Set aside the noise that came with any Apple announcement in 2010 and the iPhone 4 had a specific implication for reporters: it put something close to a multimedia production kit in a pocket. The 5-megapixel camera shot video at 720p, a real change from the 3GS, which managed 640 by 480 at best. The A4 processor and the higher-resolution screen mattered for the same reason — editing on location became quicker and less painful.
The software was catching up in parallel. The UBC Graduate School of Journalism was one of the schools trialling the mobile editing apps built by the Canadian company Vericorder, whose then-current release, 1st Video, could record, edit and send video as well as photo slideshows and audio. Paired with an external microphone, including the small one Vericorder sold alongside it, the sound recording came out well.
None of this was going to displace a professional or prosumer HD camcorder, and questions about the real quality of the footage remained open. The equipment it plausibly did replace was the pocket HD camera — the Flip and Kodak class of device that newsrooms had been buying — at a quality good enough to broadcast. A device a reporter already carries everywhere, running an editing suite, is a different proposition from one more thing to pack, and that applied as much to people who happen to be present at a news event as to staff sent to cover it.