Firstly, we can be certain that it will not have a ‘4’ in its name. It is considered to be unlucky in China and this is a market Apple would not want to mess up. We saw the Psion 3 and 5 series, the Palm III and V series, but you never see a 4. Never.
It won’t be called 4G either, and not just because of the reason above, but because 4G means something else entirely and that would cause all sorts of problems.
Apple needs to up the game again to keep the momentum going and a small update will disappoint everyone and gives the others an opportunity to catch up, but building on the 3GS is no easy task. What Apple does have in its favour is the ability to take technology others already off and bring to an audience who largely ignored it in the first place.
Smartphone apps have been around for many years, but Apple owned it with a new method of distribution and now dominates this area.
Indeed, the smartphone has been around for years, but Apple brought the concept to the attention of the world in an incredibly short time.
Video calling was the main feature behind the first 3G networks, but it bombed to the point that almost no-one uses the facility these days. Some believe that Apple will add this feature in the next iPhone and this looks like a good shout. People will suddenly be aware of the facility and if priced right video calling could become hugely popular. I can certainly imagine myself calling home when away on business and video calling my children which is something I don’t do now because of the price. The main obstacle would be network load, but Apple has little care for network capacity and the networks have no choice but to go along with these new data hungry features and keep their fingers crossed all goes OK.
We can expect more memory, faster performance and likely a higher resolution screen, but what else can Apple bring to the party? I suspect that a slimmer design will be part of the package and the much touted iPhone mini could see the light of day, but alas I am not holding my breath for improvements in core areas such as battery life, call quality and the speakerphone. PIM is likely to be improved (at last) and this would be a classic Apple move to increase the user’s ability to do things at a slow pace.
As to what else we can expect there are two ways it could go. Apple will either hit us with features we cannot even dream of at the moment, or features that work in a new way, or it will be slow innovation that adds little excitement. Somehow it will probably be a mix of the two, but either way iPhone 4 (no, not 4!) will fly off the shelves.
The iPhone concept pictured is by Rodolphe Desmare.
Shaun, you say ‘Apple needs to up the game again to keep the momentum going and a small update will disappoint everyone and gives the others an opportunity to catch up, but building on the 3GS is no easy task.’
Some would argue that others have already caught up. I spoke to two people in the last week who were rock-solid iPhone evangelists a year ago. Both said to me that if Apple don’t up the game they may well go with Android. I’m not saying that they no longer like their iPhones, just that there is now a genuine choice which is tempting them. It will be interesting to see what happens.
I am seeing the same around my work Graham, most people are very anti-WM but are ‘getting over’ their iphones (apple in general) and interested in Android..
The iPad was a big letdown and not the dream machine many had hoped for.
It’ll be hard to change the world again and with the brand new iPad being a large iPod Touch I can’t see the new iPhone being a revolution. How can Apple have a fanfare over the revolutionary iPad and then just 3 months later launch the miraculous new iPhone that makes the iPad look 10 years old. I just can’t see it.
What I can see is making the iPhone a more super phone than it is. VideoCalling being the big one with enahnced calendar etc to catch up with the iPad. I imagine Apple focusing/selling the iPhone(not)4 as a phone this time round and not a mini computer. Just my guess but I’m trying to make some sense of the larger Apple strategy.
Sid