The iPhone 4: Too little, too late
<p>As I write, the announcement of the iPhone 4 at WWDC is just a few hours old.  See the <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/07/iphone-4-announced/">Engadget coverage</a> for details.  The bottom line?  This is too little, too late to stop the Android deluge.</p>
<p>There are some very cool individual features on this phone, no doubt.  The two that stand out the most to me are the onboard gyroscope and the &#8220;retina display&#8221; &#8211; yes, 960 x 640 at 326ppi will be damn nice, and if I were writing apps I would seriously lust for that six-axis motion sensing.  But the improvements are mainly in the <em>hardware</em>; Apple has conspicuously failed to address the areas where it has fallen behind Android 2.2 in <em>software</em>.  There&#8217;s no progress on voice recognition, Flash, or WiFi hotspot capability. And even the hardware falls short of where it needs to be; while 802.11n is nice, the &#8220;G&#8221; after that &#8220;4&#8221; is conspicuously missing.  </p>
<p>If I were an Apple marketing guy, I&#8217;d be asking &#8220;How the hell can I compete against the EVO 4G with <em>this</em>?&#8221; </p>
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<p>Maybe the biggest news is that, as I predicted, the iPhone 4 has not gone multicarrier in the U.S..  And it desperately needed to, especially after AT&#038;T effectively shitcanned its unlimited-data plan. The hopeful rumors of a CDMA iPhone remain only hopeful rumors.</p>
<p>The &#8220;one more thing&#8221; rabbit Jobs pulled out of his hat was full-motion video in calls between iPhones. But it was a lame rabbit, only working over WiFi.  Jobs says Apple is in talks with carriers about this, and I&#8217;ll bet a lot of the &#8220;talks&#8221; consist of AT&#038;T cursing sulphurously about a feature that couldn&#8217;t have been better designed to bring an underprovisioned cell network to its knees if it had been done on purpose.  I&#8217;m guessing this &#8220;feature&#8221; will quietly disappear into the same limbo as Apple TV.</p>
<p>Another point: it&#8217;s going to be tough for Apple to make any hay out of the talk of Android fragmentation since it has conceded that 3GS and older apps will need &#8220;a little work&#8221; to take full advantage of the new display. </p>
<p>I wasn&#8217;t anticipating a really strong riposte from Apple this time out, but the iPhone 4 manages to low-ball even my minimal expectations. Better displays were coming anyway; about the only prompt effect I can see is that this announcement will make six-axis motion sensing a checklist feature for next-generation Android phones.  On the software side, Android 2.2 has certainly won this round, leaving Apple with still more lag to make up on its next refresh.</p>
