On my 2nd wedding anniversary Apple decided to give this fanboy a nice gift: the next iPhone hardware announcement. Unfortunately I was at work, so I could only get the little bits from the live blog, but I have since downloaded and watched the keynote. Here is an overview of the noteworthy things I liked:

New Look

I love the sleek new look of the iPhone. The fact that they made it slimmer is amazing and hard to believe, but it’s true, 24% thinner than the previous generation. I still see this thing being easily scratchable, but adding a case or the Apple “bumper” cases should do the trick, although it hides the coolness of the device. Being flat is a nice design evolution. I like the two button volume control rather than the rocker which I often find I hit the wrong direction while the phone is in the case.

I do worry that the Marware case that I have will no longer fit this phone. It’s very loose now with my 3G due to the wear, that means I’ll have to find a replacement. I also purchased the charging doc for my 3G, and it looks like the new form factor will make that device obsolete. I guess it gets passed down to my wife’s 3Gs.

From the pictures the changes are drastic yet similar (depending on the viewing angle) and I’m pretty impressed. Apple loves to change the design to make the old product look old.

New Hardware

Inside Apple has added their new A4 chip that powers the iPad. Not a surprise here. It will be a welcome update for me given that I have the 3G which I find very slow compared to the 3Gs. 802.11N for the new wireless standard was an obvious update too. I was really excited to hear bigger battery. I can get my phone down pretty far without doing a ton of work on it. Now with the new battery you can get up to 10 hours of video, that is like 4 movies! 300 hours of stand by time and 6 hours of browser time is awesome too.

Adding the gyroscope to allow better movement tracking is very “Wii-esque” and should open up some interesting games and map navigation apps.

New Display

It was hard to tell on the downloaded keynote sometimes, but you could see the much more richer display. It’s incredible with the same screen size they were able to get the resolution they did (960 x 480) which has over 70% of the pixels the much larger iPad has. All the icons and pictures taken with the iPhone did look way better. I’m sure this helps too with the new OS feature to have wall paper on the home screen, should make it easier to see the icons and text. I was a bit disappointed because I was thinking iPad since it came out, now it seems likely if I wait a year I’ll get a better display (and maybe a camera!).

New Camera(s)

It’s been long rumoured that Apple would catch up to other phones and add a front facing camera. While I don’t know for sure what pixel quality is on the front, it is exciting that video conference calls through Skype are now possible, although won’t be available at launch. The video that Apple showed of a Dad keeping in touch with his family through the new FaceTime feature is exactly how I picture this feature working. You can quickly hit a button and it will switch to using the rear camera, a neat way to show somebody on a call something really quick. Unfortunately it’s Wi-Fi only which I think will change once the carriers allow it, and the other limitation is that you will have to have an iPhone 4 to make it work. So that means no other iPhone or the iPad can take advantage of it. I would hope that the iMac and Macbooks could through the iSight, but that would likely only mean through something like Skype.

The beefed up 5 megapixel camera on the back with an LED flash is great. My iPhone is pretty much useless in low light situations and offers grainy photos (the 3GS seems much better) but having this kind of quality at your finger tips is amazing. Add a digital zoom and you have everything you need to capture moments when your DSLR is not at hand.

iOS4

At first I groaned at this, but when you see the demos that Steve Jobs did it actually made the idea of an ad being entertaining and informative a reality. Everything goes through Apple, so the iAd program will likely demand a level of quality to them. Apparently there are tons of ads ready to go and the product hasn’t even shipped, so that has to be great news.

Multi-tasking is something I can’t wait to try. I won’t be able to use it on my 3G, but for sure I will on the 3GS. I think Skype is a cool prospect to now be able to receive calls and keep chat windows (I think?) and calls active while I switched in and out of apps. It works as you expect and appears very fluid, but I would like to understand the limits to how many apps you can have open. We will have to wait to see people fully take advantage of the new background API’s, watch out for location based services and apps that update where you are at all times!

Adding folders will be nice so that I can keep most of my frequently used apps on the home page rather than swiping through or using Spotlight all the time. What I think is missing is add contacts to the home screen.

I love that you can add wallpaper to the home screen, but I need to see if they conflict with the icons and text.

A feature I will use all the time is the unified inbox. I have a lot of IMAP email accounts and having one single inbox to check them all will be crucial to saving me time.

I’m interested in iBooks, the e-book store that Apple has created. I’ve heard that it is very limited for the Canadian market but I assume that will change over time. I don’t know if I would use my iPhone for reading very much, I picture the iBook store being best for me like it was intended: on the iPad. I do like that if I had an iPad and ready a few chapters, that (I guess through my Apple ID) my progress would sync to my iPhone and I could pick up where I left off.  Also, if I bought a book on either device I have access to it on both.

Price and Availability

In Canada we have to wait until July before we even have a shot at this phone. All the big carriers are getting the phones. No details yet on upgrade pricing or how someone like me, who has had a 3G for 18 months or so can get an iPhone 4. One interesting way would be from Apple themselves. They announced in Canada that they are selling unlocked iPhones. That is an interesting option given the advantages of having an unlocked phone: no contract, can switch from carrier to carrier, etc. I’ll wait to find out what the pricing is, and if it’s possible to get a micro SIM from Rogers to pop into the iPhone 4.

I suspect the unlocked phone price to be upwards of $700 and the subsidized version similar to the US prices. I’ll wait and see what Rogers has to say in July!

Leave a comment with your thoughts on the next iPhone, would love to read them!

This post originally appeared on DavidRStorms.com on June 17, 2010.

Last year’s global mobile phone sales of Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry devices only accounted for 3% of all of mobile phone sales (actually unit sales), but according to the Wall Street Journal they’re raking in 35% of all mobile phone profits. Which by any measure is enormous considering how little of the overall sales market they impact. Forecasts for this year according to the Deutsche Bank are expected to be 5% sales, and 58% of mobile phone profits. This is of course contributed to the price of these devices, brand name, and obviously availability.

Apple and RIM have managed to coin and pretty much take ownership of the smartphone market crunching out these kinds of numbers. Given Apple’s time on the smart phone scene I believe that this is a much larger achievement for them versus RIM. Why? Well consider this, BlackBerry has devices on every major mobile (US) carrier, where as Apple has the iPhone locked to one (well technically two for all of the jailbroken/unlocked iPhone users), Apple has been out since 2007 with their device….the BlackBerry has had a five year jump on Apple and had has a huge following especially among working professionals. However Apple does have over a million applications available for their device and has sold 21.17 million phones in what, two years time?

In conclusion, it’s clear that with Smartphone sales accounting for 13.5% of all mobile device sales in the first quarter of 2009 (compared with 11% in the first quarter of 2008) companies like Nokia and Samsung are really going to need to take notice and begin to counter this threat. Based on theses numbers by RIM and Apple, it clearly shows that services and applications are now instrumental to smartphones’ overall success in this new market.

Like many millions of people I downloaded on June 17th the highly anticipated 3.0 software update from Apple for the iPhone. Since I’m not even a year into my contract with Rogers, this review will be based on my 3G. I think this will make a more accurate review of the software itself without confusing 3.0 features that work only with the 3GS.

Please note that this is from the “Canadian perspective” and I apologize if any current AT&T customers feel jealous about MMS!

For the most part I will revisit the highlighted items from my post back in March on the iPhone OS 3.0 Update. (note this link goes back to my personal web site)

Installing

Installation was a breeze. I have to admit that I was caught up in the excitment for this one and got up bright and early and started scanning for updates in iTunes but none were to be had. At work through TweetDeck I setup a search feed to watch Twitter for #iPhone3.0 and saw a lot of people waiting. I checked again at lunch time and nothing (I’m in EST by the way). Around mid afternoon, say around 3-4 pm I saw notes all over the place of people downloading. There was also reports of time outs, iTunes activation problems, delays, peoples phones not coming back, etc. Needless to say I was a bit aprehensive. But I know I would try anyway.

I was home around 5 ish that night and wondered if the servers would still be bogged. I plugged in my iPhone, gave it one last glace at 2.x, then proceeded with the upgrade. The download of a couple hundred megabytes took about 17 minutes or so. The backup of the phone took place, then the firm ware was installed. This was probably about 10 minutes. During installation my phone went black and I saw the normal silver Apple logo with a progress bar underneath. I thought I would see that progress bar each time the phone started as a new feedback feature, but alas not the case.

Before it was done iTunes alerted me that there was a software update from my carrier (Rogers) and if I wanted to download this. I can only assume that it had something to do with the MMS and tethering capabilities. I agreed and it downloaded and installed in no time.

That was it. My iPhone came back all loaded. I normally reseve the home page for the factory apps, and in 2.x I had 1 spare space where I put Tweetie. After 3.0 the Voice Memos app was added which pushed Tweetie to the next page. However what it did was put it on a blank page just to the right of the home screen all by itself. I was startled at first but fine with it. I believe you can go up to 10 pages now and I find that I now want to still reserve factory apps for the home screen, then frequently used ones on a more or less empty page.

Later on I’ll talk about Spotlight which kind of antiquates this.

App Store & iTunes (from iPhone)

I find these 2 apps now slower for me. Maybe I’m crazy but I get the loading screen a bit longer than I normally do. Even slower when not on Wi-fi.

First time I started the App Store I had 2 apps that had updates now that I was on 3.0. However each of them failed repeatedly. They would sit on the waiting stage for a while and then I would try again and from the App Store and I would get 2 failures. Finally I was in either the App Store or iTunes and I got prompted to accept the license agreement.

Finally on the App Store, when you look at the details of an app, you no longer have to click through the images, they all load on the detail page and you just swipe left and right to look at them. This is great for me beause I like to see all the screens but I don’t want to have to click one, then go back, click one then go back.

I did that and lo and behold I could update those apps. Only hiccup I’ve had there.

While I haven’t done it, I think it’s neat you can get TV shows and movies from iTunes right on the phone. I beleive you will need Wi-fi to download them because my 1 GB cap just won’t handle it!

Touted Features

Apple says over 100 new features, and I found this site that lists them all. Here is my personal experience with each of them.

Cut, Copy & Paste

Another feature that I think it’s great that it is there and extremely useful, but I just don’t do that much copy pasting on the phone to begin with. When I do use it though, it works as expected. And the shake to undo and redo blows a lot of people away and was a very nice touch on Apple’s part. I’m used to double tapping to zoom things and often the bubble pops up with text selected but its easily dimissed.

It’s just the way it is, but without a mouse it is a bit slower to narrow down to select the text you want, and I do find that the feature is smart about finding a word, then paragraph and then page.

The fact that the feature works across all apps is expected and works great. Copying images (up to 5 I believe) from the Photos app to an email works well (although you can send via email right from the Photos app), but grabbing an image from a web page and mailing it off is great too.

I don’t use this a lot, but I sure am glad it’s there!

Landscape Keyboard

I sort of got used to typing in portrait mode so it is a conscious reminder to flip to this form. Primarily I would use it in Email and Messages. I don’t take notes very often but I’m sure I would use this there as well.

Text Messaging & MMS

As mentioned above, the landscape keyboard is now in text messages which marginally helps me type. I do find it can take up a lot of room and leave me little area to see what is there:

One of the first things I did was try to send pictures over MMS. This worked like a charm. The small camera next to the text line makes it easy to snap a new shot or choose an existing one. I was told by my friend that pictures with text came out weird on his phone, but I love how they appear in speach bubbles on my end.

Last week though I tried to send him some shots of our basement project and all of them failed. Failed messages have a little red exclamation point beside them that you can click and retry. I did this many times but they still failed and I just gave up.

As I found out tonight (June 24) my friend also sent me pics last Friday (June 19th) and Sunday (June 21) and I didn’t get them until tonight. I then replied back with a picture and it worked. Best guess is that Rogers was overwhelmed or had to work on something last minute to make MMS work better. No idea. Haven’t seen any word on this.

You can now selectively forward and delete individual messages which I like rather than clearing the whole conversation.

Sadly I can’t take video because I don’t have the 3GS so I don’t think I can MMS any either.

A great change to the Messages app is now that when you send you are not locked out of the app while it sends but your message bubble pops up and at the top the app you have the “sending” note with the progress bar. That made a lot of sense to me.

I don’t find the app opens any faster but in fact seems slower to me.

Spotlight

This is a great idea addition to the phone. However I keep forgetting that it is there and often find myself locating apps and contacts the old fashioned pre-3.0 days.

I know its there I just need to remember to use it. The number 1 reason I would use this is quick access to my contacts. I don’t have pages and pages of apps and I organize them a bit so it’s not such a big deal to flip through the pages. I think it’s great that it will look into my email and calendar events, not to mention the iPod library.

Other

I have noticed modest speed boosts in web site rendering but I don’t tax things that greatly. I do know that JavaScript heavy sites like the Google services work quickly. I use the mobile version of Google Reader and its fantastic.

Another feature I use often is the landscape support in Email. Not so much for flipping through the list of messages, but opening emails I find it very useful. I still get the delay while the app tries to adjust the font size so it is readible, but that is mitigated a bit by the landscape support. I find that I type faster in SMS using portrait mode but from time to time I will use the messages app in landscape mode too.

If you want, here is forum documenting user found features you may not even know about yet!

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=715629

Note: this article has been edited from the original and first appeared on my site: www.davidrstorms.com on July 5th, 2009

A follow up focusing on MMS and Tethering will be coming soon!

Apple has just released the fifth beta of the 3.0 iPhone firmware, barely a week after the previous beta release. Up until now they have kept a steady two-week release schedule. The sudden increase in update frequency suggests that they’re really starting to gear up for the final release. As before, the new firmware requires the iTunes 8.2 pre-release. No news yet as to what this update includes. Stay tuned for further details.

UPDATE: According to various sources, the new beta removes the ability to turn on MMS support in the settings app. It also breaks the workarounds for enabling tethering support. If you use any of these workarounds and decide to update, consider yourself warned.

(via Engadget)

Lexcycle announced Monday that they’ve been acquired by Amazon.com, the online retail giant. Lexcycle, who is responsible for Stanza (iTunes link), one of the best-selling ebook apps for the iPhone, stated in a blog post:

We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition. Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners.

It’s unclear exactly what the future holds for Stanza and Amazon’s own Kindle app. It’s probably fairly safe to assume that Amazon’s extensive catalog of over 270,000 ebooks will eventually be extended to the Stanza application, in addition to the current catalog of over 100,000 ebooks already available to Stanza users. It’s worth noting that the open ePub format used by Stanza’s catalog of ebooks is a container not supported by Amazon’s Kindle e-reader device.

(via Appleinsider)

Say what you will about Google, but you can’t deny that they have a good sense of humor. They’ve one-upped their previous update (which proudly listed “enhanced version number” in the changelog, for anyone who doesn’t remember) by including Ninja. It’s doubtful we’ll actually see this so-called Ninja. After all, everyone knows you can’t actually see Ninjas. This is exactly the kind of tongue-in-cheek humor I like to see, especially from companies as big as Google. Keep an eye out for their next update. What will it include? Well if I had to guess, I’d put my money on Pirates.

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 is now available to developers. Apple released build 7A300g as well as an iTunes 8.2 pre-release which they say is required in order to activate the new beta. Engadget has already posted some quick first impressions of the new firmware. According to Engadget, the previously empty “Store” pane in the settings app is no longer empty. It now allows you to sign in and out of your iTunes account and features an Account Info button that sends you to a webpage where you can view and edit your credit card information, among other things. Curious that they should require a pre-release version of iTunes to activate the new beta. Perhaps this means they’ve made some significant changes behind the scenes in the latest beta. Stay tuned for any additional information that may surface on the new firmware.

(via Engadget)

IGN has an exclusive preview of the upcoming iPhone version of Assassin’s Creed.

Via IGN:

As the master assassin Altair you must explore the bustling metropolises of the Holy Land to uncover “The Chalice,” a sacred artifact held by the Templars. According to your superiors at The Order of the Assassins, stealing the Chalice has the potential to end the Crusades. (How the Chalice fits into the entire story about the Crusades is not going to be spoiled here — but it’s a story well worth exploring, especially if you played through the final scenes of Assassin’s Creed on the Xbox 360, PS3, or PC.)

The screenshots that have been released certainly look impressive. I imagine this will be a game worth picking up when it’s released. IGN claims that it is set to be released within the next few weeks at a price point somewhere between $5.99 and $9.99.

(Via IGN)

During Macworld 2007, Steve Jobs pulled out a silver slab of metal and glass he called “iPhone”. Available in 4 and 8 GB models having a slick multi-touch UI, 3.5″ display, no physical keyboard, no expandable memory card slot, no removeable battery and slated as Apple’s best iPod ever. Pundits disregarded it as a passing fade. Consumers loved it’s ease of use. The mass-media couldn’t get enough of it from TV news spots to newspaper reviews. The competition couldn’t believe it. Apple created a smartphone that was nearly devoid of all the features and functions compared to their offerings was becoming the biggest phenomenon since the Motorola RAZR. The smartphone industry was sent into a tailspin. What followed was a flurry of announcements of new devices, services and company roadmaps from various smartphone manufacturers.

Jump to Macworld 2008, where once again Steve Jobs whips out a new toy; the iPhone 3G. A slightly improved model of the original iPhone, now in 8 and 16 GB models with GPS, 3G (HSPA) and the iPhone OS 2.0 firmware giving consumers more functionality and the new App Store and businesses received better tools and Microsoft Exchange support. While this wasn’t much by any means it was enough to send the competition into a tailspin once again, now scrambling to create their own solutions to the iPhone’s integrated App Store.
By the end of 2008 RIM had released the Blackberry Bold which had some iPhone like styling with a high resolution display. This was followed by the Blackberry Storm, RIM’s first full touch screen device. Microsoft announced a Windows Mobile 6.5 update with a slightly revamped UI due to their further delayed WM7 OS. HTC who creates the majority of Windows Mobile devices continued to push their TouchFlo 3D interface by adding more multi-touch like features as a way to make WM easier to use. At this point it was easy to see that the already established smartphone makers could nolonger sit back and eek out relevant OS updates at the snails they so grew accustomed to.

Fast forward to present day 2009 and we are now looking at a possible June/July 2009 release of or at least an announcement of a new iPhone model which would compliment the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0 firmware. Again, it’s not a major OS update when compared to the competition but it does eliminate just about every complaint any pundit previously had about the current iPhone OS. When released the iPhone on many levels will be able to go head-to-head with the competition. That being said and even without a hardware revision of the iphone itself what can the competition do now to keep up or even surpass the iPhone at this point? Pundits will say “It’s about time Apple caught up” but the reality is, there’s really not many plays left on the board and the iPhone’s winning points are still in play. So far RIM’s Blackberry Storm has been a failure for the most part due to RIM itself wanting to “think different” by having a “floating” touch screen requiring users to literally press the screen twice to register a single key press. This method ended in being merely a slower and harder form of text entry. The other issue was the Storm’s OS itself which simply was not ready for primetime when it was initailly released. As a result RIM has had to issue updates to rectify bugs and user complaints that should have been resolved prior to its release. Microsoft, with their Windows Mobile OS still hasn’t figured out a way to push out OS updates to users without carrier or device manufacturer intervention. An issue users have long complained about since the PocketPC days, before they entered the smartphone market. It also turns out that the announced Windows Mobile Marketplace will only be available to users of WM 6.5 and up. This means that current users of WM will be required the purchase a new smartphone just for the priviledge to purchase software from the Windows Mobile Marketplace.
As you can see, although the iPhone is just catching up with the standard features of current smartphones the competition still doesn’t know what to do next. Even after 2 years the iPhone’s strengths are still far ahead of competing devices.
First and foremost are the firmware updates themselves. On day one firmware updates were stayed to be free and to work with all iPhones. Apple has not only kept their word but they have done it without carrier intervention and kept it simple. Just connect the iPhone to iTunes and it checks for updates automatically. This far receiving 12 updates within it’s 2 years of existance. Much more than Windows Mobile has even been allowed to receive. The iPhone also has in-home device activation. There is no other smartphone you can buy and take home to activate without first signing a contract in the store or calling the carrier first without an already active account. Then, there’s setting up the device. Getting your email, contacts, calendar and media on to the iPhone is a lot easier to do compared to many of the other smartphones currently available. Thankfully this also works in reverse when it comes to restoring the iPhone, which is just a few clicks away due to the automatic backup that happens everytime you sync with iTunes. Then, there’s the purchasing of content. Whether it’s media or software related can be found in either the iTunes Store or the App Store on the iPhone or on the PC. And while purchasing media and software over the air is nothing new, Apple was the first to put their own dedicated storefront in the face of the user by integrating it into the OS. Keeping with a similar “1-click” style purchasing scheme; makes for super easy use and imstant notification of updates to purchased software which comes right to the user. The iPhone OS itself is also more than just a pretty face. It’s an OS that is purpose driven and intuitively designed to work with the hardware. All the taps, pinches and flicks are put in place to actually navigate the iPhone itself. It is not merely fluff or worse as with other devices, created as an after thought and pasted on for show. The iPhone is the best iPod Apple has made according to Steve Jobs and even though that can be a matter of personal preference; the seamless integration and operation of the iPod, Quicktime and YouTube definately puts the iPhone years ahead of any other smartphone in the media category. Complete with the best designed and functioning built-in web browser in the smartphone market the iPhone is a device that just makes sense and works well at what it does.

All hype aside there are few other devices available, if any that can be used right out the box without having to tweak anything first just to make it useable. Designed for the average consumer but slowly easing it’s way into the business space. Apple is positioning itself to be a long standing player in the smartphone market leaving little time for the competition to rest.
What keeps people using the iPhone, is a good user experience. Since the release of the iPhone there hasn’t been anything more than a number of iClones, add-on services and features. All good ideas but none as well thought out as what the iPhone offers. By mid-summer the competition will have nothing else to mimic which goes to show that they also don’t have any truly original ideas left to implement. Apple has approached the smartphone market from a different angle and succeeded. Which also goes to show that “thinking different” does work when good ideas original or not are implemented properly, logically and with the user in mind. So until the next major iPhone firmware update expect to see more of the same; iClones, iServices and iFeatures dying a quick death as they deserve to and the big players to hopefully return to their strengths and merits and not the iPhone’s. In the end the iPhone will still be the most talked about and most regularly used device around.