Smartphones

Apple CEO Steve Jobs opened the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference June 7 by announcing the latest iPhone incarnation, the iPhone 4. As expected, the latest handset features a high-resolution display, a faster processor, and video calling, but it also sports unexpected additions like a new antenna and a gyroscope. It will be available exclusively with AT&T starting June 24. The price with service is fair--$199 for the 16GB phone or $299 for the 32GB device--and both models come in white and black versions. No, we did not hear a peep about the elusive Verizon iPhone, but we didn't anticipate any news on that front.

Even from the outside, you'll see that the iPhone 4 marks the biggest upgrade since the iPhone 3G (the 3GS didn't add much beyond a compass). The profile is thinner and you'll notice a new front-facing camera (more on that later). The iPhone 4 also serves as the debut device for the newly named iOS 4 operating system, which brings such much-needed features as multitasking, a unified e-mail in-box, and app folders for the home screen.

On the whole, this iPhone 4 has us more excited than we were last year when the the 3GS was born. The new features, particularly those in the new operating system, are long overdue and we welcome any efforts to improve call quality (remember that it is a phone, after all). There were a few things that we were hoping for that we didn't get--a 64GB model, among them--but we look forward to reviewing this model.

Design The new iPhone's design is a sharp departure from the previous iPhone models. The front and back sides are glass, both surfaces are flat, and a stainless steel border circles the entire phone. Indeed, it looks very much like the photos that appeared on Gizmodo after an Apple engineer allegedly lost it in a Redwood City, Calif., bar back in April. Other new design elements include the aforementioned front-facing camera, split volume controls, a noise-cancellation microphone, and a new LED flash with the main camera lens. The iPhone 4 also switches to a Micro-SIM format, just like the iPad.

We welcome the new design elements on a couple of levels. The flat backside means that the iPhone will no longer wobble when it's resting on a table. Also, even though the overall effect is a tad boxy, the handset has a clean and unmistakeably Apple look. At 0.37 inch (9.3mm), the iPhone 4 also is 25 percent thinner than its predecessors. Jobs called it the thinnest smartphone around, but since that race changes daily, it may not hold the title for long. … Read more

Apple's forthcoming iOS 4 will be ready to update iPhones and iPod Touches in two weeks. It will turbocharge existing iPhones without a doubt, but how does the new operating system stack up to Android's 2.2 (Froyo) release?

It's true that Apple's iOS 4 is a far more dramatic update from iPhone OS 3.0 than is Android 2.2 from 2.1. iOS 4 gets a handful of features that the iPhone was sorely missing on the software front: multitasking, threaded e-mail, folder support, and tethering--which Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn't mention in … Read more

Before the WWDC 2010 keynote began, my colleague CNET News reporter Ina Fried sent out the following tweet, "My question for #wwdc, How much tougher is life about to get today for the Windows Phone 7 team?"

It's a thought I had as well and now that iPhone 4 has been revealed, I think the answer is pretty clear: Very tough. Not that WP7 wasn't already heading in that direction in the first place.

Microsoft took a gamble announcing Windows Phone 7 far in advance of its actual launch. The revamped mobile OS was introduced in … Read more

Cellular South announced Monday that it will be adding the Motorola Milestone to its smartphone lineup, though pricing and availability date were not released at this time.

This marks the second Android-based smartphone for the carrier, following last year's HTC Hero. The Milestone sports a similar design and feature set as the Motorola Droid, which includes a 3.7-inch display and a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and dual-LED, but ships with Android 2.1. Other details include an 8GB microSD card, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and support for Cellular South's 3G network.

Also, good news for Cellular South customers, as … Read more

Editors' note: The following is CNET UK's review of the Dell Streak. Once the product is available in the U.S., we will update our Dell Streak product page with a new review specific to U.S. consumers.

If bigger is better, then the Dell Streak is the greatest smartphone in the world. But size isn't everything, and although the Streak's large screen and powerful Android operating system provide heaps of fun, it needs some more polish before it lives up to our Android tablet fantasies.

Mega phone Is the Streak a phone or a tablet? We … Read more

One of the most hyped features of the new iPhone, known as iPhone 4, is the new screen. Apple bombastically calls it the Retina display, citing a host of improvements over the current screen, which has gone three years without a major update. But what does it all mean?

Judging from the specs alone, the new screen will look better than before. That's a good thing by objective standards, and we'll get into the improvements below, but first a word of caution about relying on published specs when it comes to screens in general.

Improvements, especially resolution, tend to have diminishing returns--it's really tough to see the difference between same-sized 1080p and 720p TVs with moving video, for example. The way a manufacturer implements the technology, for aspects like color reproduction, reflectivity, and gamma, can have a larger impact on image quality than any published specs. Finally, the content, the viewing environment, and even your own visual acuity all affect how an image will look to you on the new iPhone 4's screen.

960x640 resolution: This is the native resolution of the Retina display, which crams 614,400 pixels onto a 3.5-inch diagonal screen (326 pixels per inch). That's four times as many pixels as the current iPhone, which has a 320x480 native resolution on the same-sized screen (163 PPI), and significantly more than newer competitors like the Motorola Droid (854x480, 265 PPI) and the Nexus One (800x480, 252 PPI), for example. As Jobs pointed out, 300 PPI is typically regarded as the limit of useful pixel density, and the iPhone 4's mark of 326 is among the best available on any display.

Text, especially smaller fonts, should appear sharper and less pixelated when you look closely in a side-by-side comparison between the old and new iPhones. The difference with photos will be a lot more subtle, on the other hand, while the difference with moving video might not be visible at all. It's simply easier to see differences in resolution with black-and-white, line-based material, especially when it's not moving. In any case, you'll have to look closely to see them. Compared with other screens with higher pixel densities than the current iPhone, the differences in detail will be even smaller.

We say "should" because material that's not designed for the higher resolution--Jobs said the new iPhone iOS 4 would be, and encouraged App designers to update to higher rez--has to be scaled to fit the pixels.… Read more

As time ticked on in Steve Jobs' keynote at Monday's WWDC conference, we kept waiting for the Apple chief to showcase the iPhone 4's front-facing camera. When he finally did, it wasn't a Skype video conferencing app that many expected, but Apple's own software, called FaceTime.

FaceTime is built into the version 4 operating system that Apple is now calling iOS 4, since it powers the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Using the front-facing camera, two callers will be able to see and hear each other in a high-definition video call.

The good news is that FaceTime will require no setup, so firing up video chats should be intuitive even for VoIP novices. Here's the setback: at launch, FaceTime will run only over Wi-Fi, and only on the iPhone 4.

We understand that hardware and software requirements like a front-facing camera and HD video recorder would cause Apple to limit FaceTime calls to between iPhone 4 phones, but we are surprised that Apple isn't taking advantage of 3G calling, particularly since it's been six months since the company allowed third-party developers to add 3G calls to VoIP apps.

The bigger question on our minds, however, is just how big a blow FaceTime will deliver to Skype and other competing VoIP services.… Read more

It seems no one was really prepared for the huge demand for the HTC Evo 4G. Not only did Sprint and other retailers run out of the devices, but Qik, the provider for the Evo 4G's video chat app, was also overwhelmed by the phone's popularity and ended up having to temporarily pull the app.

Actually, the problems started early for Qik when customers complained that they couldn't even find the Qik video chat app in the Android Market, but fortunately, Google quickly came up with a workaround so users could discover and download the app from … Read more