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Jobs unveils iPhone with video editing

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple chief executive Steve Jobs showed off a next-generation iPhone on Monday that features the ability to shoot and edit high-definition quality video and a crisp higher-resolution screen.

“We are going to take the biggest leap since the original iPhone,” Jobs said in a keynote speech at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference here.

The “iPhone 4” will go on sale on June 24 in Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the United States and will cost 199 dollars for the 16 gigabyte model and 299 dollars for the 32GB version.

The iPhone 4 includes more than 100 new features including a front-facing video camera to allow for video-conferencing, a better still camera, improved battery life and a screen with significantly higher resolution, Jobs said.

The front-facing video camera will allow iPhone owners to have video chats with Macintosh computers or iPhone to iPhone.

The new iPhone also allows users to “record HD video and edit it on a device you carry with you everyday,” said Randy Ubillos, Apple’s chief architect for video applications, demonstrating Apple’s iMovie video editing program.

Jobs touted the higher-resolution screen as a major leap forward. “There has never been a display like this on a phone,” he said.

The 3.5-inch screen is the same size as on previous models but features 326 pixels per inch, four times more pixels than the earlier iPhones.

“There is a magic number around 300 pixels per inch that is the limit of the human retina,” Jobs said. “We are over that limit.”

“That’s going to set the standard for display for years to come,” he said.

The improved battery allows for 40 percent more talk time, Jobs said.

He said the iPhone 4 — at 9.3 millimeters or three-eighths of an inch — is 24 percent thinner than the previous model, iPhone 3GS.

“It is really thin,” Jobs said. “It is one of the most beautiful designs you’ve ever seen. Its closest kin is a beautiful old Leica camera.”

Jobs said the iPhone 4 features a five-megapixel camera, an improvement on the previous three-megapixel camera.

The Apple chief executive joked that some of the attendees at the conference may have seen the iPhone 4 previously “because there have been a few photos around.”

Technology blog Gizmodo obtained a prototype of the phone in April from a 21-year-old man who found it in a California beer garden, where it had been lost by an Apple software engineer, and published details of the device.

Apple launched the iPhone in 2007 and has sold more than 50 million of the devices.

Before displaying the latest iPhone, Jobs said that more than five million digital books have been downloaded since Apple began selling its iPad tablet computer two months ago.

He said the 8,500 applications developed for the iPad have been downloaded more than 35 million times from Apple’s App Store.

Jobs, dressed in his trademark black turtleneck and blue jeans, received a standing ovation as he walked on stage to address the more than 5,200 software developers attending the conference.

Apple has sold more than two million iPads since the touchscreen device went on sale in the United States in early April and in nine other countries late last month.