iPhone 4 predictably official

Yesterday Apple held their Worldwide Developers Conference, and as everyone expected, unveiled the iPhone 4. The real thing has turned out to be exactly like the leaked iPhone back in April. Although there were mixed reactions when the leaked version was first seen (some referring to it as a cheap Japanese knock-off), now that it’s official everyone agrees that it’s a thing of beauty, with the aesthetic stylings of a classic Leica camera.

So what’s new? There’s the 960×640 3.5 inch IPS LCD display, which the Apple marketing department are referring to as “the retina display” (a nice way of ignoring the fact it’s not a low-power, daylight-friendly AMOLED display like most other new smartphones). Under the hood there’s an A4 CPU, as seen in the iPad. Battery life has been boosted slightly, with 7 hours of 3G talktime. The camera has also got an upgrade, now with 5 megapixels and 720p HD video recording, plus a small front-facing camera. That’s your lot on the hardware front – memory and storage remain unchanged.

As you can probably guess, we’re not really blown away by the iPhone 4. Of course, the early leaked version did take some of the wind out of the announcement, although the incremental hardware upgrade – basically just taking the iPhone 4 to the same level as the HTC Incredible and similar new Android phones – leaves us a little underwhelmed. That said, many see the apps as the iPhone’s… killer app. So we’re sure it will still sell like crack-covered hotcakes.