but nothing over 4.0".

FM transmitter - What's the use of this other than to use the iPhone with a radio? Most cars now have the option for an iPod interface, or at least come with a Aux in jack.

HDMI output - Fair request, although I'd rather see Apple give the 30 pin Dock connector the ability to output HD video rather than adding another port on the phone.

802.11N - iPhone 4 has it

Slide out keyboard - I doubt Apple will ever do this. They place a large value on Aesthetics, and a slide out keyboard is often cramped, prone to breaking, and adds thickness to the phone.

Second screen - See above, plus there is really no use for one on a phone (the bezel separating the screens would make using both screens for 1 app almost impossible, especially web browsing)

[Helmore]

Thinner lol, by a whole mm.

The iPhone 4 currently is the thinnest smartphone on the market AFAIK. Alright, it's not yet on the market but there haven't been any other smartphone announcements of an even thinner smartphone.

As for the cameras, thats nothing new to smart phones, atleast the new iphone has a flash.

One thing that Apple does properly with the camera on the iPhone 4 is to actually improve on things that really matter instead of simply increasing the amount of megapixels. They actually improved the performance of the individual pixels of the sensor compared to the sensor of the 3GS and they added a couple more megapixels by increasing the size of the sensor instead of putting smaller pixels on the sensor.

As for the processor, for the sake of iphone addicts, I hope it is on par with atleast a snapdraggon.

As we all (should) know, there are several versions of Snapdragon. There has currently only been one version in use, as that version was the first to have been released, and that's the QSD8X50 (QSD8250 is GSM only, QS8650 is GSM + CDMA). The QSD8X50 has a processor that's faster than what's on the iPhone 3GS, but the GPU in this snapdragon chip is slower than what's in the 3GS. The chip in the iPhone 4 on the other hand uses the same GPU as is used in the 3GS but it clocks it at a higher frequency and the CPU in the iPhone 4 should come very close to the performance of the Qualcomm QSD8X50 (Snapdragon 1). Another advantage of the chip in the iPhone 4 is that it has a 64-bit memory bus instead of a 32-bit memory bus as is used in the QSD8X50 and the iPhone 3GS, this should help in both graphics performance and in CPU workloads. What I'm trying to say is that the iPhone 3GS already was quite a bit faster than Snapdragon 1 in the graphics department and the iPhone 4 only increases this lead while actually being on par and maybe even a little faster in the CPU department.

Now something not completely on topic, but I'm a bit bored...

The second half of this year should be interesting though as then we'll start to see newer version of Snapdragon. Versions that are either faster or have a lower power consumption or both. We'll have phones with the QSD8X50A, which is a 45 nm version of the initial Snapdragon chip and this one will be clocked higher while using less power. Idle power consumption will drop from 25 milliwatts to 10 milliwatts and load power consumption will be reduced by around 30%, while on the other hand the clocks will be increased, the CPU will go from 1 GHz to 1.3 GHz and the GPU will go from 133 MHz to 200 MHz. This is a second generation Snapdragon chip. There's also another second generation Snapdragon chip, but I don't know much about it.

The 3rd generation Snapdragon chips will feature dual cores. Their power consumption should be around the same as the current Snapdragon chip, maybe a little more at peak performance. Probably the first 3rd generation Snapdragon chip to be used in phones will be the QSD8672, which is CDMA + GSM (if the code number is X6XX then it's CDMA+GSM, if it's X2XX then it's GSM only), which will have a dualcore Scorpion CPU running at 1.5 GHz along with a GPU that's about 4 times faster as the CPU in the first generation Snapdragon chips. I presume that its maximum power consumption at full load will be a bit higher than the first generation Snapdragon chip, its idle power consumption will be lower though. It will have a couple more power islands, which means that it should use a lot less power when only playing music for example. It's the same thing that the NVIDIA Tegra chip employs and the reason why NVIDIA is boasting such huge music playback times on a single battery charge.
Another 3rd generation Snapdragon chip is the MSM8X60, which will also have dual cores but running at 1.2 GHz, the same GPU as the QSD8672. It has a couple of refinements other changes compared to the QSD8672, but I don't know the exact differences between these 2 chipsets.

P.S. Don't take every single thing I say as fact. It's hard to get any proper information regarding these chipsets and I might have a couple of things wrong or mixed up. Most of should be correct though AFAIK.

[Generic user #2]

Second screen - See above, plus there is really no use for one on a phone (the bezel separating the screens would make using both screens for 1 app almost impossible, especially web browsing)

you're thinking of it in the wrong way.

the whole purpose of a second screen would be for one screen to be unobstructed, while the other screen would serve as a control interface. while maintaining the portability of the whole unit(it'll be thicker, but honestly...its really not a big deal).

*this would work GREAT for games with keypads/joysticks

*also a good place to place the tabs and addressbar when browsing. might as well place all your standard notification bars there as well.

*last but not least....MULTI-TASKING. keep one app open on each screen.

[texasreefer]

you're thinking of it in the wrong way.

the whole purpose of a second screen would be for one screen to be unobstructed, while the other screen would serve as a control interface. while maintaining the portability of the whole unit(it'll be thicker, but honestly...its really not a big deal).

*this would work GREAT for games with keypads/joysticks

*also a good place to place the tabs and addressbar when browsing. might as well place all your standard notification bars there as well.

*last but not least....MULTI-TASKING. keep one app open on each screen.

No way, a second screen....just rediculous. The Iphone may have better battery life than say the evo, but thats not to say that the battery life on an iphone4 is great. Adding a second screen would reduce the battery life to peanuts. As long as were making up features, the new iphone should of had a lube dispenser to make punching my clown a breeze.

[Zaskar]

No way, a second screen....just rediculous. The Iphone may have better battery life than say the evo, but thats not to say that the battery life on an iphone4 is great. Adding a second screen would reduce the battery life to peanuts. As long as were making up features, the new iphone should of had a lube dispenser to make punching my clown a breeze.

Yeah, a second screen would demolish battery life, I'm pretty sure the screen itself uses more battery life then any other aspect of the phone. For instance using an app like the Kindle app to read ebooks uses battery life almost as fast as a 3d game.

[Kuroimaho]

In case of notebooks 60% of the power consumption is used up by the screen. I wouldn't really want a bigger phone than the iphone, the evo might do it but no greater than that. I am more interested in HW improvements and what SW can take advantage of it.

[texasreefer]

The evos battery life is weak and the screen may have a lot to do with that, but every iPhone user that has touched my phone has been very negative when handling it. But, the smile on they're face as they're navigating it says it all. It is a very impressive phone. I'm just glad that Texas is 4g ready. Every major city is covered. I still can't believe they are charging everyone (who isn't covered) the extra fee for HTC evo. I don't know if it can touch iphones fan base, but the turn out at bestbuy, the shack, and the Sprint store was pretty wild here in San Antonio. The speed test app. puts my download speed at 3.1 mb/sec in 4g mode, compared to 1.3mb/sec in 3g mode.

[Manicdan]

i got 3Mbit 50 miles away from philly, and according to the sprint map, the 4G coverage ends at the border of PA/DE, but 20 miles into DE i still got signal. so i was really happy about that, not sure how often i will use 4G since it is a battery hog, and i almost never really need that extra speed unless i was trying to download hd stuff, and knew i would be able to charge it an hour later, lol

[Generic user #2]

No way, a second screen....just rediculous. The Iphone may have better battery life than say the evo, but thats not to say that the battery life on an iphone4 is great. Adding a second screen would reduce the battery life to peanuts. As long as were making up features, the new iphone should of had a lube dispenser to make punching my clown a breeze.

lol.

did i say i wanted a second screen? lol

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

The battery is weak until you actually adjust what you're using (wifi, 4g, etc). There's reports of people getting 2+ days on it. I adjusted my evo to run at 245mhz while the screen is off.

iPhone will still do well, even if Apple did no upgrades and just changed the way it looked, people would buy it. Most people can't tell me what the difference between the 3g and 3gs is besides a bump in storage space.

[Dave_Sz]

Well there are many ways they could've improved apon it. A bigger screen, built in fm transmitter, hdmi output, wifi 802.11N support "not sure if it has or not" and many other ways. Maybe a slide out keyboard model. Maybe even a dual screen display. How about a slide out LCD screen that can be used as a second screen or the standard keyboard "wishes :p". Anyway, maybe revolutionary was the wrong word and what I meant to say was innovative. To me it's the same old Iphone with a new name.

But if they did all that, what would they have left over for iPhone 4GS? It's coming out in like 7 months you know.