All Articles Tagged iphone hd

UPDATE: Apple Insider points out this could also refer to an AT&T network upgrade to 3.5G HSPDA+ type cell speeds. Or maybe both?

New iPhone hardware rumors are coming our way fast and furiously now, what with new device numbers, OLED screens, and… faster Internet speeds?

That’s what Silicone Alley Insider is saying:

our source has heard rumors that the next iPhone will have a significantly faster Internet connection.

What does that mean exactly? Our bet is on those new 802.11n mobile chipsets we heard about a while back. Pretty much everything else in Apple’s arsenal is now 802.11n fast, and even given those fancy new Airport Extreme and Time Capsules, faster would be better…

So again, how’s that picture of the next generation iPhone shaping up for you?

Smarthouse (via BGR) has a report saying Apple just might be making the leap to OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens for those future iPhone models mentioned yesterday.

It’s also believed that a new iPhone and iPod Touch due later this year will include an OLED screen made by LG who last year scored a multibillion dollar deal to manufacture display screens for Apple.

Apple currently uses LED for the iPhone (and MacBooks, and the new 24″ Cinema Display). OLED required no backlight and consumes much less battery power than previous technologies. Given Apple’s obsessions with thinness and battery life, this move makes the kind of sense that does.

Also bundled in the rumor is, of course, a rumor about Apple also using OLED in an upcoming “netbook”. We’re still thinking an iTablet is more likely…

So, all these leaks starting to paint anyone a new summer hardware release picture yet?

The word has gone out: Apple is now allowing you to do more than just rent movies in HD, they’re letting you buy them. You’re looking at spending a bit extra for the HD version – $19.99 to be precise. They’re pushing preorders for a few movies (Quantum of Solace and Twilight) but there are also a few you can buy right now (Saw V, for example. Sadists rejoice!).

The movies also come with an SD version bundled in for your iPhone and iPod. Which is great and all, but how’s-about Apple provide us with an iPhone that doesn’t need such primitive down-scaled resolutions. iPhone HD looking more likely to anyone? If it comes, we’re still doubting it would be the 720p that these videos come in (our money’s on iPhone HD with 480p), but it would be a sight better. We’re still hoping against hope here, but maybe 2009 could be the true “Year of HD,” …4 years late, but still very welcome.

UPDATE: Ars Technica has found references to an iProd 0,1 (iProduct prototype? Could that be the iTablet?) and an iFPGA, which they say may be something to do with “field-programmable gate array” (yeah, us neither). So Apple is either really busy building out their Mobile OS X offerings, or are having a load of fun punkd’ing the blogosphere…

ORIGINAL: We pretty much know there will be new iPhone hardware. Apple is likely always working a generation, two generations, three generations ahead. What we don’t know is what and when.

The first iPhone 2G (2007) is references as iPhone 1,1 while the iPhone 3G (2008) is 1,2 — which indicates it wasn’t a significant hardware revision (3G and GPS not significant? Okay!)

The first iPod touch (2007) was 1,2, however the iPod touch Gen 2 (2008) was 2,1 — which indicates a more significant revision (external speaker and volume controls, Nike+ are significant? Okay again!)

Now BGR is reporting that deep delving into the iPhone OS 3.0 has found references to future models. iPhone 2,1, which we’ve heard about before, makes it look like Apple has a more significant hardware revision on its way for the iPhone. No idea what that is yet (we’ve guessed iPhone HD). What’s new is a reference to iPhone 3,1(!).

Does this mean there are 2 new hardware models coming? And soon as in this year (2009)? Or will 3,1 follow a year or more after 2,1, like Apple does with iPod models?

Speaking of which, the code also reveals an iPod touch 3,1. Could that be an iPod touch HD? A large size iPod touch iTablet? Or should we quiet our fanboy hearts for a moment?

We’ve spoken quite a bit before about the potential that Apple might one day “split the platform” with either an iPhone nano (very unlikely) or an iPhone HD (which we’ve been discussing quite a bit lately).

Right now, all existing iPhones and iPod touches sport 320×480 screens at 163dpi. The iPod nano, by contrast, was already at 202dpi during the previous, “fatty” generation. The BlackBerry Bold is at something around 217dpi. HTC is making 480×800 displays now like they’re going out of style.

At some point, the iPhone will jump to HD (by which we mean 480p, or 480×800) and current generation iPhone apps, and their associated bitmap interface elements just won’t look so good.

Cocoia, renowned icon and interface designer Sabastiaan de With’s blog, has an excellent post up today about that very issue. He says:

Applications will have to ‘deal’ with two different resolutions at the least; icons and other bitmap graphics will have to be redesigned for the higher pixel density screens. There will, no doubt, be applications that are not ready and look very bad on the new device, or perfectly good applications are not approved into the App Store because they are not ready yet.

We may keep pushing the date forward like a hot potato, but at some point Apple and developers will have to face up to the fact that there will be a lot of redesigning, re-thinking and adaptation required. Until that day, enjoy the simplicity of developing and designing for a simple, defined hardware specification. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when technology comes and slaps you in the face.

Apple has enjoyed huge success from the relatively unified hardware model as well, so here’s hoping they help developers not only prepare for, but transition to future resolutions as painlessly for them — and us — as possible. Any developers out there already pondering this?

Imagination makes the PowerVR graphics core chip (GPU) that powers the current generations of iPhone and iPod touch handsets. Apple likes them enough to have become a huge licensor and even investor in the company. Well, it’s looking like that investment may pay off for iPhone users in the next generation iPhone and iPod touch (which TiPb is still predicting will hit in July and September respectively).

Even bigger news? It looks like these new multi-core chips will be transparent from the developer’s point of view. That means Apple has far less risk in “fracturing the platform” by adding more GPU firepower to the next gen iPhone. Also, they look to be supporting OpenCL, Apple’s open source implementation that allows GPUs to be treated like CPUs and boost general purpose computing when they’re not throwing polygons and pixels around our favorite games or movies.

Says the Register (via MacRumors):

Without any intervention by the application – and, more importantly, without any intervention by the application’s developer – the driver will pass data to an “MP code scheduler,” which will in turn pass that data to one pipeline scheduler per core, which will then pass it to one thread scheduler per multi-threaded processing engine, which will then manage the threads through the engines as they process the graphics data.

In other words, the SGX543 can have any number of cores from two to sixteen with no change in the driver software or the application. All that complex data/pipeline/thread management is done in hardware. No muss, no fuss.

But a whole lot of “we want it now!”…

MacRumors is reporting on a Digitimes story that says Taiwan-based supplier:

Wintek revealed that it is currently working with Apple to develop some new products, but it said it does not know what applications the new products are for.

Apple has denied interest in producing both a tablet and a netbook in the past, which is what they do both when they really have no interest, and also when they’re about the release something. What with all the new hardware Apple dropped last week, TiPb has speculated that the March 24th date for a rumored Apple Event could be used to debut the iPhone OS 3.0 beta, a higher resolution iPhone HD… or an iTablet form factor.

If Apple does release a new device, would it really be a netbook scale version of Mac OS X or a large-size iPod touch running the iPhone version of OS X? Either way, developers would need time to ramp up (or down) their apps. Either way, could this be more fuel for that fire, or simply more grist for the rumor-mill?

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Last night’s iPhone Live! was pretty darn good — so good, in fact, that it created a cross-border, pan-dimensional bug that kept us from recording the first 20 minutes properly. We recapped it a bit, but those who it hit it up live got a special treat. Rest assured, though, we have more than enough to talk about with the new Kindle iPhone App, what it means for Apple, Amazon, and when it might go international – so if you missed iPhone Live!, go ahead and check out this here podcast.

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Today Apple dropped new Mac Mini, iMac, and Mac Pro desktops, and Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule routers. Previously, we’d heard rumors about Apple waiting and holding one of their Special Events on March 24th, a “Spotlight Turns to Desktops” to bookend last fall’s “Spotlight Turns to Laptops” event. But none of today’s releases were as new or event-worthy as the unibody MacBooks announced last year, were they?

So, if Apple really is having a March 24th event — and it’s not just some interfanboynet make believe — what’s left for them to announce?

Well, March 2008 was the iPhone SDK Roadmap Event, where Apple began the process that ultimately led us to iPhone OS 2.0 and the App Store.

Could March 2009 give us a similar peek into the beginning of a beta process for iPhone OS 3.0? Could it show off an App Store-level complication on the order of an iPhone HD or iTablet, requiring the months before WWDC and an eventual summer release be spent testing new resolutions or screen sizes, or other hardware changes bound for the iPhone 2,1 model?

As stated explicitly in the title, pure and abject speculation at this point, but Apple does seem to like product cycles and symmetry…

What do you think?

We’ve heard before that, among other things, iPhone OS 3.0 would support quad-core processors. Of course, we haven’t seen these processors yet, but now ST-Ericsson and ARM have announced they’ll be giving a private sneak peak at one at Mobile World Congress. (Via MacRumors):

The technological breakthrough is the first of its kind and is based on the ARM(R) Cortex(TM)-A9 multicore processor, which represents a significant leap from previous generations of baseband/application processor architectures by providing unprecedented levels of performance and power efficiency.

Combined with previous rumors of OpenCL support allowing the faster, betterPowerVR graphics cores to boost general processing as well, and 802.11n mobile WiFi chips future iPhone generations could be, as Steve Jobs is so fond of putting it, real screamers.

Better hardware (especially more RAM) could, of course, encourage Apple to allow more 3rd party multi-tasking. Maybe even make the leap to iPhone HD? (In a matt black finish?!)