and there you have it, the iPhone 4

Well, unlike most, I woke at 2.45 to entertain myself with a 3am keynote speech from Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple.  It went a little over an hour and a half, but was packed with some great demos.

As I wrote yesterday there was much known about this new phone, but some not so clear.  I was pleased to see the processor, battery life and screen all get much needed revamp.  These things should put them on par with some of the contenders in the smartphone race such as HTC.

more thoughts follow…

Puzzling though was Steve Jobs’ “one more thing….” at the end of the Keynote.  A feature on Video calling.  I’ve not been one to complain about multi-tasking and all those things, because frankly, I think the iPhone has always done exactly what it was intended to do.  It’s more for the ‘tech heads’ who feel how behind the device ‘seems’ when it’s side by side with something like the HTC desire.

So, Video calling.  That’s been around for years, and years, and years.  I can remember in 2007/8 testing phones with Video calling.  Great fun, chatting to my Son while I was at work.

But I never used it in ‘real life’.  It was and still is in my opinion a Gimmick.

That said, Skype has proven how powerful Video calling can be.  Seeing friends and family around the world is powerful.

Problem is, the iPhone 4 will only allow this when you are connected via WiFi and are calling another person with an iPhone 4!

A few things we can hope for:

1/ The ‘front facing camera’ API (programming code that allows people to use it when making apps) is opened up, and the likes of Skype get a foot in the door there

2/ When Apple realises that the US is a beast of it’s own when it comes to Telco’s, perhaps the likes of Telstra, Optus and Vodafone will be able to ‘enable’ NORMAL video calling via the iPhone.  A quick seach on Telstra’s own website for a phone “any brand” with “video calling” shows 21 available handsets.  I mean please, how embarrassing will this look.

Is it just me, or are we way ahead of the states in this regard.

So, bring it on, iPhone 4 – I’ll be very much looking forward to it, the speed of the iPhone 3G I have has been lacking of late, and I think thats due to the app overload – another good reason why Multi-tasking had to wait!