Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Chen recently stated in an interview that the 4th gen iPhone will feature a touchscreen backpanel, akin to the recently released Mighty Mouse.
“Apple’s going to put a lot of innovation, not just on the hardware, but also on the software of the new iPhone,” Chen noted. Chen also corroborates earlier reports that Apple will be upgrading the camera on the iPhone to 5 megapixels, and though not brought up by Chen, other sources have indicated that Apple will include LED flash as well, which will do wonders to improve photo quality in low light environments.
While some sources have said that Apple will release a new iPhone model as early as April, Chen maintains that the new device won’t even go into production until April, which would suggest a June/July launch date.
When asked to comment, Apple spokesman Steve Dowling naturally responded, “We’re not going to comment on rumors and speculation.”
Obviously, the most intriguing thing here is a touch sensitive casing for the iPhone. We’re not entirely sure what such a feature would be useful for, but one idea is that users would be able to slide their fingers on the back to zoom in and out while taking photos.
Anyone else out there have any ideas?
via Bloomberg
January 14th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
It could use one or more fingers on the back to multiply the functions of on screen touches….rather as the option, command, control and shift keys multiply the usefulness of keyboard or mouse actions.
Chandra C
January 14th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
The back sensitivity is necessary when you can’t have the screen obstructed by your fingers. There are already a couple of patents that make this necessary. For example, one specifies that the front facing camering is actually integrated within the display, with light sensors intermingled with display pixels. That being the case, if you initiated an iChat Video conference, you don’t want to touch the front of the screen but rather while chatting you would use the back of the phone for interaction.