There's no mistaking Apple's new iPhone 4 for any of its three predecessors. This angular, precisely-machined device -- only three-eighths of an inch thick -- looks and feels little like the smooth, streamlined iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.
The innards of the iPhone 4 -- $199 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage, $299 for a 32 GB version, with AT&T the only service option in the United States -- offer other departures from the past.
Begin with its 3.5-inch "Retina Display" -- named because, Apple says, the human eye cannot discern all of its 960-by-640-pixel resolution from a foot away. When you view a picture, zoom in on a map or read a book in an application like Apple's iBooks or Amazon's Kindle, the complete absence of the usual jagged, bitmapped edges is arresting.
The iPhone 4's cameras also represent a major advance. One on the back offers 5 megapixels of resolution and (finally) a flash, plus high-definition video recording. It exhibited almost no shutter lag and took beautiful shots outdoors. But photos in low-light situations showed too much noise, and without optical image stabilization some shots come out blurry.
As a video device, the iPhone 4 constitutes a serious threat to Cisco's Flip cameras. Its footage looks as good as a Flip's, but it can easily share a video on the go. And with Apple's $4.99 iMovie application, you can even edit the clip and add effects like titles and transitions.
The iPhone 4's other camera sits above its screen on the front. Its weak 640-by-480 pixel resolution will suffice for self-portraits posted online and little else. But it also supports FaceTime, Apple's video-chatting system. Call somebody with another iPhone 4, and if both devices have a WiFi connection to the Internet you can switch to a blurry video chat after tapping an onscreen button and waiting a few seconds.
FaceTime failed in the Post's newsroom, where the network firewall blocks some types of Internet data it requires -- and by not coughing up an error message, FaceTime left both of us guessing. It worked from my wife's office and through two connections at home.
No comments:
Post a Comment