News tagged ‘iPhone OS 4’

Latest information from several resources reveals that the third beta of iPhone OS 4 has an ability to capture video at 1280x720 resolution instead of the standard 640x480. That is confirmed with following preset values that were found in new API improvements:

AVCaptureSessionPreset640x480
AVCaptureSessionPreset1280x720

It was long rumored that iPhone 4 will have 5MP camera, LED flash, another front-facing camera for making video conferences. IF the HD resolution will be supported indeed, iPhone's old alias "iPhone HD" will be finally confirmed.

Lately Apple has released a third beta of the iPhone OS 4. It is specified as build 10M2247 and available for registered developers. Previous beta release was issued two weeks ago. The situation looks familiar as last year iPhone OS 3 had also gone through 5 beta cycles before it was publicly announced.

Currently the new update is unavailable due to installation problems, but those of the developers who successfully downloaded and installed it have already revealed what's new in the release.

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This week's sensation was a Steve Jobs' letter published officially on Apple's site. If you didn't read it or want to remind it to yourself, here are its main tent poles:

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Yesterday The Wall Street Journal reported that this year Apple is going to charge companies 1$ million for iAds on its mobile devices. Citing an unknown but reliable source familiar with the matter those companies that want to become a part of the iAds launch will pay $10 million to be first in the door.

The pricing policy of iAds is pretty simple. Every time user sees an ad the advertiser is charged a penny. If he's tapping the banner, Apple charges $2. So $1 million ad buy will provoke a big amount of its views and user taps.

In addition to a higher price Apple wants to take more control over marketing campaigns of its clients. But still it doesn't reduce companies' interest in iAds:

"Despite the high price, ad executives at agencies from Boston to New York and San Francisco to Los Angeles have crowded into conference rooms in recent weeks to listen to the tech company's pitch for iAd".

One of the advertisements that is already developed is an ad for Nike's Air Jordan basketball shoes. It includes iAd logo and animated banner. If you select it, you'll see an interactive store locator, special videoclip and exclusive offers taking place at local stores. This iAd was also shown by Apple on its iPhone OS 4 preview event.

Some experts think Apple's appearance at the market of mobile advertisement may convince some other selling ads companies to switch to other mobile platforms (for example, Google Android).

With a growing popularity of apps for Apple devices advertisers and developers see iAds as a potential opportunity to reach a wide audience and raise more money on it.

According to the report revealed by Chosun resource 5MP camera sensors for iPhone 4G will be supplied by LG Innotek.

"The electronics component maker began producing the sophisticated cameras at its plant in Gumi this month and will mass produce them starting in the second half of this year."

So the rumors about OmniVision going to supply cameras for a new generation of iPhones that appeared in December 2009 are incorrect.

iPhone 4G is expected to have not only 5.0-megapixels capera, but also a camera flash (probably based on Philips' LUXEON LED techonogy). The functions for flash are already implemented in iPhone OS 4.0.

Today mobile ad firm AdMob has released another Mobile Metrics report that consists of information about the software and hardware that had been used by Apple's handsets owners in March.

The study reveals that only 2% of all Apple devices with iPhone OS are first-gen iPhones. But it is important to notice that since the first sale of iPhone OS-based device Apple sold over 85 million of its worldwide. If we'll take the period between June 2007 and July 2008 (time when iPhone 3G was shipped), then it turns out that company sold 6.1 million of iPhone 2G, which is approximately 7% of the total sum of handsets that were sold.

Fortune Brainstorm Tech journalist Philip Elmer-Dewitt continues to count and then sums up:

"If 7% of those iPhone 1Gs are driving 2% of AdMob's traffic that suggests that nearly one in three is still ticking - and visiting the Web."

Obviously, the popularity of the first-generation iPhones will be further reducing without iPhone OS 4.0 support.

AdMob also found that the most popular iPhone in March 2010 was iPhone 3GS, which generated 39% of all traffic. This is much higher result than 9% in September 2009.

Other information can be seen above on the graphs.

Video above can be described as a humorous quintessence of Steve Jobs' keynote when he presented iPhone OS 4.0. It is made by Neil Curtis who is known for his another 180-sec videoclip about iPad. Looks pretty funny!

Recently Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer had a financial conference call with the press and analysts. Here are some interesting facts we gained from the conversation:

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Apple added new and beautiful animation for multitasking in the latest firmware 4 beta 2. Here's how it looks like now:

Today Apple released new SDK and iPhone OS 4 beta 2 (8A248C). This is only for developers, who can download it here.

We will keep you updated on new iPad/iPhone/iPod features that will be found in this new firmware 4 beta 2.

And we're back now with a new e-mail reply by Steve Jobs, received from a TechCrunch reader. He was interested why Apple doesn't apply parental control to apps released in AppStore but simply denies accepting it. Jobs' answer was suddenly long, and he recommended to buy an Android-based phone.

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The story about iPhone 4G get's even more complicated. Recently the future iPhone 4G photos were shown just everywhere. After several hours these photos were claimed fake, because the device looked just like a Japanese iPhone clone. Today Gizmodo posted an article with many photos and videos, proving this is actually the next iPhone prototype. This might even be the real final version of iPhone 4G. And of course this might still be fake, a good one though. We don't know yet.

So what's new in the next iPhone 4G:

Front-facing video chat camera.

Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS).

Camera flash.

Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad).

Improved display. It's unclear if it's the 960x640 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the "Connect to iTunes" screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.

What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack.

Split buttons for volume.

Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic.

iPhone OS 4.0.

Dimensions: 4.50 х 2.31 х 0.37 inches.

Weight: 140 g.

Battery: 5.25 WHr 3.7V (iPhone 3GS - 4.51 WHr 3.7V).

Here are the photos of next iPhone:

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Dave Johnson from Bnet's blogs has written a post about why iPhone OS 4.0 and, particularly, iAds is a reason to get rid of your iPhone. He says that even such a big company as Apple cannot stay of the road when there are opportunities to gain additional billions of dollars with their new advertising program. It is announced that iAds service will work only in a free apps, but in a while there will be nothing to stop it from showing up such advertisements in paid apps too. That is why it is time to look at iPhone rivals.

Mike Schramm from TUAW develops this thought further - if iAds will bring significant revenue to Apple, why not deliver it to Mac OS X?

But at this moment these thoughts are not confirmed with any of the Apple actions, so there is no need for panic yet.

MuscleNerd just released redsn0w 0.9.5 beta - the first public jailbreak of iPhone OS 4. This utility is only for developers of jailbroken apps, so they can update apps for firmware 4.0. The jailbreak only supports the iPhone 3G and runs on MAC OS X. There is no carrier unlock right now.

You can download RedSn0w 0.9.5 and get more info here.

Yesterday MuscleNerd uploaded a video of an iPhone 3GS that runs the iPhone OS 4 (beta version). Along with a new OS it also runs Veency, an unauthorized VNC-app for the iPhone (so it can be runned only on jailbroken devices).

That means that new OS can also be jailbroken by the methods that were used for the previous versions. We may only hope Apple won't make any security updates before its official release.