The context of this story

Year: 2010
Products: iPhone

iPhone 4 and the guy who lost it

Spring 2010 is coming, and users are excited. Apple is sure to release a new version of the iPhone, and speculation about what it will contain and what it will look like is growing. Websites focused on Apple rumors are filling up with more or less fake images of individual components and the entire new phone, which will undoubtedly be called the iPhone 4. But this time, the new iPhone will be less of a surprise to the world at its official launch than Apple intended. Despite all the secrecy surrounding the development of the new phone, this time everything will turn out differently.

Gray Powell is a software engineer at Apple, responsible for developing software for telephony on the iOS platform. When he goes out with friends to a bar in Redwood City, California, on March 18, 2011, he has no idea how much his life is about to change. His last Facebook post, published from his iPhone, reads, “I slightly underestimated the power of German beer,” which probably means that he is leaving the bar in good spirits. Unfortunately for him, without his iPhone, which he forgot on the table in all the excitement. And it wasn’t just any iPhone, but a prototype of a new model.

One of his fellow diners picks up the phone from the table, but doesn’t know who it belongs to. In the morning, he turns on the phone and notices a name in the Facebook app that means nothing to him; he doesn’t know Powell personally. Then he notices that the phone has a very different interface than a regular iPhone, and when he removes the rubber protective case resembling the 3GS model, he notices that the phone looks completely different. Then the information about how the prototype of the new iPhone got to the Gizmodo editorial office differs. According to some, Gizmodo bought it for $5,000, while according to others, the new owner gave it to a tech-savvy friend at Gizmodo when he realized that the iPhone had been remotely locked and he had no way of finding the owner’s contact information, so he wanted his friend to contact him. Either way, Gizmodo got exclusive material about a phone that was not due to hit the market for several months and was the most anticipated mobile phone in the world, and they exploited it to the full.

Apple, however, took harsh action. It demanded the phone back, and when Gizmodo’s editor-in-chief wanted to speculate about some kind of reward in the form of premium information, Apple’s lawyers hit Gizmodo hard, and the matter culminated in police searches of the computer of the editor responsible for processing information about the new iPhone for Gizmodo. At that time, however, images of the new phone and the most detailed technical specifications that could be deduced from the phone, which could no longer be turned on, were circulating all over the internet.

Surprisingly, Gray Powell continues to work at Apple, even though he broke virtually every rule that the extremely secretive Apple has regarding the security of device prototypes. However, he is now one of Apple’s best-known software engineers—whose names and achievements are otherwise not widely publicized—although the description associated with his name is perhaps not so appealing: “the guy who lost the new iPhone[.”]{dir=”rtl”} T-shirts describing this story have even appeared on the market, but it is doubtful that Gray Powell would welcome his newfound fame.

Despite this incident, the presentation of the new iPhone 4 on June 7, 2010, is once again packed, and if Steve Jobs had not already introduced a new tablet called the iPad earlier this year (which we will discuss separately), it would be the most anticipated event of the year.

The new iPhone 4 is a fundamental transformation of the iPhone concept. First and foremost, it has a completely redesigned look: it is now a glass sandwich reinforced with a metal frame, in which the antenna is integrated. Indeed, the phone has front and rear panels made of extremely durable glass, but as users will later discover, even this cannot withstand all falls. Steve Jobs described the antenna integrated into the frame as a great and unique idea, only to later learn that it was neither unique nor great, and also why no one else had produced it. That’s when the Antennagate scandal broke out. At this point, however, the solution is dazzling, beautiful, and sets the iPhone 4 apart from all other phones on the market. What’s more, at the time of sale, it is truly the thinnest mobile phone, and Jobs does not fail to emphasize this.

The feeling of exclusivity is also emphasized by the “retina display” – a display with an extreme resolution of 960 x 640 pixels on a given diagonal of 3.5 inches. So why a retina display, a display with retinal resolution? Jobs explained that at the normal distance between the display and the eye, a higher resolution would not make sense because the retina would not be able to recognize it. Opticians later explained that there is still some reserve, but not much, so Jobs was practically right.

Image: iPhone 4

The new iPhone is equipped with a fast Apple A4 processor, which Apple produces itself. Apple recently acquired Intrinsity, a company specializing in the development of ARM processors (officially confirmed on April 27, 2010), and this is the result of that acquisition. The processor can be clocked at up to 1 GHz, but Apple underclocks it to a still impressive 800 MHz for battery life. The operating memory is again doubled to 512 MB eDRAM. All this should please game developers and, ultimately, gamers: the iPhone is becoming the most widely used portable gaming platform, surpassing both Nintendo and Playstation. Apple will continue to win the hearts of gamers with its performance, realistic graphics, and support for graphics features.

Another new feature designed to improve the iPhone’s usability, particularly in games, but also to expand its control options in general, is a gyroscope, a device used to accurately determine the iPhone’s movement along all three axes. Previous models used an acceleration sensor for the same purpose, but it did not achieve the accuracy Apple required. The three-axis gyroscope now allows the iPhone 4 not only to detect how it is tilted, but also where and how it is moving in space, making it possible to control games very finely, even with complex movements and gestures.

Other user features are also being added. The new camera has 5 megapixels and the ability to shoot video in HD resolution of 720 true image lines. And if you want to make a video call in the new FaceTime mode, there is also a camera lens on the front panel.

The business strategy was also unusual. Until now, Apple had withdrawn older models when launching new ones. Now it has left them as cheaper alternatives, with the iPhone 3GS continuing to be sold and supported as a cheaper alternative to the iPhone 4S.

The new technology in the phone would be useless if Apple had not come up with software to support it. With the launch of the iPhone 4 comes a new version of iOS 4, bringing the most anticipated feature: multitasking for third-party applications.

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