Hardware now as big a selling point as user experience?
iPhone's success and impact on the mobile industry has never really been about the hardware, per se.
Sure, the three iPhone models have been hugely desirable devices, but the real selling point has been the user experience, and then since 2007 its apps ecosystem.
In short: consumers didn't buy an iPhone because it had a certain megapixel camera or a certain resolution screen. They bought it because it was beautifully easy to use, and seemingly had an app for everything in a store leagues ahead of its rivals.
However, in recent months, hardware - tech specs - has come back onto the agenda in the smartphone wars. The latest wave of Android handsets in particular have been acclaimed for their design and features, and often compared to iPhone - with Apple's device often coming off worst.
That's essential context for today's WWDC keynote. User experience remains key to iPhone, as seen in Apple's portrayal of iOS 4's multi-tasking as a much more elegant way of letting apps run in the background than rival smartphones.
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And the App Store remains streets ahead of its rivals in both sales and slickness - although that says as much about the evolution of those rival stores as it does about Apple's.
However, iPhone 4 is clearly a sign of Apple training its guns on the specs war again - from its camera and high-res display, to its bigger battery and A4 processor, through to the way it bundles the antenna into the structure of the phone.
Steve Jobs even talked up the fact that it's the thinnest smartphone ever - a flashback to a couple of years ago, when that honour seemed to pass to a new handset every week.
Android - or rather Android-powered handsets - have been posing some stern questions of iPhone in recent months, so the new device is clearly the response.
Consumers and developers both win from this battle. The pace of evolution of both smartphone hardware and software is swift, fuelled by the competition between Apple and Google.
Just as Apple has taken its hardware up a notch with iPhone 4, Google is putting more effort into Android Market.
And the more I think about Windows Phone 7, the more it looks like Microsoft has learned some important lessons from the strengths and weaknesses of both iPhone and Android too, making it a dark horse for 2011 if the company truly does deliver on its promises.
But what hit home today is that this battle is about hardware as well as software. Technology as well as apps. It's an exciting time for the mobile entertainent industry, whichever horse you're backing in the smartphone race.
