So the iPhone 4 announcement got me thinking. Sure, the handset is very nice and everyone is very thrilled that it now measures up at just under a centimetre – making it one of the slimmest smart phones ever released and good amount thinner than my HTC HD2 and iPhone 3GS.

However, it wasn’t the design of the new toy that interested me, but the stuff it is made from. The materials used for the casing of the new iPhone 4 are – despite its sleek brushed metal appearance – actually a type of engineered glass, said to give better signal and wireless connectivity. The theory is that the new material is a better conductor of radio waves than plastic. Having not yet tested it out, I’m not convinced – it just sounds more breakable. Can you imagine the pain of acquiring a crack down the rear casing?

Anyway, the switch-up is said to have given iPhone 4 a boost in speed that’ll allow for 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 5.8Mbps HSUPA and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. All very impressive in a tiny phone, but still a world away from the superfast access speeds available on a leased line or other such land-based web connection option. It makes me wonder whether wireless web will ever catch up to hard-pipe lines in its ability to offer users top speeds, or if we’ve hit something of a glass ceiling.

Another feature which aroused my interest and one that will no doubt have been picked up on by call quality fiends everywhere was the new noise cancelling features of the iPhone 4. The inability to effectively conference with the 3GS was one of the main annoyances I found with it – the speakerphone wasn’t of a great quality and the person on the other end picked up too much background noise for it to be a decent option. By contrast, units like the Polycom Soundstation 2, which I used in my office, are made for the job. But the new iPhone has got noise cancelling technology, which means that whether you’re on a private call using the earpiece or you’re opening up the call to a couple of others in the room, quality should rocket. Add to this the ability to include other speakers mid-call with the iPhone’s conferencing feature and I can see this new handset sending conference unit makers running.

So you can go on all day about how nice the new iPhone looks, for all I care. All I’m really interested in is connectivity – and this new handset looks like one of the best yet.

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