WWDC: Apple Announces iPhone 4, Featuring Gyroscope

Apple has officially unveiled its fourth major iPhone model, the iPhone 4, outfitting it with the iPad's A4 processor, adding a gyroscope, and quadrupling past iPhones' pixel resolution. "There are well over 100 new features," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs during the company's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, attended by Gamasutra. "Stop me if you've already seen this," he added, referencing a widely-publicized incident in which consumer blog Gizmodo acquired and revealed a near-final version of the device. The device's gyroscope detects pitch, roll, yaw for six-axis motion sensing, featuring APIs by CoreMotion. "It's perfect for gaming, and one of the reasons it's perfect is that it's built into every iPhone 4," said Jobs. The new "retina display" screen has a total resoltuion of 960 by 640, providing four times the pixels of the existing iPhones' 480 by 320 screens in the same 3.5-inch screen size as the iPhone 3GS. As a result, it can render text and other scalable UI elements in existing iPhone apps at higher resolution. Unlike previous iPhones, the new model has glass on both the front and the back, with steel on the device's "spine." Also included are two cameras: a flash-equipped primary camera and a secondary front-facing camera that will be available for video conferencing as well as other developer-determined uses. The primary camera can capture 720p video at 30 frames per second. "This is really hot," Jobs said of the device. "It is one of the most beautiful designs you've ever seen. This is beyond a doubt the most precise thing, one of the most beautiful things we've ever made." "When you hold this in your hands it's unbelievable," he added. "I don’t think there’s another consumer product like this," Jobs also said. Photo: Gizmodo