I’m not sure how this keeps happening. The first year I waited at a mall for 5 hours to get the original iPhone.
The following year my friend Mark Rein convinced me to see a midnight showing of Hellboy II and then wait outside of an AT&T store all night to get the iPhone 3G. You’d think I’d learn by the third year but once more I was in line at the mall hours before the Apple store opened to get the 3GS. This year I thought it would be different. Apple offered free overnight shipping to anyone who wanted to pre-order the iPhone 4. Figuring everyone would go that route I decided to beat the FedEx trucks and just show up at the mall at 6AM. I’d be in and out in a little over an hour, which would give me a head start on battery life testing on Apple’s 4th generation iPhone.

I promise that not all of my decisions play out this poorly. Those who pre-ordered the 4 and requested overnight delivery got their phones early and my one hour wait turned into six hours at the mall, for the fourth year in a row.

Apple’s iPhone 4 with Bumper Case

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Steve gets up on stage, proclaims the iPhone 4 to be the biggest introduction since the original iPhone, and the public flocks to Apple stores to fork over $200 on day one and around $2500 over the course of two years for the privilege. But this isn’t 2007. Apple has real competitors in the smartphone space. Android phones have grown in features, polish and popularity. Even Palm entered the race with a competant offering, and Microsoft isn’t far behind. It’s easy to start a revolution when everyone else is doing the wrong thing, but what about when more companies actually get it? Was Steve justified in his excitement over the 4? That’s what we’re here to find out today.

Straight on it looks like just another iPhone. You get the black face with a shiny trim. From the side it is the redesign that Apple has needed for a while now. It’s not revolutionary but it’s the type of improvement that makes its predecessor feel old. And that’s exactly what this does. Have a look for yourself:

iPhone 4 (left) vs. iPhone 3GS (right)

The straight lines, smaller dimensions and lack of unnecessary bulk make the 3GS feel like a car from the 90s, unnecessarily curvy. The styling is now so much more compact. Compared to the iPhone 3GS the 4 is around 5% narrower (but no more difficult to type on) and nearly 25% thinner. It even makes the Nexus One look dated:

The iPhone 4 is slightly heavier than the 3GS (4.8oz vs. 4.7oz). You feel the added weight but I wouldn’t call it heavy. The front and the back of the iPhone 4 are both made out of glass, and they protrude beyond the stainless steel band that wraps around the phone (more on this controversial decision later). While this gives the 4 an amazing finish, it also makes carrying the phone nerve racking. Coupled with the smaller, more dense form factor I’m now deathly afraid of dropping and shattering this thing. Apple has done a lot to reinforce the glass, however there have been enough reports already of shattered iPhone 4s for me not to feel very safe. Only Apple would think to make the two surfaces most likely to hit something out of glass. It’s like making mouse traps out of cheese, something bad is bound to happen.

iPhone 4 (left) vs. iPhone 3GS (right)

The physical buttons (but not their layout) have changed on the 4. The ringer switch has shorter travel and feels sturdier as a result. The volume rocker has been replaced by discrete volume up/down buttons, also very sturdy in feel. The power/lock button is also now made out of stainless steel. Only the home button remains unchanged, although it does seem to make a deeper click when you use it.

The speaker moved to behind the right grill at the bottom of the phone instead of the left. The dock connector thankfully remained unchanged. It looks like Apple is committed to maintaining this connector until it makes the jump to something wireless (or optical?).

The back of the phone is pretty. Apple broke with tradition and finally included a single LED flash on the phone. The flash comes on in low light conditions and is enough to take shots in total darkness.

The camera has been upgraded to a low noise 5MP sensor. It can shoot stills at up to 2592 x 1936 or video at 1280 x 720 @ 30 fps. We’ll go into greater detail on its quality in the camera section. The iPhone 4 also adds a front facing camera capable of shooting both photos and video at 640 x 480.

Apple quotes contrast ratio as 1000:1, in our measurements we got very close (952:1). A significant improvement over the 188:1 ratio of the 3GS. Apple achieved this by both dropping black levels and increasing the white levels on the display. Improving both is always fine by me.

Internally the iPhone 4 uses Apple’s new A4 SoC, built around an ARM Cortex A8 CPU and a PowerVR SGX GPU. The new SoC is built on a 45nm process and features 512MB of memory on the package. Apple hasn’t made CPU clock speed public, but I’m guessing around 800MHz compared to the iPad’s 1GHz for reasons you’ll see later. GPU clock speed is unknown as well. Having more memory on package is an interesting move by Apple as it makes the iPhone 4 better suited for multitasking compared to the iPad. Also implying that shortly after the iPad gets multitasking it’ll be updated to a version with more memory as well.

The iPhone now has an gyroscope as well the rotation sensors of its predecessors. Developers are given full access to the gyroscope making the iPhone 4 capable of becoming a very expensive Wii-mote.
Physical Comparison
Apple iPhone 4 Apple iPhone 3GS HTC EVO 4G (Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8650) HTC Droid Incredible (Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8650) Google Nexus One (Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250)
Height 115.2 mm (4.5″) 115 mm (4.5″) 121.9 mm (4.8″) 117.5 mm (4.63″) 119 mm (4.7″)
Width 58.6 mm (2.31″) 62.1 mm (2.44″) 66.0 mm (2.6″) 58.5 mm (2.30″) 59.8 mm (2.35″)
Depth 9.3 mm ( 0.37″) 12.3 mm (0.48″) 12.7 mm (0.5″) 11.9 mm (0.47″) 11.5 mm (0.45″)
Weight 137 g (4.8 oz) 133 g (4.7 oz) 170 g (6.0 oz) 130 g (4.6 oz) 130 g (4.6 oz)
CPU Apple A4 @ ~800MHz Apple/Samsung A3 @ 600MHz Qualcomm Scorpion @ 1GHz Qualcomm Scorpion @ 1GHz Qualcomm Scorpion @ 1GHz
GPU PowerVR SGX 535 PowerVR SGX 535 Adreno 200 Adreno 200 Adreno 200
RAM 512MB LPDDR1 (?) 256MB LPDDR1 512MB LPDDR1 512MB LPDDR1 512MB LPDDR1
NAND 16GB or 32GB integrated 16 or 32GB integrated 8GB micro SD 8GB micro SD micro SD
Camera 5MP with LED Flash + Front Facing Camera 3MP 8MP with dual LED Flash + Front Facing Camera 8MP with LED Flash 5MP with LED Flash
Screen 3.5″ 640 x 960 LED backlit LCD 3.5″ 320 x 480 4.3″ 480 x 800 3.7″ 480 x 800 AMOLED 3.7″ 480 x 800 AMOLED
Battery Integrated 5.254Whr Integrated 4.51Whr Removable 5.5Whr Removable 4.81 Whr Removable 5.18 Whr

The iPhone 4’s logic board shrinks in size thanks to further component integration, making room for a much larger battery. The 5.25Whr battery in the iPhone 4 is a 16% increase from what was in the 3GS, and 95% of what HTC put in the EVO 4G. While raw performance improved, it’s clear that Apple’s focus this time around was battery life. Again, we’ll dive into specifics later in the review.

Moving back outside Apple surrounded the phone with a stainless steel band. This band doubles as the 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth antennas. And if you hadn’t noticed, it also moonlights as a giant elephant. Let’s talk about it.

I’m convinced that there’s no perfect mobile form factor. You can make arguments in favor of and against everything from the smartphone and tablet to 17″ desktop replacement notebooks.
There’s simply a time and a place for everything.

Sometimes you don’t need to do a lot but want to be able to couch around and browse the web on a tablet. Other times you need to do actual work but don’t need a ton of CPU horsepower; that puts you into 13-inch notebook territory.

For even more productive beings there are larger 15 and 16-inch systems. And given how thin the system is, it’s also not hard to make an argument for Apple’s 17-inch MacBook Pro. You get a desktop-like screen resolution and mainstream desktop performance.

It’s like having a set of screwdrivers. You may use some more often than others but having the entire set helps. Unfortunately having a set of notebooks and mobile devices isn’t really an option for most. Inevitably you have to choose. And for portability, that choice often leads you to something a bit larger than a netbook for performance, but small enough to comfortably carry around.

For Apple users this portable sweetspot is the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Apple’s 2010 13-inch (left) vs. 15-inch MacBook Pro (right)

I’ve praised the 2010 15-inch MacBook Pro as being the one to get thanks to its combination of performance and battery life. When Apple made its 2010 upgrade public however, the 13-inch model was somewhat neglected. It got a faster GPU and bigger battery, but only a mild CPU bump. Priced at $1199 you get a 4.5 lbs aluminum unibody chassis, a 13.3″ display and a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. Keeping up with recent tradition, a NVIDIA GeForce 320M chipset is also under the hoo..err, keyboard. While the rest of the MacBook Pro lineup got shiny new Core i5 and i7 processors (dual core + Hyper Threading), the new 13-inch is stuck with an older Core 2 Duo.

On the bright side, Apple finally outfitted the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a sufficient amount of memory: 4GB. It’s still spread out over two DIMMs (making upgrading more expensive than it should be), but it’s enough to get you going. I’d say that given the usage model for most notebooks, 4GB should be plenty with OS X 10.6.

The 13-inch MBP comes with all the ports the 15-inch model has, minus dedicated line in/out. You get GigE, FireWire 800, mini DisplayPort, 2 x USB 2.0, a SD card readerand a shared line in/out port. Click to Enlarge
Apple’s 2009 Lineup 13-inch MacBook Pro (Early 2010) 13-inch MacBook Pro (Late 2009)
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo 2.40GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz
Memory 4GB DDR3-1066 2GB DDR3-1066
HDD 250GB 5400RPM 160GB 5400RPM
Video NVIDIA GeForce 320M (integrated) NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (integrated)
Optical Drive 8X Slot Load DL DVD +/-R 8X Slot Load DL DVD +/-R
Screen Resolution 1280 x 800 1280 x 800
USB 2 2
SD Card Reader Yes Yes
FireWire 800 1 1
ExpressCard/34 No No
Battery 63.5Whr 60Whr
Dimensions (W x D x H) 12.78″ x 8.94″ x 0.95″ 12.78″ x 8.94″ x 0.95″
Weight 4.5 lbs 4.5 lbs
Price $1199 $1199

Apple made its third semiconductor company acquisition in a stealthy manner by not making any public announcements. The alert online community discovered via some careful sleuthing that Austin, TX based Intrinsity Inc’s employees had started to work for Apple from the beginning of April 2010.

SEC filings made by Apple for its quarterly earnings report on April 20, 2010 indicated that Apple spent around $325 million for business acquisitions. Though Intrinsity’s name wasn’t publicly disclosed, a knowledge of Apple’s recent acquisitions indicated that the total amount was spent on Quattro Wireless, LaLa and Intrinsity. Quattro Wireless was purchased for $275 million and TechCrunch had previously suggested that LaLa was purchased for $17 million. Based on this, some infer that Apple spent less than $50 million in order to grab Intrinsity’s tech and employees. However, the NYTimes report confirming Apple’s acquisition quoted analyst Tom Halfhill in suggesting a purchase price of $121 million. The analyst contends that that Apple may not have paid all the money at once or 100% in cash. That, he says, may account for the lower estimates that people derive from Apple’s publicly disclosed expenditures. This is very much within the realms of possibility, but people suggesting that Apple paid less than $50 million for Intrinsity say that this doesn’t take into account the financial state of Intrinsity in the few months preceding the acquisition. Let us take a brief detour to trace Intrinsity’s history and analyze this further.

Technology

Founded in 1997 by 22 veterans in the microprocessor design industry, the firm initially worked towards developing interesting circuit design techniques and related design infrastructure for performance improvement (speed of circuit operation) using domino logic. If you are interested in the details, there are some course slides from MIT to help you out. Intrinsity’s website also had a ‘Technology’ section devoted to detailing their version of domino logic. The summary is that it is a circuit level technique which gets rid of the slow components inside the transistor level implementations of the various logic gates / functions. This makes it unsuitable for the usual design flow (writing RTL code in a hardware description language, followed by synthesizing it using automated computer tools to get a gate level description, which is then translated to the actual chip layout by placing and routing the standard cells corresponding to the generated gate netlist). Creating standard cells for domino logic is not an easy task, and companies often prefer to just handcraft the relevant logic in domino style in the slowest part of the circuit. Intrinsity has developed a design flow using domino logic cells, called Fast14. However, the whole flow is specific to a particular foundry’s process node, and shifting to a new foundry or process requires quite a bit of rework. Usually, the foundries provide the standard cells, but, in this case, one is reliant on Intrinsity to supply the cells. This is usually much later than the delivery date for the static CMOS standard cells. This is the main reason for the flow to be not as popular with fabless semiconductor companies as the usual design flow. On the other hand, companies like Intel devote huge amount of resources to perfect the layout of each and every gate in their pipeline to get the requisite performance. It is believed that Intel also uses a variant of domino logic for designing many components in their datapath. Intrinsity’s approach (as well as the associated delay in taping out the chip) lies somewhere between the static CMOS standard cells flow used by most companies and the full custom approach used by ones with lots of resources.

Business

After five years of flying under the radar (by which time the headcount had increased to 80-odd and $15 million had been burned through), Intrinsity finally managed to tape out a chip using their domino logic scheme towards the end of 2002. This DSP-centric processor (called the FastMath) was able to clock an impressive 2GHz in TSMC’s 130nm process. It enjoyed critical acclaim, but business for this chip wasn’t exactly forthcoming. In May 2003, with just around $7 million left in the bank, Intrinsity was forced to get back to the VCs for more funding. An investment of $35 million followed which was supposed to be used for sales efforts. However, taking the processor into full production had to be shelved following general market apathy towards a DSP from a relatively unknown company. In order to keep down the cash burn rate, 20-odd employees had to be let off. With no revenue stream available, Intrinsity decided to begin efforts to license their technology to other fabless semiconductor companies.

Intrinsity Inc’s Business Timeline

As outlined in the ‘Technology’ section, convincing companies to ditch their original design flow for something novel like domino logic is not easy. In February 2004, they entered into a deal with ATI, wherein, the technology would be used for a multitude of future ATI GPU designs. This lent them financial stability for some years. In early 2005, there were some organizational changes, with the old CEO moving into the role of a CTO, and the hiring of a new CEO. Deals with AMCC and Agere Systems followed in 2006, generating some more revenue. For AMCC, Intrinsity helped develop the Titan core based on the embedded PowerPC architecture. AMCC even invested and got some stake in the company. Business began to look up as ARM joined hands with Intrinsity to develop a FastCore version (the tag given by Intrinsity to any logic core synthesized with their Fast14 domino technology) of the Cortex-R4 called as the Cortex-R4X in 2007. Analysts expected a FastCore version of the Cortex-A8 to have very good performance too, but ARM didn’t appear too interested in pursuing that line. Despite all these deals, the expenses were still high, and Intrinsity had to snag more investments. In early 2008, $31.5 million was obtained in a Series E funding round, bringing the total money raised to more than $88 million (The amount of money invested by AMCC in exchange for stake in the company isn’t public).

In September 2008, Samsung went against ARM’s suggestion that any semi-custom implementation of the Cortex-A8 wouldn’t be faster than TI’s OMAP3 version. They inked a deal with Intrinsity to develop a FastCore version of the Cortex-A8 called as the Hummingbird. In the meanwhile, Apple was also looking for a way to speed up the Cortex-A8 for their iPad. It is believed in industry circles that Samsung asked Intrinsity develop a FastCore version of the Cortex-A8 at the behest of Apple for A4, and also ended up using it for the S5PC110 / S5PV210 after splitting the cost (according to rumors). The hardening was completed in July 2009, just in time for the rest of the A4 SoC to be taped out for the iPad and the S5PC110 for the Samsung Galaxy S.

Intrinsity also raised $4 million in late January 2010 from 11 different investors, bringing the total amount raised by the company closer to the $100 million mark. The LinkedIn page for Intrinsity suggests that they had around 120 people at the time of acquisition. For such a company, $4 million is barely sufficient for a quarter’s expenses. It must have been known at that point of time that the company was fast running out of cash and would need to be sold. The above timeline also indicates that Intrinsity had to keep hunting for investment and was never able to sustain profits for long. The LinkedIn page of one of Intrinsity’s employees indicates ‘Controller at Intrinsity (Assets Acquired by Apple Computer)’ in the ‘Past Experience’ section. It is believed that ‘asset acquisition’ is different from a straightforward ‘acquisition’ in the sense that it is more of a ‘fire sale’ rather than a purchase based on the true valuation of the company’s technology. This is not surprising, considering the fact that Intrinsity’s financial position appears to have been precarious in January 2010. All these tend to make some people in the industry believe that Apple could have got hold of the company by offering them a rock-bottom price. This, they suggest, may also be the reason why Intrinsity wouldn’t want the purchase price made public, as it would show their investors as well as the value of their technology in poor light.

While introducing the iPad in January 2010, Steve Jobs specifically commented on A4 as the best and most complicated chip Apple had ever designed. Industry watchers were skeptical when it became obvious that the A4 was just a SoC hooking up various IPs available from different companies. Once it became evident that Apple had indeed purchased Intrinsity, Steve Jobs’s claim began to make more sense. In effect, Apple had developed their most advanced silicon to date!