Today, Jobs announced the iPhone4.

15 things about iPhone 4

Here's a video of him pulling a Bill Gates:

Yea, yea, yea, I don't really care about the new iPhone either. But what I do find really awesome is the Retina Display, which has a resolution of 960x640!!! Say goodbye to pixels!!!

Basically nothing new: iPhone network sucks.

That was all on wifi mind you. So yeah, nothing new. WiFi networks suck.

Gahhhhh. Sucking money out of the self-absorbed children who spend their mornings at a local coffee shop...the new Apple.

WiFi is 1000 times more stable than AT&T's 3G network.

Not when you have a shit load of people all using a single wifi network at once.

Yeah, probably still then too. It could be hooked to a 56K modem and probably still be just about as good.

0 is not more or less than 0 though

WiFi may hit 0. I don't think AT&T gets that high.

Bhohh. I'm allergic to gushing marketing bullshit.

Since when does color gamut have any relationship with spatial resolution?

Wow. All these "nerds" and nobody cares about the increase in resolution? Who cares what they call it. It will look beautiful. Nothing like a crisp, high resolution IPS to get the nerdgasms going.

Meh, it's just another phone, another resolution. Nobody had nerdgasms with the high resolution Windows Mobile phones.

It doesn't. That article wasn't written with very much insight.

No kidding!! Imagine a circle on the screen, for the first time, you won't see any pixels or wonky edges. Just a perfect circle. I'm seriously excited about the prospect of that.

Nothing about changing the app store model or ditching AT&T's half-assed service. I'm looking to move to Android.

My iPhone is useless as a phone and the app store is such a polished turd... If it didn't tell the time, I wouldn't even carry it around.

Wow, really? I want the Google phone, but not for $500.

I'm with T-Mobile, and I can't get that phone at the reasonable price because I'm not a new customer. And I've been with T-Mobile for probably about 10 years!

I was excited to hear about Farmville on the iPhone.

I actually just bought a used mytouch 3G. So I'll have both an Android phone and Apple iPad. Hopefully I can use wifi tethering to have the phone give internet to the iPad that'll be confusing yet fun.

Yeah, I know how you feel. But I think I'll be happy with my purchase, because I didn't have to extend the contract and be locked into two years of paying for data service. If you subsidize any smart phones with Tmo they force you to pay the data plan for two years. Joy!

Were they IPS?

Don't know.

My Android phone has an AMOLED screen, which easily beats that IPS junk any day.

I think Jobs has completely ignored the geek customer which is why you get this backlash -- and I think it's one of the smartest things a company can do.

Mostly yes. But the great thing is, by turning these devices into status symbols and getting them accepted by the general public, he's making our lives easier. Plus, less computer repair duty. Which means we can get on with our lives hacking away on Android phones.

Does it play Flash video?

A higher DPI does make dithering more effective, which can increase the apparent range of color.

Have an iPhone 3gs. Love it.

In AU, we don't have to get it with any one single phone provider. It comes unlocked from apple store and you can go with anyone so AT&T is not a problem here.

iPhone 4? Not as excited about. Especially from a dev perspective. Just another platform you gotta cater for.

I was excited about video calls until they announced it was wifi only. That just ruins it .

What's the deal with video calls anyway? I've had it since my first 3g phone (like 5 years ago?) and I think I've used it once.

It IS very silly to limit it to wifi though, considering 3g obviously has support for it.

Not AT&T's network. AHAHAHA.

Haha. I hear AT&T users can't tether their iPhones either? That's pathetic. Talk about screwing the user over for no good reason other than to make more money (and it can't even be that much money?).

I think they allow it with the new plans, but its extra, and it doesn't up your data limit much/at-all.

Video calls without a front facing camera aren't really video calls...

The new iPhone has a front facing camera...?

And so did my first few 3G phones, obviously I think it's just the iPhone that doesn't have one.

It has both a front and back camera.

Yes, I know. I just didn't understand his statement.

I have a £5 pay-as-you-go phone. It is utterly shit, and I am proud of it.

I have a phone with two sim cards. And I make everybody at work jealous. Or so I like to think. They all carry two phones. One of them even got a new phone the other day, but never asked for a two sim card model.

My mobile phone costs me about $15/year.

I pay that amount every 3.8 days.

Yeah, I've made exactly one video call. The sole reason for the call being "it's the 21st century and we should have shit like this."
... but yeah.

And finally the iPhone catches up to my... eh... 5 year old regular phone.

I'm sure your 5 year old regular phone has all the features of the iPhone too then, eh?

Actually? Yeah, pretty much.

Unlikely.

You've done well. I go for the cheapest thing I can find, and mine still costs 30 AUD per year. (15 AUD for 180 days).

The iphone looks pretty good, but I don't think I'd like to have one. It's more than double the size of my phone, and has less than half the battery life... and is far more than double the cost. -- But it is jam packed with useful/fun apps - which I couldn't give two hoots about. A few of my friends have them though.

Wait, there's stuff that works without wifi on the iPhone?

Ya, everything else.

I'm talking about things that require internet access. I thought Apple restricted 3g access from such apps.

Where did you hear that?

From El Stevo himself.

Well you or him must have been high. Probably you.

Steve Ballmer? I didn't think he did drugs.

I thought you meant Steve Jobs, but it doesn't matter. Basically everything works with 3G that works with wifi. I don't know of anything that doesn't besides this new voice calling thing (which will probably be fixed in a firmware update...)

Slingplayer never used to. I think they just recently changed that though. Also, the silly filesize download limits with itunes over 3g and such.

Yes, that is silly kind of but I think that's a restriction pushed by the carriers if you ask me. I don't see any other reason for it.

Yes, but Apple is bowing down to them. I don't see any such restrictions on Android or Windows Mobile. Just sayin'...

Yeah. It's not a big deal to me, but it's something that potentially (probably?) hurts my game sales. Games too big to download over 3G, so some people don't want to go to the trouble.

It's just another draconian restriction if you ask me. Of course, I would never consider purchasing an iPhone - the most insurmountable of problems being AT&T. Then the draconian restrictions such as 3g use at times, and being unable to sideload apps. The fact that Windows Mobile 7 is moving in the same direction is enough reason to add that mobile OS to my shitlist as well. Looks like I'm on Android for a while...

It's interesting that most issues people have with the iPhone is because of AT&T - not the iPhone.

I'm just glad we have several provides that sell the iPhone in Sweden (and none of them are as crappy and customer-hating as AT&T).

Possibly on paper, but I've tried a lot of a phones, and none have the user experience of the 3GS. Sure it has some weak points, but most of those will be fixed in iOS4 it seems.

My only problem with the iPhone is the lack of Flash video support. There is a huge amount of information out there in videos, so it's really important for me.

Well it doesn't support all of flash, but it supports youtube (from the youtube player app that comes with the phone, and embedded youtube videos on sites).

Youtube uses HTML5 video tag, with mp4 video. So the player you see is one embedded on a chip on the iPhone.

They recently opened up some video streaming apps and some voice calling to work over 3G.

But I doubt it works all that great. AT&Ts network will continue to suck till they have all the new towers up (going to take them a good year or two to finish), and all the new backhaul infrastructure in, AND the new 4G frequencies. But that last one wont help 3G devices at all, well except it'll get some of the 3G users off the 3G frequencies.

I thought the new iPhone looked really awesome. I don't use cellphones, so I won't be getting it, but if they released an iPod touch with the same features I would certainly want to pick one up. Once the price dropped a bit at least. Now that I think about it, I'll probably just wait until I'm rich...

Hahahahaha. You think they're going to roll out 4G in a couple of years? Obviously you don't know how painfully slow they rolled out 3G then.

Uh, where did I say they would finish in a couple years?

Yeah, they still haven't got 3G over most of their area yet.

You jumped right from new towers to 4G.

That line was specifically about existing networks, not about 4G. They are adding new back haul and new towers to the older 3G network.

I would like to point out that my S40-based Nokia 6600i can do video calls over UMTS and it costs about 1/4th of the price of an iPhone 3Gs. It also meets all of the technical requirements I imposed on it when i was shopping for a new handset last fall, something the iPhone never can because one of them was (and still is) a proper keypad.

The new relotutions of the iPhone4 it's just incredible!! 960×640 PX!! it's almost the resolution that Monitors had some time ago!!... but iPhone have it in a small screen.

I think this time i won't be able to see the pixels like i did with the 3G..

That's about the only thing the iPhone has going for it. Won't take long for others to jump on board anyway, and its hardly the first high res screen (in fact, it's about damn time, how long has the iPhone had an embarrassingly low resolution?).

No smart phone that plays Flash videos yet, despite all this technology.

My old Nokia plays flash just fine. iPhone can play flash videos (via youtube, and their API allows you to use other sources for the same video formats).

Actually, YouTube uses MP4 video format, which Flash can use for video. I think when using Safari on iPhone, YouTube uses the <video> tag.

I thought the latest Android OS played Flash (after downloading an app)? I've got an Android now, but haven't tried Flash yet.

Surprised this hasn't been posted yet: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple

Clippy would never be that helpful.

Android does. Windows Mobile does. I'm sure others do too. It's just Apple pouting in the corner with a dunce cap on who forbades this.

It's fun to watch the battle though

I'm surprised nobody mentioned yellow spots on the iPhone 4 displays and antenna issues.

Seems like that bitten apple just got some rot on it and you can't even hold the phone to make a call Discuss - could this be a killer or will the Apple fanboys overlook this?

The antenna issue looks like a partial GUI bug. Apparently even with "no service" the phone can still make calls. And internet still works, though its a lot slower.

Doesn't sound like a GUI bug if it slows it down.

Yeah, I edited right after I posted

Even the quality of the phone call dropped rapidly.

Yeah, I finished reading the entire page, it does seem its a serious problem. Apple should have shipped the phones WITH the case they are also selling (for the first time I might add, its almost as if they knew this was going to happen and did nothing about it).

This sounds like something basic that should have been caught in testing long ago.

As mentioned in that article, Apple is now making first party bumper cases. Wonder why they are doing it for the first time? They used to leave it to 3rd party partners. All of a sudden, they are now making apple cases. hmmm.

I really had a good laugh when Apple began to manufacture rubber cases as a workaround. If I'm not mistaken these were traditionally made by third parties and not Apple itself. Anyway I wonder what's with those yellow stains on the display.

EDIT: damn, beaten.

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The fix is in!

If you're buying an iPhone 4, IMO you sure as hell better get a silicon cover for it and a screen protector while you're at it. Still though, it's a really stupid bug that it's hard to believe they didn't catch. I'd be more concerned about the yellow screen though, personally, since a $XXX (what do they cost? 3gs was around $800 last I looked) warrants a $10 rubber protector.

Why bother with a cover and a screen protector? I haven't used either of those on my phones in years (and they aren't as durable as the iPhone 4 supposedly is). They may pick up a couple scratches here and there, but whats the point in covering up. You want to keep it looking nice but not show it off - what a paradox.

I don't know about you, but I put my phone in my pocket with lots of other crap. Keys, coins etc. My previous phones screen was so scratched up it was hard to see. If I had put a screen protector on it, I could have replace the screen protector and had a phone like-new. iPhones are not matte plastic like most "regular" cell phones, so they're going to show a LOT of scratches if you don't protect them. I would at the very least put on a clear protector (which is just a screen protector like thing that covers the body) if I wanted to "show off" my phone. But in all honesty, I feel embarrassed that I have an iPhone, the opposite of wanting to show it off.

I put my phone in its own pocket. Never had anything too major with scratches, especially with glass screens. I never liked screen protectors - too much hassle, they never like to go on right, or you get dust under them, and it just never looks as good as a naked screen. Keys/coins/etc go in another pocket.

I started doing this with my latest phone, and it's amazing the difference it makes. A friend of mine got the same phone about two weeks after I did, and his looks several years older, it's now so beaten up.

Me too, for a couple of years now
Though I still managed to scratch the screen in an empty pocket once.. I sat down on a car rear door, broke the glass a piece of the glass got in to my pocket & scratched the screen -.-

Holding the phone naturally kills all signal -- drops everything for me. I am annoyed...

In reorganizing my folders, I ran into a bug where 20 something apps were randomly taken out of folders and thrown onto new screens. I found a bug where wiggle mode crashes in a special case applying to folders (luckily it recovers well from this). Facetime does not work anymore on my phone after doing a restore of my old phone, although I just had a fix from the internet mailed to me I will try.

With all the issues though -- it's a great phone. Even the battery life feels a bit better.

It's startling how crappy the 3gs looks when set next to a g4. It really looks terrible...

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Did you see how the people in that vid had a chuckle at the presentation? If Jobs brought out an iPhone to show off and it blew up in his hands, they'd still buy it. Apple fans love apple shit.

I doubt these "little" problems will stop the sales of the iPhone 4.

Dustin: Is that a screenshot straight from an iPhone4? Is that the natural res of the phone? (ie pixel for pixel)?

Two of my mates at work have one and they showed me how to stop it working. All he did was hold the left side near the bottom (you know, like how you hold a phone). This shorts the two antennas and the signals drops off.

Apparently the official Apple response is not to hold the phone like that. So there you go, either get a case or hold it like posh people drinking tea.

Call me old-fashioned, but I would have thought somebody might have carried out some basic phone tests before releasing it...8-)

Yeah, it's a pretty serious flaw for them to miss. I guess because all of the testers used cases to make it look like an iphone 3gs?

I really hated my Blackberry Pearl, so I'd frequently put it in my pocket with the keys, just as a sort of technological revenge. I'd also drop kick it from time to time.

Yeah, damn, I didn't realize how big that screenshot was. It's like that but 5/12th the width and maybe 7/12th the height when holding up the phone to my screen.

The effect on text is incredible. I never realized how subconsciously annoyed I was at reading text before. I got that "aah, that's a relief" feeling when reading text the first time. It's actually easier to read text on my iphone than my laptop now.

Ah, one more thing. My favorite part (which is just iOS4, so I probably would have had this on the 3GS) is backgrounding pandora and using the headphone controls to control (pause, skip etc) it! Just brilliant.

My iPad envies you

Why did they make it not have multitasking? Surely there's gotta be a reason other than "we used iPhone's OS and it didn't have it, oh well."

It's still in development.

You could probably jailbreak your ipad and get multitasking.

Skype doesn't work in the background.

If I get a smart phone it will definitely be an...Android!

Not much seems to work in the background. My understanding is apps must recompile with SDK 4 and they automatically get backgrounding. The old understanding was that all apps would get backgrounding automatically.

What's worse, I believe you must use an unstable beta XCode to compile SDK 4. This is all very lame.

As far as I understood it, Apples new api only let you build a special service for the OS to handle stuff while you go about using other apps. That is, your app ceases completely, and all thats left is a small OS service handling what it is that you told it to do... Like play music in the background, monitor skype calls, fetch your RSS feeds, etc.

No multi processing, just background plugins.

That's how it should be on a small, mobile device that favors standby over true shutdown. But it shouldn't have taken until version 4 of the OS.

Pandora and Dropbox work nicely now, but Skype and TouchTerm don't. And most applications don't support the quick resume. All of this should have been easy to get right on the first release of the OS.

Yet they talk about "getting it done right is worth the wait" as if it takes a genius to figure out the few things that are useful to run in the background on an iPod.

You have to implement one method to get backgrounding to work in your app. All it has to do is stop opengl drawing/other opengl commands before it returns. If you don't use OpenGL, then the apps should all still work with backgrounding. There is a 10 minute limit for background tasks. They can notify you if they're going to be terminated. And the SDK is out of beta now Dustin, it has been for a while now.

So Apple finally gets around to adding a basic feature years later, and it's brilliant? I've been multitasking on my phones for years... I am always amazed at just how brainwashed Apple fanboys are. They're worse than Sony fanboys.

If anyone else released a phone that couldn't even be held normally without dropping signal, people would tear into them. But because it's Apple, it's only a minor inconvenience.

It took a genius to figure out that if new features are equally redistributed among new releases, it produces more releases & thus more income.

Except they aren't charging for iOS 4 at all.

People talk about it, it's somewhat enough..
Append:
Google policy, is to be "very good guys", since some 90% of their income is their adds, the rest maybe pretty much just work for reputation. (oh well, not that simple, but..)

Not directly, but if you have old hardware, you need to buy new.

Old enough at least. iOS 4 works on the 3G, and the 3GS (though not 100% feature comparable with the iPhone 4).

If you're stuck with an original iPhone, or first gen iPod Touch, well sucks to be you

They are artificially feature limited unless you buy new hardware. Sort of like the last round of updates - leaving MMS off of the original iPhone. I'm sure they've pulled other crap like that, I just don't pay attention.

While it is kind of silly (and a bit consumer unfriendly), but they are not obliged to update old hardware (or new-ish hardware, for that matter) with new features. Obviously they will want to make as much money as possible, so if you find this unacceptable you shouldn't buy their products.

It's also kind of weird considering how compatible Android tries to be.

Why is that weird? Making Android incompatible wouldn't earn Google anymore money at all.

This discussion about multitasking reminds me of my old Q-Tec PDA with Win Mobile 5 which backgrounds the application upon clicking cross button and you have to end the task from memory manager, because it wears out battery quite sooner.

Also reminds me of my friend who at first nagged about iPad not having multitasking. He suddenly switched sides and proclaims that multitasking is wrong on mobile devices, because it just backgrounds the application, user doesn't know it's still running and soon you have many applications running in background for no reason, when all you needed was to shutdown them when you've closed them. Everytime I ask what about IM or Skype running in background when browsing web...

Or trying to play music while browsing the web.

That works just fine on the iPhone/iPad. Only third party apps are subject to the "no multitasking" rule (and that has changed now with iOS4, in some ways).

The IM App on the iPhone uses push notifications to alert you of incoming IMs.

What if you want to listen to Pandora or Last.FM while browsing?

Also, I think that iPhone's push notifications are a joke. They seem so outdated - a modal popup, with no way to view the alert later or anything?

I'll break it down for you:

1. Tap Pandora icon

2. Push Home button

3. Tap Safari

4. Browse

5. ...

6. Profit

Video Demonstration

The current discussion was related to iPhone OS 3, where there was no multitasking.

Jonatan and Dustin switched back the discussion to iOS 4. Plus, BAF had PM'd me asking for a video because he finds it hard to work without Hannah Montana tunes.

I thought you had one of those $5/year phones.

How does that prevent me from having an iPod?

So an iPod is basically an iPhone without the phone? Browser and everything?

The iPod touch yes.

An iPod Touch has no cellular/mobile access, GPS, camera or built-in microphone. But it has wifi support and can use any application that doesn't depend on one of those missing features.

I use it as a mobile Skype phone.

I also use it to build iPhone apps and make big cash.

^{And I use it to listen to Hannah Montana with BAF.}

Geezuz, that's quite a price difference for one extra feature a few extra features. Do you have to pay for the dataplan too?

No, the iTouches are currently wifi only.

iPhone 3GS 8GB is something like $99 + (minimum) $40/month contract + $25/month for 2GB.

iPod Touch costs more up front, but obviously no ongoing fees.

Compare the price if the iPhone without plan against the touch, thats a little bit better of a comparison. Or the actual price of the iPhone including its 2-3 year plan and data fees.

I pay 64 USD/month for my iPhone 3gs 16gb. There was no charge up front, and I can use all that for calls/sms/data (and it includes 5gb of free data). It's not cheap, but I think it's worth it. Only downside is that I'm stuck with it for 24 months (like 16 left now)

Expensive phone, $1536.

I don't think it's all that expensive considering I can use all that for calls, texts and data. It's a moot point for me, since my company is paying for it, but even if it was not, I'd still get that.

I personally don't think you're getting enough for that price. But maybe its just me.

Oh yeah, I could also get rid of my mobile broadband because of this (tethering the phone) - that's 25 USD less per month.

Still - yeah, it's a bit expensive, but totally worth it Once my contract expires I'll probably get iPhone 4 (assuming they solved the problems by then).

Oh ML, always going the extra mile for the Allegro members in need.

Hannahorrible Montana tunes.

Now fixed.

PS: Is it BAf's coming out ?

Have you not seen Miley Cirus?

I'd hit that!

...Then go to jail.

17 is legal over here.

Some people claim that the legal age here was changed to 16 and some even claim 14... I go by 18 because I know it's for sure.

Legal age here is 13

Meh, around here the legal age is 15. That means teenagers can have sex legally and nobody frowns upon twenty year olds having fun with 16 year olds. If I'm not mistaken in the USA there are some states that allow minors to have sex, but sex between under-eighteen and over-eighteen is forbidden.

I've heard many times that the legal age here in N.C. is 16, but they can still charge you with contributing to the delinquency of a minor if you take advantage of it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Age_of_Consent.png
16 in canada and some parts of the US

That's why this video is a "ho down"? You hit her too hard

The minimum age of consent is really about people near in age to the younger person. If the parents want to charge you with statutory rape, even if the child meets the age of consent, but are younger than "adult" (18-21 whatever), they can.

^
Came to read iPhone 4 impressions and the first post I read is about sex. Rule 34?

Nope, just your typical Allegro.cc thread.

Speaking of sex, http://www.onlive.com/signup

An FYI, phone (and touch) generations that are 3Gs and better get backgrounding now. So it's sort of retroactive.

What's funny is that if we were to fork this thread to talk about sex, that thread would either die or end up talking about something different ... like Transformers or something.

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Unless there was a recent law that I missed, or you moved a country the over here age is 16.

Your statement is not inconsistent with Slartibartfast's statement that 17 is legal. I believe that point Slartibarfast was making is that Miley Cyrus, who is currently 17, would be "legal".

Oh well, you're right.. Since 17>=16..

Apparently the iPhone 4 has some pretty serious antenna issues:

The suing customers and a class-action lawsuit seem to be getting pretty good reception, however.

No, it doesn't.

Did you hear the Apple CEO got married? The service was excellent, but the reception was terrible.

The iPhone 4 is a whole new device when equipped with this:
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The one I saw was better - it was an old phone handle attached to the back.

http://www.perpetualkid.com/iplunge-phone-stand.aspx

Yes. The one I saw was better.

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Seems now it isn't a fault after all, it's just a software error, so a patch will be released soon. I wonder if all it does is fix the strength bar at 100%

I think the least apple can do is give out free covers like Nintendo do.

I can't believe they won't let me have multiple windows open at once! What if I want to browser porn and read Charles Dickens at the same time on the 3.5" screen!?

Now get off my lawn.

No. They are doing this:

• Make it harder to get full bars.

• Make the first bars taller

So in essence, it will always look like you have 3 of 5 bars at the same height.

Instead of admitting that there is a fault with the reception, they are admitting that they have always falsely advertised the strength of signal.

While I have no first hand experience with the iPhone 4, this is obviously all a big scam if people really are dropping connections when they cover the corner of the phone, as I doubt Apple has any if (bars.count == 0) delete connection; code.