With a Schiller-confirmed June product cycle, it’s a bit early for iPhone Next-Gen case leaks, innit? Not that time or likelihood will stop the internet. MacRumors says:
This new iPhone case is said to “shed its glossy appearance for a matte black look” and also introduce a new case-back made of metal. [iPodObserver] seems confident in the photo and reminded readers that they were also responsible for publishing an early back-case photo of the iPhone 3G.
Has Apple ever done matt finish anything? And would Apple really milk the 16GB capacity in a next-gen iPhone? Or would they do 16GB and 32GB next time, the way they did 8 and 16, and 4 and 8 for the previous generations? And will this simply be another iPhone 3G, or will include any (or all) of the guts we’ve been clamoring for in an iPhone HD?
Gizmodo has posted anotherconcept image for the iPhone 4G, and honestly this one does not look too bad. Perhaps the edges are a bit squared but the Macbook look to it seems to be a good idea. This concept is pretty enticing with features like 32 GB of storage, titanium body, 3.2 megapixel camera, and messaging light. The messaging light alone should be enough for Crackberry Kevin to upgrade from his 3G!
So what do you readers think? Is this the direction you’d like to see Apple take with iPhone? Keep in mind this is just a concept and we here at TiPb did not name it the iPhone 4G. Sound off in the comments!
No specks, no blur-cam shots, not even a Kevin Rose post yet, just a few more tiny little details on Pinch Media’s timeline via MacRumors:
1st spotting of the “iPhone 2,1″ device occured in early October 2008
Usage picked up in mid-December 2008
A few dozen distinct “iPhone 2,1″ devices have been detected
Almost exclusively located in south San Francisco Bay Area
Both AT&T and Wi-Fi connections
Dear Apple, CrackBerry Kevin got that wonderful pre-release BlackBerry Bold last year, and he will never let the rest of us live it down, so for the sake of all things righteous, just, and uber-cool, howsabout slapping an iPhone Mark 3 (iPhone HD?) in some bubblewrap and fedexing it our way? We don’t even care if cut/copy and paste is working yet, b’okay?
MacRumors is reporting that both the recent iPhone OS 2.2.1 release, and ad serving reports from Pinch Media show an iPhone model 2,1. The original iPhone was 1,1, the iPhone 3G was 1,2, so if accurate this numbering would not indicate the small bump of the iPhone 3G, but a real next generation device update (similar to the recent, revised iPod touch, which earned it’s own 2,1 model last fall).
Imagination Technologies has quietly slipped out word this week of a new mobile chip known as the PowerVR SGX543. [...] In practice, the technology is powerful enough to push 35 million polygons per second and 1 billion pixels per second and can thus easily drive HD resolution video output, including when 3D is involved.
HD aside, any gamers looking forward to that kind of quad-core, super graphical powered fun?
No sooner do we mention how Apple may need to ramp up iPhone 3.0 in response to the Palm Pre, than we find this little gem via ZDNet (which MacRumors is backing up):
iPhone 3.0 will support Quad-Core Processors.
Yeah, we fell off our chairs as well. But Apple did buy chip designers PA Semi and license both ARM and PowerVR, so the chips could very well be what we get the next time Apple (hopefully Steve Jobs!) takes the stage and pulls an iPhone from his pocket.
As ZDNet rightly points out, the current iPhone already rivals dedicated gaming portables in power, imagine that gone Quad-Core (would make for a nifty iPhone HD as well, now wouldn’t it?)
Okay, well, only for the first few seconds at the very beginning when Dieter proves HTC pretty much made a point of matching the iPhone 3G form factor exactly. Same height. Same width. Same depth. Of course, it’s plastic resistive screen isn’t the same as the glass capacitive screen of the iPhone — it’s 800×480! (Compared to the iPhone’s 480×320), and it packs an auto-focus 5 megapixel camera… (Along with TouchFlo 3D, about which we’ve done video all our own…)
Now, HTC has said that this device isn’t coming to the US, but TiPb is still hoping Apple rises up an matches at least some of the Touch HD’s specs with an iPhone HD of their very own. HTC’s already shown the hardware can fit the package, and Apple’s already shown they can deliver the content…
We’re just saying…
(Make sure you watch the video through to its bitter-sweet ending. We laughed, we cried, we created a new beverage game around watch-spotting…)
The current generation of iPhone, iPod Touch, and pretty much all mobile devices max out at last generation 802.11g WiFi speeds. Could the next generation finally catch up? They’d need something that packed all that speed and range into a pretty tiny chip… Luckily,
Engadget says such a chip is already becoming available:
Broadcom has announced its BCM4329, one of the first mobile 802.11n solutions on the block. On top of delivering up to 50Mbps of real-world WiFi throughput on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, the darned thing throws in Bluetooth, an FM receiver, and an FM transmitter, too — in other words, everything but the kitchen sink, where the “kitchen sink” is the cellular radio itself.
Since TiPb is still predicting an iPhone HD for 2009, and 802.11n was part of that prediction (we’ll need it to stream 800×480 video!), we’ll just say it right now: yes please!
Earlier this month, TiPb threw it’s hat in the ring of next generation handset speculation by predicting Apple would announce an iPhone HD in 2009. It just made sense to us, and apparently it’s beginning to make sense to others as well.
What happened? New York Times writer John Markoff dropped a rumor bomb:
The [unnamed search engine] company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?
Jesus Diaz over at Gizmodo seems to be thinking what we’re thinking as well:
here in Gizmodo we are thinking about an iPhone HD with an updated 800 x 480 pixel display, probably coming in 2009.
So, is this just another wunderkind spoofing his or her web browser for lulz and chaos? Or is Steve Jobs already carrying around the prototype iPhone HD in his pocket, practicing the Keynote Boom! for WWDC 2009?
