Experts Dial in on Apple's New iPhone 4

Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed a souped up fourth generation iPhone Monday with multitasking abilities, a bigger battery and that lets users shoot and edit HD videos, among 100 new features.

“This is beyond a doubt one of the most precise and beautiful things we've ever made," Jobs said in his presentation -- a unveiling that featured a Wi-Fi snafu that flustered the Apple chief and prompted laughs from the audience and a call of "Verizon!" from one person in a obvious crack at AT&T's much maligned  wireless service.

But when the iPhone 4 rolls out on June 24th in the U.S., will it live up to Jobs' hype and crush the competition? What about the device’s implications, for say, your love life? Count on the blogosphere to weigh-in.

  • “Apple has elevated the iPhone brand again and forestalled rivals’ ability to claim parity,” concludes ZD Net’s Larry Dignan. Jobs made “many subtle references that indicated that the iPhone was a Mercedes or BMW and the other rivals had more common sedans," he writes. “Sure, there are plenty of tech specs to ponder, but Apple is selling a different vibe and a higher calling.”
     
  • Not so fast, argues Business Insider’s Dan Frommer. While Frommer praises the iPhone’s new display, camera and extended battery life, he doesn’t expect the iPhone to halt Google’s Android surge. “Steve Jobs made the iPhone better today, but he didn't make Android worse,” he writes. Frommer cites “increasingly nifty” Android platform features like music streaming from your computer to phone and “Google calendar/mail sync stuff.”
     
  • Speaking of Android phones, the HTC Evo leads the pack, notes Wired’s Priya Ganapati. “The Evo has one big advantage that Apple can’t beat. It runs on Sprint’s 4G network, while the iPhone is stuck on AT&T’s 3G service,” Ganapati writes. The Evo’s Achilles heel: Sprint 4G is not available in major cities including San Francisco and New York.
     
  • PC World’s Daniel Ionescu offers a side-by-side comparison of the iPhone 4 with a handful of its strongest competitors in “an increasingly crowded and confusing smartphone market.” “Several Google Android competitors launched every month, and Microsoft and BlackBerry playing catch-up with their own offerings,” he writes.
     
  • The new iPhone doesn’t just threaten to steal business from other mobile phone companies, writes Nat Worden for The Wall Street Journal. Apple's iAd platform, which is being built into the iPhone 4, challenges old media too. “The rise of digital advertising already has weighed heavily on traditional media businesses--such as publishing, radio and television--and the nascent mobile market is expected to bring a new wave of upheaval as devices like Apple's iPhone and iPad proliferate,” Worden writes.
     
  • Over at tech blog Gizmodo, “relationship expert” Debby Herbenick breaks down seven ways the phone can affect your, ahem, sex life. Improved battery life and high-resolution “retina” display have their pros and cons, Herbenick writes. “There may be more pressure on you to stay on the phone and talk and talk and talk,” she writes. And remember -- those sexy photos will now include blemishes and wrinkles. “FaceTime – the new iPhone video chat system – will be a game-changer in and of itself.”
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