When it rains it pours.
On Monday evening the WSJ posted an article detailing Apple’s plans to release the iPhone on Verizon. Well “detailing” might be too strong a word, a fact that Daring Fireball’s John Gruber made sure to drive home when he labeled the Journal’s report as a “lame entry in the iPhone Rumors Game.”
Gruber then sarcastically (but not really) listed out a number of new features expected to show up in the next iteration of the iPhone, including a 960×640 double resolution display, a front facing camera, multitasking support in iPhone OS 4, and last but not least, the inclusion of Apple’s in-house A4 processor.
Wow. That’s a lot to take in, but remember that Steve Jobs has already called the next iPhone release an “A+ upgrade” and Gruber’s predictions, if true, would certainly fit the bill. And adding fuel to the iPhone rumor fire is an Engadget report stating that the next-gen iPhone will be dubbed the “iPhone HD.”
While the most recent iPhone model, the 3GS, offered noticeable speed improvements, it didn’t exactly come with a lot new bells and whistles. With Apple looking to maintain, if not expand, its lead over Android and an assortment of other second place contenders, you can bet your bottom dollar that the next iPhone will be jaw dropping and will further cement Apple as the premier handset manufacturer on the planet.
Regarding the rumored inclusion of the A4 in the iPhone, we should point out that a commonly heard theme emanating from the few lucky souls who were able to get their hands on the device centered on how fast and reliably the A4 processor performed, a feat made all the more impressive when you consider the large 9.7-inch screen the processor has to power. Put that baby into the iPhone and it’s gonna scream.
Now as for the “iPhone HD” moniker, a Digitimes report from last December suggested that the next-gen iPhone will come equipped with a 5 megapixel camera from Omnivision. Now why is this important? Well, this past June, Omnivision announced a 5 megapixel OV5650 Image Sensor for mobile devices capable of capturing 720P quality video at 60 fps. So while it’s admittedly to early to tell if that’s the specific image sensor Apple will include in the next iteration of the iPhone, you’ve gotta imagine that if Apple is planning to release what sounds like a pro version of the iPhone, it’s gonna dress to impress.
UPDATE: Leaked photos of the next-gen iPhone emerge. Front facing camera confirmed, along with 16% larger battery, micro-sim slot, slimmer form factor, and refreshed industrial design.
March 30th, 2010 at 8:10 am
so… basicly his holyness the jobs, decrees to bring it inline with the specs of other current phones then?
*yawn*
in other news, a squirrel ate a nut. more at eleven.
March 30th, 2010 at 8:24 am
It is 4x the resolution, not double. It is double in each direction, leading to 4x the number of pixels.
March 30th, 2010 at 8:31 am
Or – play catch-up?
There are already android phones with front facing cameras, similar screen resolutions and fast processors.
Android has multitasked …. forever.
So, yeah Apple is trying to catch up.
March 30th, 2010 at 8:32 am
still doesnt beet the crap out of the new android phone coming out on sprint that has eight megapixle camera and 2 megapixle on the front with the snapdragon 1gig processor and the 4g network exclusive to sprint.
March 30th, 2010 at 8:51 am
“With Apple looking to maintain, if not expand, its lead over Android and an assortment of other second place contenders, you can bet your bottom dollar that the next iPhone will be jaw dropping and will further cement Apple as the premier handset manufacturer on the planet.”
This is an article with many factual inaccuracies – seemingly written by someone so obsessed by the Apple brand that making blanket, glowing statements without knowing anything about the actual industry they are talking about is simply par for the course. But the above that I quoted really took the cake.
Nokia is still the premiere manufactuer of smartphones – by a huge margin. They have a marketshare, as of late last year, of over 40% of handsets. Their online presence (“appstore” for anyone thinking Apple invented the online purchase of software and it’s the only place that can do this), Ovi, had a cash turnover of over 2.5 billion USD last year.
I have a 7 year old HTC Universal (MDA Pro) that has a forward facing camera. It also multitasks – a feature which you seem to find amazing for some reason. As a matter of fact every other mainstream smartphone OS has multitasking. The HD2 (and several other handsets) released in September last year have similar resolution screens. The Snapdragon processor – already used in many smartphones since last year – is already more powerful than the current A4 processor – I doubt future iterations will be surpassed by the A4. In short the iPhone was not revolutionary and neither is the new iteration by the sounds of it – people who choose not too look beyond Apple products will no doubt think it’s revolutionary but then they are uninformed and somehow can’t look past any of Apples slick marketing but still think of themselves as informed.
The iPhone, like most Apple products does have the benefits of having slick, great looking and very easy to use OS and tight product controls ensuring completely inept users will never (usually) have issues with their phones. This is great – don’t get me wrong.
However, for you gush about how revolutionary this hardware is and how it will be “beating” other manufacturers on power and features is a joke – the features are already out: for 6 months and on more powerful devices.
March 30th, 2010 at 9:08 am
@renquist
Well said, but the fanboys will shout you down, but you expect that 😉
March 30th, 2010 at 9:25 am
RFID/NFC support please! Time for an iWallet and iKeys.
March 30th, 2010 at 9:41 am
“xx megapixel camera”… yawn. Cellphones, as a rule take crappy pictures. And they’ll continue to take crappy pictures, no matter how many megapixels you cram into the image sensor. The limiting factor is the lens, and to fix this, you need… a bigger lens. And you can’t put a bigger lens into a cell phone.
I suppose it’s too much to ask for manufacturers to stop competing on meaningless but easy to achieve characteristics… but I do wish that reviewers would call them out on it.
March 30th, 2010 at 9:44 am
It’s become the hype to talk down the iPhone. Unfortunately, the numbers are different. The iPhone is revolutionary because it’s easy to use, because it’s easy to carry, because of its huge application base.
I haven’t used to 7 year old HTC Universal, I expect it’s a great antique, but for some reason it hasn’t made any impact on the market.
A revolution is not a processor type, or a sensor type, but the whole package. In the iPhone, Apple’s engineers has made the right choices. I expect that Apple’s engineers were aware of the existence of multitasking O/S, maybe even as far as preemptive multitasking (obviously OS/X is not a product of Apple, so they couldn’t have borrowed features from OS/X, oh sorry yes they did). I suspect the design choice of not implementing user multitasking was made to enhance its usability. From tech savvy colleagues and friends who use other smart phones, it seems to have been the right choice. They appreciate the snappiness of the iPhone, its friendly GUI.
BTW, the iPhone does multitask in several ways, the ability to use the iPod while a different application is running, like monitoring GSM and WiFi (this is partly implemented in the baseband processor).
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the iPhone revolutionised the smart phone market. It’s almost brought down cellular data markets because its users finally use smart phone as a true network device (unlike previous smart phones, which were mostly used for specific tasks). Will the new hardware specs create a revolution once again? I expect not, but probably they will increase the market lead, and possibly the performance. Some would call these things a revolution. However, a true revolution will depend on the new uses of the hardware and not on the hardware specs. If the new hardware specs will enable new revolutionary uses for the iPhone, then it will be a revolution which neither the HTC nor the Android has mastered so far.
March 30th, 2010 at 9:53 am
The iPhone already does multitask – but only for Apple’s own software. However, in iPhone OS 4, Apple has allowed multitasking for all apps (meaning also third party apps from the App Store).
And for all the jackasses talking about camera resolution, believing that “the higher the number, the better the pictures”, please understand that resolution is not the same as quality. The more pixels you squeeze into a same-size image platter, the grittier and shittier the image will be. A full-hd screen of 1920*1080 pixels = 2mpix. Yes, that’s right: 2mpix = 1920*1080, an image resolution larger than the majority’s stationary TFT screen, and way, way, way bigger than your smartphone’s screen and even your laptop’s. The only reason you “need” a higher resolution is if you intend to print the image on paper. If you don’t, and only intend for the images to be enjoyed on a computer screen, then your 2mpix camera will do a more than good enough for you, so do yourself and the world a favor by educating yourself and jumping off the “megapix craze bandwagon” that digicam manufacturer’s use to take you and your wallet for a ride.
March 30th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Robin, Please!!
I guess what you are saying could be true, if you never ever crop sections of a picture and/or zoom in. You should educate yourself before talking..
Manuel
March 30th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Sounds alot like my Nexus One, but with a higher res screen and front facing camera. Is it still LCD I’m guessing?
Oh wait, I bet it still doesn’t have an sd card slot. Or removable battery. Quoting the number of apps in the store gets less and less relevant(unless you are in to gaming I guess? People always need new games).
I’m sure it will be incredibly popular, and people will love its intuitiveness. But in no way is this some sort of unprecedented upgrade. It’s catchup, and it is still going to be a very closed system.
March 30th, 2010 at 11:51 am
Fools. I’ve got Nexus One, Droid, and iPhone 3GS. I love Android, but it’s laggy as hell. Crashes every once in a while. Raw tech specs do not make for a superior phone. iPhone still just overall runs better in almost every way.
As for imaging/photo/video – side by side the colors are just clearer and video is way smoother and better looking on the iPhone. So far, I do not miss multi-tasking if Android cannot get the basics of interface fluidity and image quality perfected.
March 30th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
@Sean Peters
You do know that you take the best pictures with the camera that you carry, right? Not with the 37.8Mp DSLR i’m sure you’ll have that is gathering dust at home…
March 30th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
@Manuel – No, Robin has a point, although comparing display resolution with capture resolution is probably not a good idea. The trend of upping the density of image capture sensors, at a certain point, actually reduces the quality of the image, creating a blurrier, noisier image with less dynamic range. You have more pixels, but you do not get a sharper image. This is especially true of the smaller sensors in point and shoot cameras and mobile phone cameras. It makes for good marketing, but I’ve seen some really awful photos from some of these. (For example, read “Pixel Sizes: Noise Levels and Dynamic Range” at http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm).
March 30th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
WRONG! It’s China Unicom’s 2010 iPhone upgrade – which runs a different version of CDMA than the US.
Oh hey, remember all those rumors yesterday about a new iPhone coming out for Verizon that had everyone all excited? Well, analysts, wet blankets that they are, had to go and ruin the fun. Maynard J. Um, an analyst who is only indecisive in name, was quick to deem a Verizon launch “unlikely” for this year, with CDMA iPhones possibly going to China Telecom or Japan’s KDDI. Um, whatever. [AppleInsider]
March 30th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Stop using “gotta” and “gonna” etc.
March 30th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
“It’s become the hype to talk down the iPhone. Unfortunately, the numbers are different.”
No, the hype is to talk up the Iphone. The very fact that we have this media coverage over mere rumours, whilst the real market leaders like Nokia are ignored, is proof of this.
“BTW, the iPhone does multitask in several ways, the ability to use the iPod while a different application is running, like monitoring GSM and WiFi (this is partly implemented in the baseband processor).”
By that logic, any bog standard dirt cheap phone from around 2005 has been able to multitask.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the iPhone revolutionised the smart phone market. It’s almost brought down cellular data markets because its users finally use smart phone as a true network device (unlike previous smart phones, which were mostly used for specific tasks).”
Nonsense. Smartphones have been using the Internet since the early 2000s, and this became bog-standard for all phones in about 2005. The Iphone showed up late in 2007, and has less than 5% of the market. It changed nothing, other than how the media hype the market.
I have no idea why the small niche of Iphone users use such absurd amounts of data, but I don’t see why it’s something to brag about. Personally I try to respect things like data limits. If you preferred, I could set my 5800 to download from YouTube all day, but I don’t see why that would affect how good or bad the phone is.
March 30th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Re: data usage.
There’s also the point that other phones have more efficient usage. E.g., Nokia maps can store maps offline instead of having to download them. All phones except the Apple phones can run Opera Mini, which uses server side code to reduce the amount downloaded for the phone.
So by bragging about the Iphone’s high data usage, you’re just showing yet more bad points about it. I’d rather a phone that allows me to reduce my download amount.
March 31st, 2010 at 10:18 am
Cant’ wait for the 22nd of June. Then all these disputes will be put to rest.
March 31st, 2010 at 11:17 am
@Fanboy: No one is debating that the iphone sells a lot. The point that everyone is making here is that Apple is doing nothing revolutionary. It’s all been done before with the exception that those manufacturers were never able to capitalize on it the way apple did. That’s probably for 2 reasons: 1. They don’t go on stage and talk about how awesome they are in a black turtleneck. 2. They don’t have stupid followers who’ll buy every piece of crap with the excuse that “If the engineers in my fav. company have decided to use this, then there must be some reason. They are aware and smart people”.
For the record, there is a difference between the best and the best selling, which btw, the iphone is neither of.
March 31st, 2010 at 11:42 am
But this comes at a price, the battery will last long enough for you to move it from the charger in the bedroom to the charger in your car.
March 31st, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Apple has made a fantastic product, and everyone likes it.
It already multitasks / is open / works on every network, its called jail breaking.
If you want an android phone go buy one, they are great, just stop saying the iphone is rubbish, when obviously apple have created what people want, a service, rather than a hardware product.
Look at any benchmark in the quality of iphone vs android.
iphone generally has the most precise touch sensors, its pretty quick (not the quickest, but definitely quickest for the price).
I can’t wait to see what the ipad has to offer, I am sure apple will do a fantastic job on that too.
March 31st, 2010 at 3:28 pm
I love my iphone.
Processor speeds, megapixels and multitasking don’t come into the equation. It is a pleasure to use, and that is all that matters to me.
You kids need to stop arguing, it’s almost like ‘my dad’s bigger than your dad’
March 31st, 2010 at 3:33 pm
It’s rad that there are all these comments here about how the iPhone is playing catch up and dissing on “fanboys” on an Apple rumor site. If the iPhone is irrelevant, then why are you here?
March 31st, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Good! Apple will continue to kick everyone’s ass and force everyone to make better and better phones.
Yes, Android phones rock. I use the hero and love it. What people don’t understand here is that apple is not trying to compete with anyone or “catch up”… they just make bad ass shit and sell lots of it.
March 31st, 2010 at 4:30 pm
April fools? 😉
March 31st, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Lol “my phone’s better than your phone, yada yada yada” – you guys are hilarious
March 31st, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Man, if these rumors are true, the next iPhone is going to be badass. I really hope they put that 5 megapixel camera..60 fps & 720p!! that’s double the fps than the 3GS. I really hope they make the screen bigger too, to compete with the 4.3 inch screen from the HTC Evo 4G..
March 31st, 2010 at 9:50 pm
The iPhone is a powerful device. Windows Mobile is not gonna beat it. (Not sure about 7) Android is just a bootleg iPhone trying to beat the iPhone which they never will. iPhone will always win no matter what. iPhone always has better camara. Better video recording and play. Its really fast and snappy. Ya do the comparison. The nexus is not all that great. Same with the droid. And I belive the iPhone HD is gonna beat the Sprint EVO 4G. The EVO 4G is a great device but I dont think is gonna beat the iPhone. I highly doubt it.
March 31st, 2010 at 10:01 pm
I’ve been very happy with my 2g model, would make more sense for it to have a true hd screen rather than just 960×640
April 1st, 2010 at 4:15 am
If it isn’t going to be the called iPhone HD then what about the iPhone Pro, what other names can anyone come up with? Either way in the end this thing is going to be amazing and I want to get my hands on one!!!
April 1st, 2010 at 8:11 am
Some people in here seem a little hostile about their phones capabilities. Its almost cute how passionate people are about it. It’s a cell phone. Remember that. Focus on the more important things in life…haha
“The things we own, end up owning us”
April 2nd, 2010 at 5:46 am
Blackberries have had multitasking since…. well…. Since there were blackberries.
April 2nd, 2010 at 3:04 pm
I have an iPhone 3g and I like it because it is easy to use. Can be slow as hell sometimes. I wish it was on verizon though.
April 6th, 2010 at 9:11 am
lol, Apple haters are multiple times worse then apple fanboys in my eyes. All you people do is bitch about how Apple blows, let the apple fanboys live in their own little world, why the fuck do you have to start retarded arguments left and right?
I am an Apple fanboy and I am also aware of the flaws in Apples products, atm I would far prefer an HTC Evo 4g over the iPhone 3GS, but what you people need to understand is this.
There are Apple fanboys for a reason.
I have a mac, and I prefer it over a PC. Is it better? No, in fact, in a lot of ways, it’s worse, but I prefer it, and I don’t feel the need to justify that preference to any of you. I prefer the design, I prefer the software.
The iPhone is in many ways a superior device to Android because of software, the design is really goddamn outdated, the the software kicks the crap out of Android in more ways then Android software kicks the crap out of iPhone software.
The apps, due to the fact that they are built for a single device, are undeniably superior to Android apps.
The software, due to the fact that it’s designed for a single hardware device, is superior to Android software.
The OS is not all mixed up in multiple iPhones.
Everything, for the most park, works seamlessly and fluidly.
No matter how nice the Nexus One is (And I’m not denying it’s a gorgeous phone, nicer then the iPhone in looks, far superior in hardware), it still falls short of the iPhones software, which in todays day and age is what is important.
It’s not necessarily the most revolutionary thing ever created, but up until the iPhone, the Android OS did not look ANYTHING like it does today, the UI concepts for Android looked like something from an old Blackberry phone. If you deny that, then you’re just as bad as an Apple fanboy being an Android fanboy, so shut the fuck up.
Android is great, the iPhone is great. I prefer an iPhone, you prefer an Android, let’s leave it at that. I have my reasons, you have yours. Admit your phone preferences shortfallings, just as I did mine.
April 14th, 2010 at 12:03 am
HD just stands for “high-definition”. When you’re talking about TV’s, that’s usually 720p or 1080p, but when it comes to a ~3 inch screen, 960×640 is a pretty high density.
April 14th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Front facing camera: First apple needs to deem it battery friendly, then they need to figure out what developers cant do with it, because we can never just do what we want with anything on the iPhone. Finally Apple must be convinced that there is mass value to it, so far Apple has never crammed a new bit of hardware into the phone just for a utilitarian function (Except the compass, which may not even be in the new iPhone)
Higher Res Screen: This will happen simply due to hardware standards, and higher screen res agrees with what i think is apples new goal, building a toy.
A4 processor: Apple recently acquired a new ARM design firm with some of its savings account (Built by the app store), So it may have already purchased a new mobile processor in the middle of the night for the new iPhone/touches. Apple will be interested in an ever faster device because of the entertainment possibilities.
I used to be an Apple Fan boy, mostly because i was a very happy creative professional using Mac Products. The iPhone was a the best smartphone i could reasonably get my hands on and i love it. But apple seems to have totally forgotten its mac line, and put all of its energy into the iPhone. growing a controlled platform built and sold on promises of an entertainment and gameing toy, rather then a personal or professional tool.
April 27th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
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