iPhone 4 and iOS4

As many people already know, Steve Jobs announced yesterday Apple's new iPhone and revealed more details on its new operating system. Aside from information that's been public for months, he touched on many different additions. I'd like to touch on the facts and points that I believe should end up being a turning point for anyone looking to purchase a new iPhone or upgrade their existing.

• Just by looking at the iPhone 4, its easy to see the differences between it and its predecessors. iPhone 4 has a glass front and back, along with metallic framing. The important part here is the frame is designed to improve cell phone reception (and most likely compensate for AT&T coverage) and the glass that covers the rest of the phone is supposed to be engineered such that it minimizes damage from impact. More hard facts on this will have to wait until professionals do reviews of it.
• iPhone 4 has upgraded their rear camera to 5 mega pixel, and has added a front camera for taking videos and doing video calls with Apple's Facechat. Hopefully other companies will develop video chat apps such as Skype to not pigeonhole this new addition.
• The screen resolution is high enough to make images and videos crisp, and to improve text visibility.
• The iPhone 4 is supposed to be significantly faster, more details on how much will come when reviews start coming in the next week or two.
• iPhone 4 will use the new iPhone OS (aptly named iOS).
• iOS has many new additions, the most significant being multitasking. However, this is only supported on the 3GS and 4 models, since previous models do not have the hardware to support it. Sorry. Only way around this is to upgrade, jailbreak, or (the easiest and best decision) switch to the Google Droid. Which already has this. On all phones.
• If you are looking to purchase a new phone, you'll be able to preorder them in a week, and they hit the floor in late June. If you already have an iPhone and want to upgrade, just go online to att.com and check if you are available for an upgrade. The positive side to this is that many more people are eligible for an upgrade than a year ago when iPhone 3GS came out. From what I have read, the pricing for new and upgrades should be the same, for $199 and $299 for differing hard drive capacity.

So this is the general gist of what the new iPhone upgrades mean. I hope this is helpful for any looking to purchase or upgrade. Next week is E3, so expect me to blog on many of the new innovations in gear and video games.