Thoughts?

Only one.

Will it blend?

Apples = Tasty

The only thing that would have excited me would have been the announcement of it coming to Verizon.

as much as i love this design's look, i concur with Sil, give me Verizon or else I don't care

Yeah, their biggest touted feature, video chat? Wi-fi only, thanks to AT&T. They practically gave that one away to the EVO because of it. (Although being limited to iPhone4's only also is stupid)

Some nice improvements, but I'll still be going for an Android device come August.

[edit[Also, was really hoping for news about the bluetooth trackpad that Engadget featured. Disappointed.

As someone who is due an upgrade 2 days after release I am sold. I have to admit the "new" features are pretty meh (I really really[/] couldn't care less about video calling) but the bump in power (A4), camera (5MP plus bigger sensor), resolution, and the new form factor are great.

So all the improvements excellent and that's all I need.

Won't be enough to keep my next phone from being an Android device. Until then, my jailbroken 3GS with unlimited data and free tethering works just fine. Screw AT&T. Their new data plans are bull****.

AT&T going to a tiered data plan basically killed any and all desire to get an iPhone. The only thing that will get me to get an iPhone is if they go to another network. Preferably Verizon. Although I don't see how two stubborn control freaks (Verizon and Steve Jobs) are going to mesh.

Here every phone company has an iphone plan, and the thing doesn't come locked anyway.

In the meantime I'm not sure if I want the next iphone or if I want an android phone, thing is the EVO probably won't be coming to aussie land, so for me it's iphone vs HTC Desire

Oh, and for anyone who cares, we still get unlimited data in the UK, at least on 02.

I wonder if O2 will allow video chat over 3G.

Also, I wonder how much that screen cost them. That is, I wonder what the iPhone would have cost without it. It basically serves no purpose except to look nice. Without a larger screen you get no other benefit, and it trivializes the new CPU (as it needs more power to render at that resolution). Not to mention it will make developers lives even more difficult as they have to design for yet another display size (that or have their app horribly double-pixelized, which any iPad owner knows does not look good).

Finally, the way they talked up that camera was sad. I especially love how they chatted up the "back illumination" or whatever for the sensor, like that was something they designed. A lot of phones already have and use that (see also: EVO). Megapixels may not be the end all, but when your competitors are matching you on the sensor and beating you on megapixels, it does mean something.

There will be some 1.5ghz dual-core Snapdragon phones coming out by the end of the year, I think one of them is an HTC GSM phone. That would be the one I'd go for, if it's Android.

Just thinking of buying a new phone and the only "smartphone" options here are Apple, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Sort of sad, really.

*yawn*

From the sounds of it, not much improvement unless cameras and weight are your main focus in a device. More apple fail in my book.

It's really the OS that I find myself excited about, moreso than the new phone. Cancellation fees really take the "pop" out of such releases in my mind, because I'm simply not going to pay them for the privilege of upgrading.

I'm in the same boat. I skipped the 3G[S] upgrade, so I'm ready to get this and really get the benefits of the increased speed + battery life. The resolution bump should be nice too.

I think that it looks like a nice device but I'm not interested in paying the ridiculous monthly payment that's associated w/ it (& that goes for any carrier/plan). My AT&T plan expired in December & I'm still paying +$80/month for their cheapest plan (w/ international text messaging) for 2 phones (both dumb phones). If it wasn't for my wife (I don't want her to get stuck out somewhere w/o access to a phone & it's good for her to communicate w/ her family overseas) I'd throw my ****ing phone in the trash & tell AT&T to go **** themselves.

Freaky.

I pay £35/month for unlimited data, 500 texts and 600 minutes. I never go over.

£35 = $50USD. Not bad. I think you europeans get it cheaper though because those service providers have less land to cover (since most seem to be national)

I recall that there are more consumer protection laws in the UK which basically say, "No you cannot ream that customer in the ass with a 4 foot pole."

Because the government there has a monopoly on ass-reaming.

Makes sense. And yes, all our providers are national.

I haven't had a chance to watch the entire keynote address but I'm happy about the iBooks update. That's one of the primary applications that I use on my iPad & these updates will make it better.

.

Great.

Now I'm gonna watch will it blend movies for like an hour now.

The iphone seems pretty awesome. I would totally get it if it wasn't for the lack of flash support. I was playing with my Brother's Nexus One with 2.2 version installed and the hardware accelerated flash made the web browsing pretty amazing. All of a sudden I can go to websites like groove shark, or stream anime or mega video. It was such a joy. So i think its utter bull**** when the hardware is more than capable of flash websites but steve jobs insists on what I can and can't do with this device. He keeps on talking about the future but the way it is right now is that without flash, it isn't a complete browsing experience. I mean this phone even has a really high res screen! Aw well.

High res is pointless, it's not like a PC monitor where it's okay if things get smaller (to a point). On a phone, things are already about as small as they can be, thus higher resolution is mostly wasted. Yeah, sure, it make look real smooth, but it's taking a hit on the performance and costs a lot more.

Hi res isn't pointless. It allows you to see way more at once, thus giving you better navigation for websites. Small doesn't mean anything. Just pinch and zoom. If there is proper software implementations, than a higher res screen will definitely improve the experience. Sure it will take a performance hit, but if the hardware is good enough, you wouldn't even notice it.

I was just fiddling around with the N900 today, and the 800 x 600 was really nice, but still I wished the res was bigger when I was on desktop websites.

It doesn't allow you to see anything more at once. This isn't a PC. You can't make the real size of the buttons (not pixel size, actual display size) any smaller because then you can't press them. Rendering size of things like websites is done at resolutions higher than the screen's actual size anyway.

I'll be purchasing on launch day. I don't have any issues with my ATT service, so extending my contract won't be an issue. Hooray new shiny phone.

You are proving my point. You already admitted that most if not all websites are supposed to be rendered at a higher res anyway. So by having a higher res display, you don't need to scroll or pan as often in websites. And that is why I value a higher res display a lot because it will give me a better internet browsing experience. The way you use the OS is independent of the resolution, I agree with that point at least.

Yeah, and Apple's not even using it to allow more real estate. All they're really doing with their extra resolution is upscaling the 480x320 stuff to 960x640.

The display is a significant improvement over previous versions.

But that's not how it's going to work. It's not going to result in less panning. It's going to be exactly the same, otherwise you would be completely unable to read the text.



A fix for a problem that didn't exist, really.

I'm already finding things I hate in OS 4. The 12 item limit in folders is completely pointless. All they'd have to do to raise it is allow scrolling in folders. It's only limited to 12 items because that's the max their folder interface can display at a time.

Also, the task manager (sorry, it's not a "task manager" cause Steve Jobs says you're doing it wrong if you have a task manager) seems like it will be incredibly annoying once background apps come out. It creates an icon for every single app you open in the task manager, regardless of whether or not it's running in the background. Just from fairly normal use today I've already amassed 5 "pages" worth of apps in it (only shows 4 at a time).

So what EXACTLY is the deal with multitasking? It appears to have an Expose-like manager which is cool, but is it still suspending apps? I want FULL, REAL multitasking just like I get it on my desktop. Android and webOS have this, and webOS even has a really good UI for it.

And yes, I DO use the multitasking - ALL THE TIME, it's not academic in principal.

The new camera features are a significant improvement. Being able to record video in HD, edit them & upload them all w/ the same mobile device is quite nice.