For ease of construction, I’m just going to use the “Top 9 features of the Apple iPhone 4″ from ZDNet as my basis.
1) All New Design
Oh wow, Apple made a pretty device prettier and thinner! That’s never happened before! Let’s all go crazy! Especially since even though the phone is thinner it still isn’t as light as my Nexus One.
2) Retina Display – 3.5″ IPS display with 900×640 resolution and 326DPi.
This is the one feature of the new iPhone that I am legitimately interested to see. The second it drops, it will be the highest resolution display on the market. That said, it is still an IPS (read: LCD display) which does not have the same color depth as an OLED screen. Case in point, Apple touts the new screen as having an 800:1 contrast ratio, and because the general public doesn’t understand the number, they think it’s great. But, just for comparison, my Nexus One has a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, which in real life terms means more vibrant colors and deeper blacks.
I have to see the screen to pass full judgement, but I’ll expect that for all practical purposes because of the resolution, the iPhone will have the best screen on the market for about another 3-4 months or so, before an Android phone eclipses it.
3) New Processor – the A4
Given the benchmarking results, the A4 is slightly faster than the ubiquitous Snapdragon, at least in the iPad. We don’t know how the iPhone will stack up, but I’d assume similar results. Again this is a spot where Apple will have the lead for a few months, but, with newer Snapdragons on the way, plus Tegra 2 chips coming along as well, Apple won’t be at the top here for very long either.
4) Gyroscope
Useful only if you use the iPhone as your primary portable gaming device. And, even then, all it will do is make a few games better. Ultimately, developers will probably find uses for this, but nothing really exciting except better flight sims will result. Personally, I could care less, because I don’t do much gaming on my phone anyway. I mean did you see the video demo of this? Do you really want to be spinning around in order to do something on your phone?
5) Camera – 5MP and 720p video
Yay! You caught up with 2 year old Japanese cell phones, and my Nexus One. Be proud of yourself for pushing the envelope, Steve!
6) iOS 4
Still lagging behind Android on all fronts except for design (although even that isn’t as wide a gap as one would think). The apps and system are still gimped because of Apple’s need for control. And, no matter how Steve takes things out of context, it’s not true multitasking like in Android.
7) iBooks
Still not as good a store as Kindle, which is also available in the App Store. Plus, reading on a phone is silly and uncomfortable. Next.
8) iAds
Just another proprietary platform that Apple had to create because competition was getting too tough and they lost the bid for AdMob. Anti-competitive, ho!
9) Facetime – front facing camera chat.
Useless unless the person you are talking to also has an iPhone 4, because Apple is sure to make it incompatible with offerings that use the Evo and future Android front-facing cameras. Anti-competitive, ho!
Overall, I’m not that impressed with Apple. At the speed that Android is evolving, Apple just isn’t coming hard enough. The best thing they could have done would have been to announce the iPhone coming to Verizon, because they have saturated their limited market on AT&T.
It’s Windows vs Apple all over again. Apple can’t compete with the hardware when Android is licensed to so many companies, and they simply won’t compete in software because that would mean giving up control over their system. The only thing they have left is the gaming aspect, but even that can’t hold forever.
