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Above is my first attempt at creating something in the new iMovie app for the iPhone. It was shot and edited completely ON the iPhone. This is a testament to the power of the backlit sensor. Although only 5 megapixels (we say that like its VGA), as opposed to it’s rival EVO 8 megapixel.. the quality is superb in low lit situation, both video and still image.

Editing on this phone was a breeze, very responsive and didn’t slow down one bit. Amazingly, it didn’t drain my battery either! The basic necessities are there, and by no means is this a replacement for Final Cut Pro. Overall, I’m thoroughly impressed.

When you’re ready to export, you have 3 options: Medium -360p, Large -540p and HD -720p, all in the .mov QuickTime format. The clip quickly renders and saves to your photo album. The only downside, when exporting directly to YouTube from your Photos on the iPhone, the quality is degraded. In order to maintain quality, I had to sync my phone with iPhoto and export the file from the laptop onto YouTube.com. No biggy, since the sync/file transfer occurs seamlessly.

Other things that I didn’t really touch base on:

Depending on how you use your device, results do vary… however in my case, the EVO’s battery life depleted pretty fast. I would use the device just as I did on the iPhone 1st gen and 3G… I do understand that the battery is removable (and therefore you could possible buy another battery for a second charge) and there are such things as task killers/managers, but one shouldn’t have to take these measures to get a full day’s worth of use. It also comes with the territory of having a large screen to power…however, I believe that there is still room for power management improvement! The touted “true multitasking” is probably the biggest contributor to battery depletion.  It is fluid and does a really good job at juggling all your running apps…BUT,  this is the very reason why Apple didn’t employ multi-tasking until they came up with a better way of multitasking.

“Apple claims their multitasking will save battery life and resources, unlike the competition. But how?

The reason is simple: This is not 100% true multitasking. Not in the sense that developers define it: All system resources are available to all applications, with the system assuming the role of a traffic controller, giving preference to some tasks and less preference to others as needed.

Free-for-all multitasking will consume way too many resources, especially memory. This will make the system choke, given the limited memory available in these devices. The CPU would also be taxed, and it would deplete the battery life quicker while slowing down applications running on the foreground.

Apple’s method, however, is quite clever: Basically, it allows you to pause applications—like you can pause them in any UNIX-based operating system, while enabling some special services to allow some types of tasks—like receiving calls or playing music—to run on the background.”

Click here to read Gizmodo’s well put explanation in full.

Flash:  Having had a phone (iPhone) that didn’t support Flash and then owning one that did (Evo), I now see why Apple thinks it’s unnecessary.  a) Flash, at best, loaded very slowly b) When it came to ads, side-bar Advertisements loaded well (how annoying) c) touch interface and Flash… not very applicable.

Apple: Better battery performance, the battery is about two-thirds of the phone’s innards.  Just the perfect size, not too small, not enormously big in your hand.  The OS seems consistent across the board. Retina Display. SUPER CLEAR.

Small things on the EVO: No native screen capture, no native notepad, only the power button wakes the screen. Volume rocker does not wake the screen…and lastly, for such a large screen, the spacebar in the keypad was very small. My sentences would.look.like.this.,hitting.the.period.instead. of spacebar.

EDIT: Here’s the real McCoy

With that said, it looks like it has now become:

So 4.0 has tons of new features to come, most notable is the Multitasking and Folders.  In a nutshell: You can now (finally) switch between Apps via a sliding task manager that pops up below the dock; very elegant and unlike any other task manager on any cellphone unit.  Folders will now enable you to organize/consolidate your icons by category into groups represented by a single icons.

Now, to the point of this post.  I was watching the keynote that Jobs held today at Cupertino and watched it to the very end.  The last segment of the keynote presentation was probably the most intriguing for me, and that was the introduction of iAd… yes.. as in iAdvertisement.

Jobs almost lost me on this one, as my initial reaction was “?”, “why!?”, and “uhhh… wtf?!”.  After giving Jobs a chance to fully explain, I was sold.  With the iPhone, not only has Apple captured the telecom market,create and nuture a solid app market/industry via the App Store, drive iTunes sales via the iPhone, introduce iBooks (a book store now with 4.0)… he is now taking a share out of the advertising industry.

At first, it may sound like Jobs is in over his head and over capitalizing on almost EVERYTHING.  But watch the video… you’ll see that he’s re-innovated the way advertising has been done both online and within apps.

The function of the ads in the first place, is to help generate funding for the developers to keep them going and to help keep free apps, well… free.  The only thing is, those apps are annoying, lame and static.  They’re in the way.  We ignore them and want to continue on with our app usage.  Furthermore, even if we were interested in the ad, we are more inclined to either check it out later or choose not to click on it at all, as it will cause alot of opening and closing and switching back and forth between apps.  This dynamic makes for the ad impressions to be inefficient and ineffective.  Ineffective ads make little to no incentive for advertisers to continue advertising with the app developer.

This is where Apple’s innovation kicks in.  They’ve built iAd into the OS so that it is native and will display advertising in a way we have not seen before.  Super interactive without having to leave the app that you are currently in.  The possibilities are endless, it’s almost as if you have an app within an app.  Keep in mind, this does not mean your phone will be laced with commercials and advertisements all over; this is feature  that is available for developers to add within the apps they choose to.  The ads lay at the top or bottom of each screen in a small banner, just as they have been in the past in other apps that you might have downloaded.

With this being said, Apple is offering 60% of the ad revenue back to the developer.  It really seems like a win win situation for all parties:  Advertisers are now capable of reaching more of their potential markets with new and improved interactive ads, giving incentive to advertise with developers.  Developers can potentially profit and maintain their projects/free apps. Lastly,  Apple now has a hand in the advertising market share. Genius.

The “i” in all of their products must mean “innovation”.

HTC has made 2 handsets that have peaked my interest.  The Nexus One and the HTC HD2.  Hardware specs on both phones have caught my attention, as they both are running at 1GHz.  People! Some computers don’t even run at that speed (including yours! jk.)  Form factor and hardware are very sleek.  Most especially on the HTC HD2, the screen is 4.3 inches, roughly 1 inch bigger than the iPhone.  In terms of phones…relatively speaking, that’s a big difference in size– It’s HUGE! It’s also thin as a pencil, which is quite impressive!

The only thing that has me in a bind is the Operating Systems on both of the phones. Nexus One- I’ve never used Android, and my first (biased) impression of it reads, “iPhone’s ugly cousin”.  Despite that biased and naive notion, I’m pretty sure it’s solid. I have faith in Google and what they do.  So with that said, I think I could become aquatinted with the Android OS.  Secondly, on the HTC HD2, it is loaded with WindowsMobile 6.5 (which is a completely horrible step backwards into 1999).  According to reports that I’ve read, the phone will not be loaded nor support Windows Mobile 7.0 (please inform me if this is incorrect).  In attempt to offset the lameless of WinMo 6.5, HTC has developed what’s called “HTC Sense”, a User Interface (UI) to run ontop of windows to give it a more user friendly and sleek interface.  I tried it out myself at the T-Mobile store, and although it was pretty to the eyes, it felt (operated) a bit clunky, trying harder than it should.  Despite the awesome hardware specs, the HTC HD2 looks to be stuck in a OS time warp.  I toyed with the idea that, if I could possibly get accustomed to the Android OS, then I could maybe port that OS onto the HTC HD2?  Reading forums, it looks like this idea is also not yet possible (again, please inform me if you know otherwise!).

As I interacted with my iPhone all day, I would look at it and realize how much cleaner the phone is as a whole compared to anything out there… The platform is very solid. The UI is well uniformed.  The Apps are top notch.  The touch screen is superior to any other phone on the market…but performance has just slowed down.  A bigger screen would be nice. A faster processor would also be nice.  At the end of the day, I keep torturing myself with the idea of compromise. Do I keep the slow hardware with excellent OS and software? Do I upgrade to sweet hardware specs with a shoddy OS?

All this contemplating and I find this: iPhone 4G announcement TOMORROW, was this just coincidence , or did the Apple heavens descend upon me providing me ultimate salvation, leading me not into temptation?  Just as I was on the verge of leaving the iPhone in all of it’s glory, el Jobs comes in on a white horse to deliver the good news.  If the rumors are correct, then this iPhone 4.0 and iPhone HD look pretty promising…

What are your thoughts.  What are your suggestions?  To those who have used any of the mentioned devices and/or Operating Systems… give me some insight! Thanks!