Get ready, Apple addicts — the long-anticipated iPhone 4 made its debut yesterday at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
Thinner, chock full of new goodies and with a stronger battery, the new smartphone will hit store shelves June 24.
It will have new features like a higher-resolution screen and a front-facing camera for video conferencing.
“This is, beyond a doubt, one of the most precise things we have ever made,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs declared at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Potential buyers will still have go through AT&T — whose near-capacity networks are often criticized — and must sign two-year contracts with the carrier to get the 16 gig version for $199 or 32 gig version for $299.
Plus, new subscribers are no longer eligible for AT&T’s unlimited data-usage plan.
Despite rumors from earlier this year, no iPhone will be available on Verizon.
The first difference that users will notice with the iPhone 4 is its ultra-thin 9.33 millimeter profile — 24 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS.
“It’s incredibly sexy,” gushed Joshua Topolsy, a blogger for the tech Web site Engadget. “We’ll hand it to Apple, the phone is so thin, it’s kind of mind-boggling.”
The regular camera gets an upgrade from 3 megapixels to 5 megapixels along with zoom, an LED flash and high-quality video recording.
Then there’s the front-facing camera for its much-hyped FaceTime feature that allows users to video chat with other iPhone 4 users.
The images over the video chat will be super sharp with the phone’s “retina display” — which provides 326 pixels per square inch that Jobs boasted was indistinguishable from “text in a fine-printed book.”
“I am in complete awe,” wrote Ryan Block, a co-founder of another tech Web site, gdgt.
Apple also says phone calls will be clearer thanks to a second microphone that cancels outside noise.
There was, however, an embarrassing moment at yesterday’s conference when Jobs — dressed in his trademark black shirt and jeans — was unable to access the Internet with the phone because too many audience members were already online.
Jobs said there are now 225,000 different applications, or apps, for sale on the iTunes Store, including a just-announced Netflix app to watch movies and the popular game Farmville.
The new phone will run Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS4, and owners of previous-generation iPhones can download it on June 21.
Last year’s iPhone 3GS will still be sold at the reduced price of $99.