Wow, iPhone rumors sure are coming in at breakneck speed these days.
Earlier today, a Taiwanese website (tw.apple.pro) relayed that Apple is currently working on three iPhone 5 prototypes, one of which includes a slideout keyboard while the other looks exactly like the iPhone 4 only with a much longer battery life and a much improved camera. The latter wouldn’t embody a radical new design or include markedly different functionality as the iPhone 4, but would rather be an evolutionary upgrade a’la the iPhone 3G to the 3GS transition. As for the third prototype, that information is hard to extract from the article as Google Translate can only do so much.
Lastly, the report notes that the iPad 2 will feature a thinner design along with a front-facing camera.
While we don’t doubt that there’s a slideout keyboard equipped iPhone floating around somewhere deep within the bowels of Apple’s research labs, it’ll be interesting to see if Steve Jobs’ aversion to buttons will ever let such a product see the light of day. Then again, with reports that Apple is looking to release a smaller iPhone form factor to stave off the growing influence of Google, is it that far out of the realm of possibility for Apple to release a slider iPhone?
February 16th, 2011 at 5:36 am
Boy, the more the world moves forward the more it goes backward.
If Apple ever makes a slider iPhone just for the sake of keyboards I’ll say they will have just reached their downfall. They may even do a slider but to allow for teletransport, pour coffee, or whatever they might think of or come up with (portable printer, secret compartment or whatever), but honestly, keyboard?
They killed the keyboard in phones with the iPhone and did it for computers with iPad, why go back? Excuse-me while I go throw myself out of the window.
People need to detach themselves from physical keyboards and move on.
February 20th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
http://junkbot.eu/