What we know about the iPhone 4G
All the facts and rumours about the latest iPhone hardware
The latest iteration of the iPhone, the successor to the 3GS which is rumoured to be announced this June, has had something of an early coming out party.
An Apple software engineer left it on a bar stool in Redwood City, someone found it and realised it was the new iPhone, Gizmodo bought it for $5,000, the gadget blog opened it up and poked around inside, and now Apple wants it back.
You can read our extensive coverage of the entire saga at the following links. Act 1: Engadget gets the photos. Act 2: Gizmodo gets the phone. Act 3: Apple wants it back.
All up to speed? Good. So if this really is the next iPhone, what can we expect to see on Steve Jobs's Keynote slides this June? It's worth taking it with a pinch of salt, of course, because even if the phone is real it's still a prototype device and might not accurately represent the final hardware.
But with that caveat well and truly out there, here's everything we know about the iPhone 4G.
It's slimmer, heavier and squarer, and has a flat back
Right off the bat, the first thing to notice about the iPhone 4G is the aesthetic departure it's taken from the iPhone 3GS. Gone is the rounded, tapered back, instead replaced with two almost indentical faces, separated by a thick aluminium trim.
But while this new iPhone looks out of place in the current iPhone and iPod touch line-up, Gizmodo points out that perhaps it's Apple's current mobile devices that are the odd ones out, writing that the 3GS is "out of place compared to the hard edges and Dieter-Ramish utilitarianism of the iMac and the iPad."
The phone measures 4.50 x 2.31 x 0.37-inches, making it slightly smaller than the 3GS in every dimension - especially depth, where this new iPhone is a signficant 0.1 inch slimmer. It's also a little heavier, weighing in at 140 grams, about 3 grams more hefty than the 3GS.
That's probably on account of the battery, which Gizmodo reports is a good 16 per cent larger than the 3GS's lithium ion. But that doesn't affect the iPhone's dimensions, as Gizmodo writes that the "internal components are shrunken, miniaturised and reduced to make room for the larger battery."
It also has a completely flat back, made of glass, ceramic or shiny plastic which should help mobile signals escape easier, as Daring Fireball dug up in a 2006 Apple patent.
Gizmodo, Daring Fireball, Apple Patent
It's got a smaller screen, but a higher resolution display
The Gizmodo team can't see anything on the display, as Apple has remotely killed the device via MobileMe, but the "Connect to iTunes" screen is apparently much higher quality than the same screen on the 3GS.
This corroborates a rumour supplied by Daring Fireball's John Gruber, who says the iPhone 4G will be able to kick out a 960x640 resolution display.
The gadget blog says it also packs a "slightly smaller screen than the 3GS", but doesn't expand on exactly how much smaller it is.
It uses a micro-SIM
Much like the iPad, the iPhone 4G will ditch the standard Mini-SIM card size for the new micro-SIM cards. They're about ten millimetres shorter, and three millimetres narrower than the typical Mini-SIM cards we're used to.
Don't worry about UK mobile companies lagging behind. Engadget reports that both O2 and Orange will support the micro-SIM for the iPad launch next month.
Vodafone definitely isn't far behind, especially with this sneaky TwitPic of a Vodafone branded micro-SIM, uploaded by @VodafoneUK.
Gizmodo, Engadget, Twitpic It has separated buttons and a secondary mic
Look around the iPhone 4G's trim and you'll spot all the usual iPhone buttons and features: a 'lock' button and headphone jack up top, a 'mute' button on the side, and a microphone on the bottom.
But you'll also find that the volume control has changed from a single, long button to two separate, round buttons. The SIM card slot has moved around to the side and there's a second microphone on the top, which Gizmodo reckons is for noise cancelling.
It's got a larger camera on the back, and a new one on the front
The iPhone still has a camera on the back, but now it has flash and the lens is noticeably bigger than on the 3GS.
More importantly, though, it now sports a front facing camera on the face of the iPhone, next to the speaker. Presumably for video chat, this is one of the most often requested features of the iPhone.
Who knows what it could mean for gaming. The DSi, for example, has a front facing camera and has used it for a number of interesting gimmicks from Wario Ware Snapped to the upcoming Earthworm Jim.
It will use the iPad's A4-family CPU
Forget the ARM CPU that the 3GS sports, industry sources tell FoneHome that the iPhone 4G will sport an A4 processor, just like the iPad does.
Daring Fireball's John Gruber collaborated this back when he slated the Wall Street Journal's iPhone 4G rumours.
"They have no actual details of the next-generation iPhone," Gruber says, "Not the A4-family CPU system-on-a-chip, not the 960 × 640 double-resolution display. Not the second front-facing camera. Not even the third-party multitasking in iPhone OS 4."
Seeing as he was right about just about everything else (we'll have to wait and see on the exact resolution of the display), he's probably bang on with the new processor.
This means a more powerful device, especially one capable of playing 720p video, which would go nicely with that new, high resolution screen.
It might have larger storage memory
Gizmodo says it doesn't know the exact size of the iPhone 4G's storage, writing "on the back of the phone, it said it was XX GB, but since we were unable to get the phone to a running state, we couldn't see exactly how large it was."
But Engadget writes that is has "80GB of storage". Take that with a grain of salt though, because even though Gizmodo has stripped the device apart and looked at every component, the website doesn't have a clue how big the device's storage is.
Gizmodo, Engadget