Apple unveiled a fourth generation of its iPhone, called the iPhone 4, on Monday, containing an additional camera and a gyroscope that may unlock new uses for the device.
Steven P. Jobs, chief executive of the company, introduced a new version of its hit phone during a presentation at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, a weeklong meeting of software developers.
“It is the thinnest smartphone on the planet,” he said of the 9.3-millimeter-thick phone. The device uses the steel frame around the phone as an antenna and has a higher resolution screen and a gyroscope that Apple expects game makers will use. The revamped phone has another first for Apple’s smartphone: a front-facing camera that could be used for video chatting and Web conferencing. The phone has a 5-megapixel camera that also shoots high-definition video. The iPhone 4 also has a larger and more powerful battery .
The latest phone is a sharp departure from the rounded design that all three previous iPhones shared. The new device replaces the standard curves with an angular, square-shaped design.
Apple’s next-generation phone will also run faster than previous models, thanks to the use of the same A4 chip being used in Apple’s tablet computer, the iPad.
The new iPhone 4 will be available June 24 in Apple’s standard black-and-white cases and is priced at $199 for the 16-gigabyte version and $299 for the 32-gigabyte version.
On stage, Mr. Jobs seemed fiercely determined to impress the audience, possibly in an effort to drum up enthusiasm for features and improvements that were revealedin April by Gizmodo, a technology blog.
Much of Apple’s presentation was dedicated to demonstrating how the new iPhone would work with the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, now called iOS 4, which will be made available free to current iPhone owners. The software will have more than 100 new features, including capabilities for multitasking, running location applications in the background, a gaming platform called Games Center, an iBooks reader and a new universal e-mail inbox.
Mr. Jobs said users of the iBooks software would be able to download books to an iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch at no extra charge. The system will wirelessly synchronize all notes and bookmarks, so someone could start reading a book at home on the iPad and continue on the road with the iPhone. Amazon does something similar with its Kindle and related apps.
The Apple software also allows a person to make annotations to the books. It will also read PDFs, a popular document format.
Mr. Jobs did not announce that any other carrier in the United States would offer the phone, as some news outlets had speculated. AT&T is Apple’s exclusive carrier.
AT&T recently announced that the company would no longer offer its customers unlimited data access, which the carrier previously offered for $30 each month. Beginning Monday, new customers can either pay $15 a month for 200 megabytes or $25 for 2 gigabytes.
