Apple Iphone 4.0 Software
So it’s finally official, 4.0 is coming our way. So how did the event unfold?
First up it’s Steve Jobs himself taking centre stage. He dives right into some positive reviews about Apples latest launch, the iPad and follows up with some pretty impressive sales figures, 300,000 sold on launch day and 450,000 sold to date. Not bad for a product that so many people were in two minds about!
Following these impressive figures Jobs launches into downloads, first explaining the huge amount of iBooks downloaded (600,000 to date) and then iPad Apps downloaded (3.5 million). He then goes onto talk about the amount of Apps available for the iPad and demo’s a couple for the crowd.
We’re nearing the announcement now, stay calm! The iPhone comes into the conversation as Steve talks about it’s tremendous success winning the JD Power award three years running and selling 50 million units to date!
So the big announcement hits. OS 4.0 is coming this summer and will be available for dev preview today! There will be over 100 new user features, 5x digital zoom, tap to focus on videos, gift apps, geotagging, change home screen wallpaper and Bluetooth keyboards!
Multitasking…
Steve admits that Apple aren’t the first to get this feature onto a smart phone but claims they will be the best, just like copy and paste. He throws in a bold claim that Apple have developed a way to implement multitasking without draining the battery or making the handset react sluggishly then follows this up with an impressive looking demo.
Apple will offer several multitasking services to developers. The first one talked about is background audio and they use the application Pandora to demonstrate this, flicking between applications whiles Pandora continues to play music in the background.
The next service is VOIP and to demonstrate this they use SKYPE showing off the ability to remain online with SKYPE even when navigating away from the Application. If someone calls then a small pop up will be displayed, enabling you to connect the SKYPE call.
The next is background location which allows applications to take advantage of location services and keep them running in the background e.g. Tom Tom. Also the social networking app Loopt is used as an example. Whiles this feature is being mentioned they do talk about how much Apple take privacy very seriously and will give users full control over what location services can access from the device.
Next up is push notifications which Apple admits has seemed fairly limited till now. They also talk briefly about local notifications which don’t need to access Apples servers.
Task completion comes up next which talks about apps that take a long time to complete like uploading pictures to Flickr. This service will continue to upload the picture in the background and close when complete. The final service mentioned is fast app switching which allows an application to save it’s state and stop running and restart exactly where it left off!
Steve takes the stage once again. He goes on to talk about their second “ten tpole” which is folders!
No longer will we have to navigate through different pages, we can simply go to our created folder! Steve demonstrates that you can take several apps and put them straight into a folder which automatically renames itself depending on the category of apps or it will allow you to rename it. Once the folder is created users will be able to drag the folder anywhere they want, even the dock. The next thing he demos is how to change the home screen wallpaper which looks pretty simple.
You’ll no longer be limited to only 180 apps on your iPhone but 2000 instead. Go ahead and try and reach that limit!
The next tent pole is enhanced mail. Unified inbox comes up first and also the ability to have more than one exchange account. You can navigate inboxes using fast inbox switching and also use the option to organise by thread. You will also be able to open attachments using apps from the app store.
Tent pole 4 is iBooks. Users will be able to purchase iBooks for their ebook reader and also wirelessly sync their books between platforms.
Moving onto the next tent pole we learn we are about to hear about some great enterprise features including better data protection. Users will also benefit from multiple exchange accounts and Exchange Server 2010 support.
The next tent pole is the Game Centre. They go as far to say they blow the PSP and DS out of the water with the whopping number of games available on the app store. Users will now have their very own social gaming network, think Xbox live for the iPhone. This will include gamer achievements, leader boards and match making. Pretty impressive.
The next tent pole is iAd. Mobile advertising. Steve goes on to say that Apple aren’t too keen to see developers putting adds into applications. Apparently iAd will be the motion plus interactivity for users which won’t yank users from their app to go and check out an advert. The adverts are completely interactive, almost like an app within an app.
So when’s it coming? Well Steve goes on to say it will be coming for end users this summer for the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3rd gen. The iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen users won’t be able to run things like multitasking but can benefit from other upgraded features. iPad will receive the upgrade around autumn.
Some pretty exciting stuff. Multitasking obviously being the biggest hit here but some other nice little features to. It’s a shame that iPhone 3G users wont be able to completely benefit from this upgrade but hey, guess Apple would never make any money unless they could convince you to buy the next model! It’s a little bit of history repeating itself. Apple did the same thing last year, refreshed the iPhone line up with a great new OS then barely a month later launched the next line of hardware. Hopefully we can expect the same this time round. Roll on iPhone 4.
Apple Iphone 4G
The web is alive with the sound of rumor. When it comes to Apple they love to keep everyone guessing about their future products and when it comes to the iPhone everyone loves to guess!
So, what can we expect from Apples next mobile device? Will the fact that the ipad is hitting us shortly mean we're going to see a not so improved iPhone? I sure hope not!
Historically when it comes to touch screen devices Apple hasn’t really faced much competition, especially when it comes to UI. However this year the heat is really on and there are plenty of devices out there which well and truly trump the iPhone. Of course Apple are still a little bit ahead in terms of interface but at the end of the day their hardware is outdated. Can they afford to bring out another tiny upgrade? Surely they need to come out all guns blazing!
Just to whet your appetite here's a little list of some of the big rumors:
A little taste of what might come.
- 5 megapixel camera, autofocus with dual LED flash
- 32 and 64 gb memory
- Removable battery
- AMOLED screen
- 3D display
- Multi tasking support
- Front facing camera for video calls
- HD video camera
Apple Iphone 4g
When it comes to mobile devices lately if it’s not been about the iPad then it seems to be about Windows Mobile 7. There is a massive amount of excitement revolving around Windows new mobile operating system and also a lot of disappointment when it comes to certain hardware devices (Yes I’m talking about you HD2!)
Windows are certainly being very strict when it comes to it’s new Mobile operating system and hardware requirements so it should be a very interesting development.
The whole operating system has been rebuilt rather than modified like we’ve seen in previous builds. This Is a great step considering we will hopefully so the final extinction of some of those archaic features. Users can expect to see more Xbox integration with their mobile devices including live games, avatars and profiles.
We don’t have a definite release date yet for Windows Mobile 7 but word on the street says towards the end of 2010. There are already handsets in the works with HTC announcing that it is developing the Windows Phone 7. Exciting stuff!
Windows Mobile 7
The web is alive with the sound of rumor. When it comes to Apple they love to keep everyone guessing about their future products and when it comes to the iPhone everyone loves to guess!
So, what can we expect from Apples next mobile device? Will the fact that the ipad is hitting us shortly mean we're going to see a not so improved iPhone? I sure hope not!
Historically when it comes to touch screen devices Apple hasn’t really faced much competition, especially when it comes to UI. However this year the heat is really on and there are plenty of devices out there which well and truly trump the iPhone. Of course Apple are still a little bit ahead in terms of interface but at the end of the day their hardware is outdated. Can they afford to bring out another tiny upgrade? Surely they need to come out all guns blazing!
Just to whet your appetite here's a little list of some of the big rumors:
HTC Incredible
HTC, quietly brilliant, have been making real progress recently in combating the effect of Apples iPhone. There are a range of devices available to consumers on the market which have an exceptionally good user interface with some amazing specifications. The Nexus one and the HD2 are massive examples of these and have been very successful since their launch. Now we hear about another handset in the works which looks even more delightful.
The HTC incredible, also known as the HTC EVO 4G, looks to be a great piece of kit. The question at the moment is will this phone be one of the first to support the new technology LTE? If so then this handset is even more exciting!
It’s also rumoured that the HTC incredible will be running on Snese UI, boasting a massive 8 megapixel camera, 1 GHz snapdragon processor and 768MHz. Not a bad feature set really!
Right now we are still waiting for some official specifications but if the above is true then I can’t wait to get my hands on one and see how it fairs!