Hands on with iPhone 4

The iPhone 4 is a radical departure from its predecessor

By Dan Moren, Jason Snell, San Francisco | Wednesday, 09 June 2010
Cameras, photo, videos
We got to spend some time playing with the iPhone 4's two cameras. The rear camera is a 5-megapixel model, up from 3 megapixels on the iPhone 3GS. But megapixels aren't everything--in fact, the iPhone 3GS camera creates better output than many smartphone cameras with more megapixels. This new camera appears to follow in its predecessor's footsteps, though we were only able to shoot in a controlled environment in Apple's demo area. The photos we took looked great in preview mode on the phone; we look forward to doing a more thorough analysis when we get our own iPhone 4 and use it to shoot in more varied environments.

Also new to the rear-facing camera is an LED flash. When you turn the flash on and press the shutter button, the LED flashes once to allow the camera to meter the brightness, and then a second time to take the picture. The results seemed decent, though we've learned from other smartphones that an LED flash isn't always the best choice if there's enough light to shoot without. Still, for most people the LED flash means that you'll always be able to take a picture, even if it's getting pretty dark. (You can set the flash to never fire, always fire, or fire automatically when the camera senses that you need it.)

The iPhone 4's front-facing camera isn't a 5-megapixel wonder; it's a 640-by-480-pixel camera (three-tenths of a megapixel, if you're curious) designed to be used primarily with the new FaceTime video-chat system, though it will also work well as a way to take self-portraits. You can flip between the front and rear camera from within the Camera app, as well as when you're using FaceTime.

FaceTime itself worked great in the demos we saw carried out by Apple's employees. Video quality in the FaceTime chats seemed somewhat variable; it's definitely not a high-def video experience, but it doesn't really need to be. (But as we learned from iChat AV, the real test with video chatting is when you try to start a chat from various and obscure network conditions.) Starting a chat couldn't be easier, however. You dial a friend with an iPhone 4, and then tap the FaceTime icon in the Phone app to initiate a video call. There's no app to launch and no buddy list to configure. It's a very cool idea, though it does make us wonder what will happen when other devices--those without phone numbers, for example--join the FaceTime party.

Once you're in a FaceTime conversation, you can readily switch between landscape and portrait orientations, or jump back and forth between the iPhone 4's front- and rear-facing cameras--in case you want to show your conversation partner what you're looking at. As in iChat on the Mac, there's a small window that shows what your camera is seeing, and you can drag that pane into any of the screen's corners.

The software
We got to spend a few minutes using two new iPhone apps, iMovie and iBooks. Given just how much processing power is required to edit video, iMovie's performance was impressive. It felt very smooth. And the iMovie interface seems, if anything, more suited for the iPhone's touch interface than for the Mac interface. Trimming a clip is a simple as tapping on it and dragging a pin right or left. Now you can shoot your kid's dance recital, edit it together, and ship it out to friends and relatives before the dance teacher has finished her thank-yous at the end of the night.
iBooks on the iPhone 4 takes great advantage of the new phone's high-resolution screen. Text is amazingly crisp. When we tried to flip over into PDF view, we did notice that there were some pauses when zooming in to a large PDF document. But once the zoomed-in portions of the PDF appeared, they were immaculately rendered.

Coming soon
Now the wait begins. But at least it's not a long one: Apple will be taking pre-orders for the iPhone 4 in seven days, and shipping it in 16. By the time July rolls around, you won't need to rely on us to answer your questions about this new direction for Apple's iPhone line--you'll be able to find out yourself. In the meantime, though, we'd be happy to answer anything we can on the topic.