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iPhone 4 Rumors Rumble
padraic_93 writes "Information has become available which reveals development is underway for the new iPhone 4, as well as suggestions of features and Apple's plans for the phone.
A report on PinchMedia, which made repeated use of the term 'iPhone 4,' was cited on the website MacRumors, though the website admitted that such reports can often be forged. The report also made allusions to a 'Corporate Event' planned for June 28th — July 2nd 2010, which have been taken as referring to the next WWDC."
A related rumor holds that Apple has ordered 40-45 million 5-megapixel cameras, which might hint at new functionality.
Not to be rude, but really, who cares? Must we have a story every time Steve Jobs sneezes? Yeah, that's what technology companies do — they release new versions.
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Maybe they are only making ~21 million phones like they did with the current generation (according to the article).
What about the other 20 million cameras you ask? Well surely one facing the user as well as the rear camera, so that you can video call - functionality still lacking from the current lineup.
Tom...
Seriously, why is this news? We all know that a new revision will come down the road at some point. The only "new" information here (for me at least) is the ordering of the 5mp cameras...
What I found more interesting than what's posted here, is what Engadget reported yesterday:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/23/apple-planning-event-for-january-with-high-res-iphone-or-small/
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
I'm not buying it, rumor has it that they'll be updating the iPhone sometime after version 4 is released... safer to wait.
Help & Account -> Classic Index -> Sections, mark the radio button below the red circle on the Apple line, no more Apple stories.
As much as you might hate Apple, it's still a technology company and Slashdot has an entire SECTION devoted to it. If you don't like it, don't have it on your index.
Stop whinging.
LOL. In case you've been sleeping under a rock in a different galaxy, here's a quick update: A) Slashdot is about, among other things, technology. B) Apple is a technology company. C) There ARE people who read this site, who are interested in the next iPhone. How dare they post an item about technology on Slashdot. It's completely insane!
Part of The Apple Product Cycle.
Slashdot is one of those "Mac Internet forums" described therein. Or do you think that it is a coincidence that Slashdot's sections are:
* Main
* Apple
* AskSlashdot
* Book Reviews
* Developers
* Games
* Hardware
* IT
* Idle
* Index
* Interviews
* Linux
* Mobile
* Politics
* Science
* Technology
* YRO
Linux? HA!
Linux is a topic here only to attract more M$ haters.
When was the last time we had a story about Linus or RMS sneezing? See what I mean? Exactly!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
by the incessant Apple rumor-mongering lately. I love Apple products but I don't need to hear about every little detail. Is it really a surprise to anyone that Apple is preparing to upgrade its hardware to something comparable to the Droid or the forthcoming Nexus One? Frankly I'd rather be surprised but here I am reading this article, right? Now I feel self-loathing setting in... Great!
Now that there's legit competition for the iPhone in the form of the Droid (and most likely the Nexus One as well) obviously Apple needs to improve their product offering. The amount of info in this rumor is about a sneeze worth.
What about the current generation of iPod touch which is missing the camera - and every man and his dog was expecting it to have one. Or even the tablet that is likely to be coming out next year. Apple does make devices other than the iPhone.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
is having a version that can work on either GSM or CDMA based on an inter-changable carrier module.
That would unlease the iPhone from AT&T and permit it to be used on a network that can support the load.
I still get irritated that AT&T tries to counter Verizon with that stupid Post-card covered coverage map. Verizon doesn't say anything about AT&T's voice coverage ... they only remark on the piss poor 3G coverage (needed for data). AT&T is trying to compare Apples to Aston Martins.
... development is underway for the new iPhone 4...
I hate to break it to you but development for iPhone 4 was probably underway, oh, about a year or more ago. Heck, development for iPhone 5 features are probably underway right now as well. Apple is, among many things, a very forward-thinking company (like virtually all companies of their size and success) so they are developing many things that are years (plural) away from release.
In other words, this is news how? Who here didn't already know that development was underway?
I was only commenting to a mate a few weeks ago that i was supprised at the lack of iphone 4 rumours but it seems its begun.. I'm not big on alot of the BS from Apple, but the annual rumour mill on the next iphone is always a load of fun. I only have a few requests, make it easier to get the freakin sim card out, make the touch screen extend past the screen so u can scroll etc off the screen without your fingers getting in the road and i'll be a happy chappy!
[citation needed] for phones taking 12MP photos. Additionally, in the case of camera phones, the true upgrades need to be done on the CMOS sensors, which are terrible in anything but broad daylight. "HD Video" from a camera phone is, as far as I have seen, almost always a joke as well. yes technically it may have more than 480 horizontal lines of resolution, but the quality has always lagged severely behind digital cameras and camcorders, and throwing more megapixels at it isn't the answer. The issue is that everyone wants devices that are smaller, thinner, have longer battery life, and can withstand abuse. Pro photographers and videographers still use huge cameras for a reason.
MP counts say nothing. I have used a 1.3MP digital camera from the early 00's that takes better pictures than every camera phone I ever used. Unless you get a phone with optical zoom you can almost be guaranteed the quality will be crap.
1 good megapixel is better than 8 crap ones
I still don't understand how a company like Apple can get an award from Greenpeace for being environmentally friendly when they produce such disposable crap and go out of their way to enforce planned obsolescense.
They got that because they have an environmental policy. Doesn't really matter what's in the policy, but Greenpeace condemned them for not having one, then Apple released a policy, and Greenpeace rejoiced, even though Apple hadn't actually changed anything they were doing.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
In other news, Microsoft planning successor to Xbox 360, Nintendo planning successor to Wii, Sony planning successor to PS3, Microsoft successor to Windows 7, bears shit in the woods, pope catholic, etc
"With mainstream phones going high with 12+MP en HD video cameras, frankly the 5MB I heard about the new phone are ludicrously pathetic."
Other way around, actually. A 12 MP (or even a 5 MP) sensor in a cell phone is a ludicrously pathetic marketing trick. As a practical matter, a typical cell phone lens is going to give you about 2 MP. Pairing that with a high resolution sensor just means you're measuring the blur more accurately, and wasting storage and processing capacity. Note - there ARE some (rare) cell phones that use bigger lenses, and those might actually get 3 or 4 MP, but definitely not 12.
You can measure the MTF yourself if you want. Last time I had this argument with somebody he actually posted a picture from his 5 MP cell phone camera and we compared with an appropriately blurred version from my 6 MP SLR. Guess what? His picture had an effective resolution of about 2 MP (and horrible noise). Which brings up another point - small lenses will always give you poor low light performance, but you make it much, much worse by trying to capture an crazy number of pixels to boot.
The cell phone appears to be the last bastion of the megapixel myth. Camera manufacturers have started giving up that marketing tactic, with newer cameras going to less resolution and emphasizing noise performance. If the rumors are true, it's actually too bad Apple has given into this ploy... although it's probably hard to source lower resolution sensors now.
Agreed. Not only that, but increasing the megapixels while having the same sensor size leads to more noise. I think 3MP is a good sweet spot for phone cameras. Just work on the optics and you could have something usable!
Especially with "Snappy" for the iPhone (in Cydia) you can bring up the camera app ready to take pictures in under a second.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Will it be able to make phone calls?
Windows is not the answer.
Windows is the question.
The answer is "NO."
Pro photographers and videographers still use huge cameras for a reason.
And the #1 reason: All their old analog lenses fit the new digital cameras (from the same companies). Lock-in baby.
Apple is going to release a new version of the iPhone in the summer? Wow, how surprising and unprecedented
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Is better than the one you left at home.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Greenpeace isn't in the ecology business. They're in the high profile environmental crusade business.
If things changed, they'd be out of business.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
But seriously, that's where the action is for open platform phones.
I'm sorry but I really have to say this: 95% of people with a cell today don't know what an open platform is. Of the other 5% a good 90% of them don't care.
Open only matters if you really want to make something out of what you're given. Most people can't be bothered to do more with what they have in their phones today. Why do you think Twitter is still such a joke to most of the people who own cells?
This is the same reason that open source on the PC means so little to most people.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Indeed - but then by this reasoning, why is it news in the first place that a possible future version of an existing Apple product might have a 5 MP camera? If MP isn't relevant, this shouldn't be newsworthy in the first place.
Are you kidding? IBM? Open? They are by their very nature NOT open (with the exception of Java to push their services). I almost choked on my coffee.
I remember buying my Kyocera 6035 PalmOS smartphone in 2001, so the smartphone craze goes back a bit farther than 6 years. To think that phone lasted me almost 4 years.
I'm holding out for the iPhone 7....
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Just look at the features available in other smart phones for the last 6 years... Since the big update for the 3GS phone was the addition of this thing called "cut and paste", I predict the next big change will be in the hardware realm, where Apple will invent some way of sticking a thing called a MicroSD memory card into the phone! Innovation at Apple will abound evermore!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Given the lenses that most of these camera phones use, typically 1 megapixel is more than enough. These cameras are Diffraction LImited Systems and thus throwing more pixels at it in the same size solves nothing.
To put it in simple language, the resolution limit of the camera is due to the diameter of the lens, not the number of pixels on the sensor. This is part of the reason why Canon went from the 14Megapixel sensor on the G10 to an 11 megapixel sensor on the G11. The G10 was diffraction limited, while the G11 roughly matched between the lens system and sensor. Thus, the two will produce pictures with equivalent resolution, despite one having fewer pixels than the other.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
MP counts say nothing. I have used a 1.3MP digital camera from the early 00's that takes better pictures than every camera phone I ever used. Unless you get a phone with optical zoom you can almost be guaranteed the quality will be crap.
1 good megapixel is better than 8 crap ones
I've had a bit different experience, although I do agree that the MP count is mostly meaningless. High MP actually seriously drops the quality because of the tiny sensors can't get enough light.
Nokia seems to have the upper hand in mobile cameras and once again these phones are not something most americans end up seeing. Most of their top of the line phones have had Carl Zeiss optics for a while now. The tiny sensor is still a problem so any low light situation creates ugly grainy images. However with proper lighting (or with Xenon flash like in the old Nokia N82) you can get some really good pics. Nokia pretty much stopped increasing the sensor size a few years ago at 5 MP and has been trying to improve the quality since.
If you can figure out how to get a raw image out of a camera phone then be my guest. They're usually not accessible. If anything, the sharpening steps that are applied act to cover up the low acquired resolution.
Camera manufacturers get away with it because almost nobody ever looks at their phone photos at anything close to full resolution. You can easily see the softness in a camera phone shot compared one from a decent camera, comparing full screen on a notebook. That's around 1.3 MP. Blown up full screen on a 1080P high def TV is still only a touch over 2 MP.
So when a camera phone can show full quality, no visible softness on a 1080p monitor then maybe it will be time to go to more than 2 MP.
Had to post all that anonymously, hey?
First off, I'm talking about resolution. I thought I made that clear. Resolution is the ability to distinguish (to resolve) two objects spaced a particular distance apart. I am NOT talking about image quality.
Now, it is quite possible your 12 MP cell phone camera produces visually higher quality images than other cell cameras, or even point and shoot cameras. That does NOT mean it is producing 12 MP worth of resolution, or anything like it.
A DSLR with a very good lens (or a medium/large format with a very good lens) IS the correct item to compare with. We're looking for the best gold standard possible. Again, we are comparing only resolving power. If your 12 MP sensor is not matched with a lens that is capable of providing a sufficiently sharp image then your sensor is being wasted. Again, it might be producing a very nice image, but an image that does not have 12 MP of resolving power.
Have you looked at your pictures zoomed in sufficiently so that you're actually seeing one image pixel per pixel on your screen?
Now, looking at the Pixon 12, it turns out it DOES NOT have a typical cell phone camera lens. That lens has an area that is many times what most cell phones have, and looks like it might even be made out of glass (instead of plastic). The thing even looks like it has multiple lens elements, and might even zoom! Of COURSE that's going to look good compared to any typical cell camera, and against point and shoots too. That IS a point and shoot lens. Again, notice in my post how I said "typical cell phone lens." Also note that we're discussing the iPhone, which has a typical cell phone lens, and is not going to be putting one of those monsters on.
I can see why you posted as an AC. Your post really sounds like you're trying to justify your purchase. Well, to make you feel better, that thing might actually justify a 4-5 MP sensor, far above what a typical cell camera does, and better than most point and shoots. If you take a picture of a standard test chart under standard conditions and post it, we can tell you.
Next time take a more careful read through the post you're replying to, try to understand the actual issue at hand, and remember to keep your temper under control.
Many other companies are mentioned on all the big sites. The crunchpad gets as much coverage as the long fabled Apple Tablet. Remember just before the Droid came out? Gizmodo, Engadget......they were all fizzing from the bunghole over it! "oh, that iPhone is shit, droid DOES baby!" yak yak yak. Now, the REAL Google phone, the Nexus One is suddenly the hot shit, and the Droid is overlooked as "slow" or "ugly" etc etc. By the same sites that were crazy about it, just a week ago! We get one story about the iPhone 4, after the iPhone has been attacked over AT&T issues (it works fine on any of our networks for me here in New Zealand), how its screen sucks compared to the Droid/Nexus One, how the app store is so horribly locked down, and thats why its suffering so horribly, while all the other open platforms lead the charge into mobile computing.....like the Ovi store! Or the Android marketplace! Oh Apple, you really shot yourself in the foot with your closed App store!
I'm a big Apple fan, huge! But I dont call myself a fanboy. I dont assume Apple makes golden products, and find faults with them. Though, I often find myself wishing Apple designed MORE products though, I absolutely hate the UI on all digital cameras, HDTV's etc that I've used. I can only imagine how great Apple versions of these products COULD be. Then, the market would of course try and catch up with better UI. It sure seems to me that most of the great products of this decade ARE from Apple. I'm always open to other companies of course, but none seem to be anywhere near as consistent as Apple. Who else has a bunch of stellar products? Microsoft? Some people love their Xbox 360, or their mice, but cmon! Samsung? Sony? Sony has been beeped for decades now! I love my PS3, I really do, but the company is incredibly messed up!
I think you have to face it, yes, you built a faster computer for less money, congratulations. But, if you could pick a couple items of tech that this decade will be remembered for, I'm sure the first half was dominated by the iPod, and the latter half of the decade by the iPhone.
I'd love to hear from others what their gadgets of the decade have been, maybe make it two like I did, one for the first half, one for the second.
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