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Next iPhone — Front-Facing Camera, A4 Processor
As a quarter million pre-orderers wait for their iPad on Saturday, the millions of iPhone users can start speculating in earnest about the next gen iPhone. The rumors start by saying "It will be dubbed the 'iPhone HD' and will include a double resolution display, a front facing camera, multitasking support, and the blazing A4 processor."
...because ?
.... how Apple always manages to thrive upon rumors instead of upon "classical" ads. You may call such rumors "hypes", and they prolly are. Still, they do constitute remarkable publicity feats.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Don't worry, the other 10000 rumors will all get their own Slashdot articles too.
The iPhone's refusal to adopt Flash, coupled with its huge popularity, is among the greatest forces driving development away from Flash and towards alternate platforms. This is a good thing.
If there's one thing history teaches about rumors regarding upcoming Apple products, it's that nobody talking knows anything. If anyone gets any Apple-product prediction right it's because enough monkeys pounding on typewriters will eventually write Shakespeare.
Remember how the iPad was supposed to have a front-facing camera, an awesome chess game, full 1080p HD video, solar charging, biometric security, etc. - and wasn't going to just be a fat iPod Touch? Yeah.
Sure the next iPhone will be an improvement. Duh. Anything more than that is pure rampant rabid speculation.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Good Grief. I have a first-gen iPhone, and will consider upgrading when the next version comes out. So you can expect that I'm excited about the possible specs on. But, really, the linked article is a ridiculous i-gasm. If you are going to report this stuff, stick to the original sources, rather than linking to second-hand articles that lace their copy with unabashed fanboy-ism. If you want color commentary along with your tech news, check out the relevant post on Engadget.
What actually kicked off this latest wave of speculation was an an article from the Wall Street Journal, stating that Apple is developing a CDMA version of the iphone for Verizon. The WSJ is a fairly reputable source that wouldn't print unless they had some solid evidence, so this should be interpreted as a bit more than a typical rumor.
is there some reason why a camera cannot be flexible to face whatever direction the user wants?
Moving parts, hinges, even rotating mirrors, are failure-prone and take a lot of space. Most phone with front-facing cameras use two smaller lenses instead and leave out any moving parts -- my 4-year-old Sony Ericsson K610 has a VGA front camera for videoconferencing and a 2MP rear-facing camera for proper pictures. I am pretty sure that the iPhone will use the same concept.
Ever use a Windows Mobile device? Background tasks on mobile hardware should be avoided whenever possible. Not because it's hard to multi-task, mind you—it's just hard to enjoy a smartphone when you have to constantly hunt for random process that are killing your battery life and/or slowing your phone to a crawl.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
You don't understand - this is slashdot. The rules work like this:
1. Dredge up some random rumour site from the depths of the internet with possible Apple product info. This is usually wild speculation and based on the Mountain-Dew-fueled ramblings of an Apple fan.
2. Bash this "finished product" on slashdot because it doesn't do x, y or z, or because it doesn't run Linux and use totally patent free technology.
3. Complain that Apple is getting free publicity and that they are mentioned too much.
4. Bring up comparisons to Apple in totally unrelated stories. Go to step 3 several times.
5. Apple announces product.
6. Complain that product is nothing like the rumour sites *guaranteed* it would be.
7. Complain that it's locked down (again) and that anyone who buys one for any reason is a clueless sheep.
8. Claim that the product is "proof" that Apple will soon fall.
9. Wait for netcraft to confirm it.
10. Assuming non-confirmation after two quarters of continued profitability for Apple, and large sales numbers of the "doomed" product, go to step 1.
Better 3G chip to go with all the carriers that have rolled out various kinds of HSDPA
Same CPU as the iPad (or more likely a version that cuts back the speed and power consumption to account for the smaller battery on the iPhone)
No multitasking (regardless of battery life concerns, Apple would need to "ruin" its perfect UI with some kind of task switcher feature)
No front facing camera (video calling has not taken off in the way phone carriers would like, especially in the US. AFAIK its almost non-existent on AT&T)
Rewritten bootloaders and security to make jailbreaking and unlocking harder
I suspect 802.11n will appear IF apple can find a low power chip that doesn't require devoting too much of the internal space of the iPhone to the antenna.
I predict that there will still be no support for:
Loading apps without going through the app store
Fast 2D drawing APIs (CoreSurface or whatever it is) being able to be used in official apps
External keyboards of any kind
Any peripheral where Apple doesn't get a cut from every unit sold.
Any kind of ability for apps to share data files with each other
Any kind of ability to load arbitrary files onto an iPhone (i.e. a generic "documents" folder)
I also predict that there will continue to be many reasons Apple will reject your app submission, all of which exist as official policy at Apple (and are known to the app store reviewers) and none of which Apple will ever disclose to developers. One of these "unwritten rules" is likely "no apps that mean less revenue for Apple carrier partners such as AT&T"
App Store is a seriously controlled environment and they already impose strict guidelines for developers. How does an idle application even eat up more battery? It's not like your RAM needs more power if it's used a little bit more. The background app doesn't need to do any drawing and is usually on pause (unless it needs to do certain tasks in the background, and then it makes sense).
Because the apps you want multitasking for aren't idle. That's the whole point. If an app doesn't have anything to do in the background, then who cares if it quits when you click the home button? Aside from a slightly longer start time, you won't even notice. The whole idea is to have IM apps that run constantly and music apps like Pandora and Last.fm that continue playing when you switch to another app.
Because you have to travel the menus to locate your app you just switched out from and load up whatever you were doing, and even to perform a quick copy-paste you need to:
1) save your document
2) close app 1
3) locate app 2
4) open app 2
5) copy
6) close app 2
7) locate app 1
8) load up the document you were working with
9) scroll to the point you wanted to paste to
10) paste
11) do the same again because your copypaste missed something
Yeah, seems really convenient and simple.
Your list has nothing to do with multitasking... It's entirely about switching between applications. If today's iPhone had 3rd party multitasking, the steps you listed wouldn't change, except:
Step 1: I haven't seen an iPhone app with a "save" gesture. Maybe some of them exist, but most apps just save your changes automatically.
Steps 8 & 9: Good iPhone apps (which, admittedly, is a small set) take care of these for you by saving their state when you quit.