Second-gen iPhone Confirmed?

gadgetopia writes "ITWire is reporting that the Taiwanese manufacturer Quanta has seemingly confirmed a second generation of the Apple iPhone. Another report referenced by the article suggests the new model could come with a different case design. 'Quanta and Apple already enjoy a strong relationship, with Quanta building both MacBooks and iPods for Apple to sell worldwide, although Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry) is reported to be building the first batch of iPhones due to arrive in the US market by the end of June. Reports suggest Quanta has received an order for 5 million iPhones which are to be shipped in September ... Presumably this could entail a 3G or even 3.5G HSDPA iPhone for European markets due to get the iPhone by the end of the year, or even the addition of more memory - imagine a 16Gb or even 32Gb iPhone, unlikely though those will be this year mainly due to the high cost of 16 or 32Gb of flash memory.'"

Can we please get out the next OS first!

[N3WBI3]

Rather than a very expensive, albeit, nice phone can we please put out the OS we were origionally expecting this quarter..

Re:Can we please get out the next OS first!

[catbutt]

Tiger is working well for me. An update would be nice, I suppose, but frankly I don't really care that much.

I'm far more interested in seeing apple jump into the phone business and keep everyone else playing catch up.

Re:

[Ramble]

Sorry, but catch up? The smartphones currently out there do way more than an iPhone does. It's too expensive for the casual user and no business would use it. The whole phone is basically an expensive gimmick only the brute hardcore Apple fans would buy.

Re:Can we please get out the next OS first!

[shilly]

1) The two segments are business and consumer, not business and casual users. Plenty of consumers have a $350 iPod and a phone worth (at least) $150. Quite a lot have a BlackBerry as well. It seems reasonable to assume some will prefer to have one device to replace the first two, if not the third as well.
2) Your view of what's useful and what's a gimmick for a phone is bizarre. Most mobiles are pretty shit at their core job of making and receiving calls -- it's a major PITA trying to merge two calls for example -- getting this kind of feature really really right is what counts. Visual voicemail, to take another example, is a step-change improvement in vmx management. Plenty of business users will be very keen to get their hands on those features, although whether they'll be able to or not will generally depend on factors beyond their control.

Re:Can we please get out the next OS first!

[DesertBlade]

Current generation BlackBerries can play media and are cell phones, they provide all the features at less cost. Blackberry may be the standard in business, but they are moving into to the consumer markets with the Pearl, that is what I have and I see them more and more.

Re:

[MikeFM]

As somebody that has used, sold, and supported BlackBerries I have to hope that Apple can create a phone that does a better job with less issues because BBs are ugly and often difficult for users to use. They're not bad exactly - they're just not great. I'd love to see a BlackBerry response to the iPhone that produces a BB that is really powerful, nice looking, and easy to use.

Of course, so far, I'm not sure the iPhone is even going to be that great. We'll have to wait and see how it handles real world usag

Re:

[shilly]

You seem to be missing my point with your first sentence in exactly the way that the first poster did. It's not a question of whether it is, in principle, possible to play media and use cell phone functionality on your BlackBerry, but how well those features are implemented. iPhones, as with virtually all things Apple, break only a little bit of new ground in terms of "things no-one has ever tried to do before" but break significant new ground in terms of "making this idea that's sort of been around for a w

the Mom test

[Gary W. Longsine]

I plan to test the iPhone by handing the iPhone to my Mom and asking her to call my brother. I suspect that she'll be able to do it, with no training. If I'm right, then the iPhone will be quite popular. Apple will wind up selling their "smart phone" to people who would never buy any of the "smart phones" on the market today, because they are too difficult to use.

Re:the Mom test

[blhack]

I disagree with your test. A better one would be to hand it to her for a week, then try to take it away and see what happens. I have a blackberry, for the first few days or so, the interface was VERY strange to me, and it took a lot of pecking around before I figured out the philosophy of how everything was layed out. Now, I don't think i will ever own a different phone. Navigating through other peoples phones now is a pain, nothing is organized with any sort of logic, and the menus look like those of a fisher price toy.

Re:the Mom test

[Captain Splendid]

Except the difference between yours and GP's post is that his test is a more reliable way of seeing how these will sell, not how well the poeple that get one enjoy it.

Re:

[StikyPad]

That's the most ridiculous qualification for success I've ever heard. "If my mom can open the front door, she'll love the house!" I've never seen anyone who didn't know how to place a call. Push the buttons, hit Send. My 5 year old knows how to do that -- I'm not kidding -- and I've only told him once. He has a harder time remembering his mom's phone number and tying his shoes.

This is a test of basic functionality. If mom can't make a call, that's a bad sign. If she can, it only means the device is a

Re:

[Phroggy]

This is a test of basic functionality. If mom can't make a call, that's a bad sign. If she can, it only means the device is a usable phone.

The implication here is that many current "smart phones" fail this basic test, and therefore a lot of consumers won't buy them, because they can't figure out how to make them work when they see them in the store. If the iPhone passes this test while most other "smart phones" on the market fail, the iPhone will sell like hotcakes.

Re:

[StikyPad]

I understand your implication, but like I said, it's a barrier to entry. Difficult to make calls means likely failure. Easy to make calls means "now show me why I should spend $700 instead of taking the free phone my carrier is offering."

That said, it may be a success based on the status of Apple alone. I selfishly hope it's not, but mostly because I find a large touchscreen horribly impractical, and I don't want to see that feature spread to every other phone the way cameras did a couple of years ago.

Re:

[dantheman82]

Which lends itself to a great ad slogan:
Our "smart phones" are smart, even when you are not!

Re:

[timeOday]

Your view of what's useful and what's a gimmick for a phone is bizarre. Most mobiles are pretty shit at their core job of making and receiving calls

Then it's too bad the iPhone won't have any buttons for dialing (and for that matter texting). That's a very basic problem.

Re:Can we please get out the next OS first!

[DECS]

It actually displays whatever buttons would make sense in the given context.

How many tiny physical buttons do you think it needs? I've used everything from a Treo to a BBerry, and can't say physical buttons push my buttons. Dialing numbers or mixed number/text is annoying with a full mini keyboard, and is painful with T9. I for one welcome our new touch screen overlords.

Recall seeing any keyboards on Star Trek? We have to make the move at some point in order to get into the future, and its not like Microsoft is going to usher in something new.

Another point of interest is that nobody is crying about the LG Prada phone, which uses a similar arrangement of a touch screen, albeit using the horrific Flash Lite.

Origins: Why the iPhone is ARM, and isn't Symbian [roughlydrafted.com]
Apple iPhone vs LG Prada KE850 [roughlydrafted.com]

Re:

[Sancho]

It's definitely a preference thing. I have a PPC6700, and I simply can't stand the lack of tactile feedback when making calls. It wouldn't be a big deal if either the voice dialing capabilities or the address book were better. Making a call is a pain in the butt, and typing in my voice mail password (the number one time that I need to press the numbers, anyway) is horrible. 99% of the people I call are in my recent calls list, which is very easily accessible.

That said, I knew going in that it was going

Re:Can we please get out the next OS first!

[Mike Buddha]

Recall seeing any keyboards on Star Trek? We have to make the move at some point in order to get into the future, and its not like Microsoft is going to usher in something new.

I'm sorry to be the one to burst your bubble but Star Trek isn't real. It's version of a keyboardless future isn't real. This future comes from the same minds that gave us Tachyon Fields, Phasers, and Transporters (also not real). It's not the product of any real cultural/technological process in which keys were determined to be inefficient, ineffective, or obsolete. It's surprising how often I have to point out that Star Trek is fiction on Slashdot. It's sad, really.

Re:

[DECS]

Hi Mike,

It was a joke. I'll point them out next time so you don't get sad.

Dan

Re:Can we please get out the next OS first!

[@madeus]

As an early adopter I've owned (and occasionally trialed through work) loads of new phones - and developed 3rd party software for a couple (for fun).

The software on most phones is appaling, no attention is paid to user experience. They are not built by people who understand how to put together a good UI or a robust and appropriate interface for a mobile device - and I can't imagine they've gone through any sort of meaningful usability testing.

Smart phones are showcase of poorly designed software, with inconsistent behaviour, over complicated and badly organised system settings and unresponsive, sluggish and often unstable user interfaces - that are typically only half-implimented. This only started to be really visible once phones started getting complicated (as it's easy to make a simple system, like the early Nokia UI, easy to use).

I'm sure my last 4 or 5 phones will technically have a lot more features than the Apple Phone when it comes out - I've got 5 year old phones that I'm sure will be able to claim a richer feature set - but in the same way I've had other, more 'powerful' MP3 players than my iPod, if the user experience is right, that's more important to me. I'd rather have a smaller subset of features that just work really well, rather than bunch of confusing settings and overly complicated menus and options that insist on getting in the way rather than just behaving in a simple, minimalist manner and doing what I'm actually likely to WANT it to do.

I hope that in demonstrating how to get software right (which I have every confidence Apple will do - given their track record with things like the Newton) manufacturers will learn and develop similarly user-experience focused platforms with a similar level of polish. But I doubt it, after all they didn't learn from the Newton and the development of Palm OS has been royally screwed up.

As much as I don't want to sound like a fanboy, it's actually depressing how good the the UI on the Newton was when I think that no PDA or smartphone I've owned or even heard of since (and that must be about 20) has even been HALF as good. Sony were making some great hardware till they halted Clie development (the PEG-TH55 is still an awesome peice of kit, several years on) and the latest Nokia Smartphone range is interesting (I've got an E61 ATM), and the Sharp Zarus PDA range is really nifty too, but without good software, the hardware is just wasted.

Nokia - kiss your Smartphone biz away

[hirschma]

I also have a Nokia E61, too. Great hardware; the software and interfaces, well, not so much. The damned thing was put together by a graphics designer, not an interface designer, and is the opposite of intuitive.

To start out with, it is shameful that Nokia couldn't ship a product with POP/IMAP client that actually works. I mean, it isn't like there aren't many reference products out there, many with their code available for perusal. They had to have known that the mail app was broken, unless they did no bet

Re:

[StikyPad]

demonstrating how to get software right (which I have every confidence Apple will do - given their track record with things like the Newton)

Maybe it's just me, but pointing to a market failure [wikipedia.org] as an example of how to do things right seems, uh.. well, let's just say it's not very convincing.

Re:

[@madeus]

I don't see that market success is consistantly correlated to quality of software.

That said, I don't think that's a good reason not to have good software.

Re:

[StikyPad]

While I appreciate your concern for my reading skills, "not as successful as Apple had hoped" is clearly a nice way of saying "a failure." Aside from that, Wikipedia is hardly an authoritative reference, so arguing over what it says is an exercise in futility. If you're going to try to prove me wrong, at least link to something more authoritative. Like this [windowsitpro.com], perhaps. Although "Apple CEO Gil Amelio is also taking a close look at Newton, the disastrous 'personal digital assistant' that has yet to turn a p

The wider market consists of regular people....

[NDPTAL85]

Yes, catch up. Features are irrelevant when the User Interfaces to use them suck so much that mostly no one uses them. How many owners of Treos, Blackberrys and WM devices use even 40% of the features of their phones? The iPhone's breakthrough UI will enable regular folks to use MORE of their device then they could with other smartphones. So yes, in that regard which just so happens to be the MOST IMPORTANT ONE, the others will all collectively and individually be playing 'catch up'.

Re:

[N3WBI3]

I bought my wife a mack book with Tiger which means I inherited her power book with 10.3. There are many people out there with more than one mac who dont want to buy two upgrades..

Re:

[andy9701]

You can always by the family pack [apple.com], which for Tiger costs $200 (a single user upgrade costs $130) and gets you 5 licenses. That's really a pretty good deal.

Re:

[N3WBI3]

Yes but given one of the machines is already tiger why would I buy the family pack the then update on machine. When they release the next os *then* I will buy it.

Re:Can we please get out the next OS first!

[anagama]

I'm more interested in 10.5 -- multiple desktops finally integrated (not some overpriced add-on or underfeatured free add-on). I can only hope they add middle-click-paste as well, but I'll probably have to wait for 10.6.

Re:

[porcupine8]

This is modded funny, but seriously, middle-click-paste is the one thing that my husband is STILL complaining about since a combination of me and a new job made him switch fully from linux to mac two years ago. Every time he has to copy and paste and I'm around he has to complain about what a pain it is to hit command-c command-v.

But then, I switched from linux five years ago, and I still try to behave as though my mouse had sloppy focus sometimes. That's what Apple needs to add.

Re:

[NNKK]

I have a question. If you actually _need_ a standard Unix system as your primary desktop, why the hell would you buy a Mac in the first place? What possible attraction could there be? You pay a premium for the hardware and get a system that, though it actually _is_ really Unix, despite what you seem to think, differs in some very important ways from most Unix systems.

You seem to be ragging on OS X and its users just because it doesn't do what _you_ want it to. If it doesn't meet your needs, that's fine, but

Re:

[Phroggy]

Applications, applications, applications, applications. You can't run Mac applications on Linux. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice to have some more of Linux's features available on Mac OS X.

Re:

[NNKK]

Apps are not what attracted me to a Mac (though I'll admit I'm an atypical user in many ways). In fact, now that I'm using a Mac, there aren't many "Mac" apps I really use:

I use Mail.app for my personal mail through an accident of history (and it doesn't matter much, as everything's stored on my IMAP server these days), but Thunderbird for work. One of these days I'll transition my personal mail back to Thunderbird, too.

I use Adium for IM, but primarily because gaim doesn't have a native Cocoa port. Really,

Re:

[CyberSnyder]

Baaaa. I really like my iBook and OS X. Baaaaa.

Besides some flakiness in setting up WiFi, my iBook has "just worked" for the past 2.5+ years. Far less headaches than anything Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX or Irix related. When 10.5 comes out, I'll buy a MacBook -- and not because the iBook needs to be replaced. It's just getting more difficult to get time on it without my wife or kids doing something on the laptop. They also prefer it over Windows. Maybe Apple only took half of NeXTStep, but I

Re:Can we please get out the next OS first!

[abigor]

Yes, it really is Unix. It's just a fucked over version, that's all. And it's fucked over in ways that reduce functionality.

Could you elaborate on this? Please be specific. I write and deploy software to Unix (Linux, BSD, and occasionally Solaris) for a living, and I develop on a MacBook. It has served me very well, and I've found no areas in which it's really "fucked over" to reduce functionality. Well, I guess the lack of Gentoo-style start/stop scripts threw me for a bit, but that's not a global Unix thing.

Re:

[Rodness]

Tiger is working well for me. An update would be nice, I suppose, but frankly I don't really care that much.

I totally agree. Tiger is stable and doesn't leave me feeling like there's something missing. I'm intrigued by features in Leopard (notably Time Machine) but other than that, honestly, there's no huge compelling rush to upgrade.

Remember, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Tiger is 2 years old and still most decidedly not broke. Sure, it's got a few quirks, and sure, I will most likely upgrade to Leopard pretty darn soon after it comes out, (well, maybe at 10.5.1) but Tiger is still good enough that I'm n

Re:

[Dr. Sp0ng]

Wow, your Mac has problems. Have you considered that you may have some faulty hardware (likely RAM)? I've been using a Mac for years, pushing it hard while using both File Vault and secure VM, and I've never seen any of these issues.

Seriously, run your RAM through a checker.

always one complainer

[Anonymous Coward]

A phone is much better. No one knows what os you run but everyone will see my iPhone.

Re:

[fishdan]

Well, I tell you what, I'm damn sure not buying a first gen IPhone now. Of course that's gonna screw Apple's sales, but seriously -- if there is a 3g IPhone coming out, I'll wait.

waiting is

[Gary W. Longsine]

AT&T is deploying their 3G network, but you can expect the iPhone to support it when it's widely available, as EDGE Is today. That might be a pretty long wait. Right now, in those few placees you can get 3G in the U.S., you're probably already in or near a "hot spot" with 802.11 access. AT&T does have serious competition since the CDMA carriers in the U.S. have been investing heavily, so perhaps the wait for the current generation of cell phone network technology won't be as long as it historical

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

Was there a "first-gen" iPhone? Did I miss something?

I think we're seeing a groundbreaking marketing strategy from Apple: Announce a new product that's not that much better than the current smartphones we already have, then leak a story about some "second-gen" iPhones that are "just around the corner".

Here's my question: If you knew there was a second generation iPhone coming, would you spend the $499 (or whatever it is) to buy the first generation? Every so often, a technology company will come out wit

Re:

[mixmasta]

Whatchoo talkin'bout Willis? Apple is making money hand over fist and won't be going out of business even if the iphone is a total flop, which it wont be.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

Don't misunderstand, I give Apple credit for pushing out the DRM. We'll have to see how far they get.

My initial post was intellectually lazy. For the time being, I don't use iPods for various reasons, mostly having to do with iTunes.

I do think the part about them leaking a second-generation iPhone before the first one comes out is kind of funny, though.

memory size

[Anonymous Coward]

32Gb is only 4GB. I think you meant 32GB.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant 32GB.

And you meant 32 gibibytes. You're an Apple user, aren't you? Go back to Remedial Prefixes 101 before you embarrass yourself further.

Try Googe

[thegnu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte [wikipedia.org]

You may get the irony in this young troll's comment.

(also, try Googing Googe before you get on my case)

Re:

[Enrique1218]

Ah Slashdot, pedantry at its best.

OpenMoko

[fredan]

And as an alternative there is OpenMoko [openmoko.org] which, of course, runs Linux and is complete open.

fixed it for you...

[Gary W. Longsine]

And as an alternative there is OpenMoko which, of course, runs Linux and is incomplete, although it is open source, so you can help finish it.

one more fix for unintelligibility

[WilliamSChips]

And as an alteran there is OmaDesala which, of course, runs AncientOS and unlike the iPhone can help you ascend.

Re:

[Phroggy]

I always thought ascension was just a cheap trick they thought up as a way to kill Michael Shanks' character without actually killing him, although of course they milked it later. Other sci-fi shows have had similar ideas, but the whole concept of learning how to evolve into a state of pure energy is pretty absurd, and I have trouble suspending my disbelief for that kind of crap.

Re:

[WilliamSChips]

If they did create it to compensate for Shanks' leaving, he must have decided to leave early in season 5. First appearance of Ascension [wikipedia.org]

European Release or Minor Rev?

[Soukyan]

Along with the speculation in the article, I have to simply speculate that the contract is for phones to be sold in another market, such as Europe. Or it could be a minor revision boost to coincide with new iPod revisions or some other flash-based announcement that Apple may make. From a business perspective, I have to think it is the former. I'm still interested to see the first revision of the iPhone on store shelves before I start worrying about a second revision.

they would have to subsidize the price

[miowpurr]

If they offered a 32GB iPhone, the price would have to be subsidized like most other cell phones in the US. NOt that Apple would ever allow that, but it might get more people willing to buy the phone and then pay extra for content packages.

All I Want...

[whisper_jeff]

All I want to know is when the iPhone is coming to Canada...

Imagine

[noz]

imagine a 16Gb or even 32Gb iPhone, unlikely though those will be this year mainly due to the high cost of 16 or 32Gb of flash memory.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of iPhones, unlikely though these are already difficult enough to get your hand on one, let alone 20 including mobile phone contracts.

Re:

[aegisalpha]

If it weren't for battery and bandwidth issues I'm sure the spare processing power of most mobile phones would be put to good use by Folding@Home or any of the other distributed computing projects.

Not a second iPhone, but a widescreen iPod?

[maubp]

Some have speculated that this is in fact a widescreen iPod, rather than a second revision of the iPhone (for a non-USA market?)

Re:

[dkf]

A widescreen iPod? Will that be like 50 inches wide? That would be so awesome! I'd need a bigger pocket to put it in though...

3G

[crunzh]

I would love a 3G iPhone. Videocalling and not the dog slow GPRS datatransfers (In denmark where I come from EDGE isn't really used.)

How about voice dialing and better battery

[Sciros]

Rather than more memory (aren't there iPods with that already?) how about they at least confirm that the current iPhone has voice dialing or make darn sure they put it into the next release. I can only imagine the number of idiots trying to press "buttons" on their flat touch screen while driving. (if they've confirmed it then nevermind, and that's good to hear)

A longer-lasting battery is also a MUST if you want to use the sucker as *both* a media player/comp00tar and a phone. Want to watch a movie? Sure, but then you're out of a phone, buddy. Not so sure that's a great tradeoff. In-flight entertainment on long trips and something to call a buddy to pick you up from the airport? Better luck next time ^^

So, things to look forward to in the next release perhaps.

Re:

[crunzh]

My Nokia N73 lasts 2-3 days when used to check email, make calls, take a few photos and listen to music. Its smaller than the Iphone but with a large display. So 1-2 days should not be impossible.

Video Playback

[dreamchaser]

Driving a display that's good enough to view movies on and decoding video at the same time draw quite a bit more juice than decoding audio/still image files. Still, I am hoping they can get the 1 day in your range, otherwise it's useless for anyone who travels at all.

Re:

[Sciros]

At the moment it's 5 hours of video, web, or calls. Or 16 hours of music. Something like that, according to the specs someone posted on wikipedia. For a media player / web browser that's acceptable, but if you use it like most folks use such a device, I think you'll find little battery power left for calls. I know I'd never trust my Cowon A2 to have enough battery power to also be a phone for me, and that thing has a way longer-lasting battery than Apple's stuff.

Re:How about voice dialing and better battery

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can only imagine the number of idiots trying to press "buttons" on their flat touch screen while driving."

It will suck for the first couple months, and a few innocents will have to die to ensure the safety of the species, but I think we've figured out a way to rid society of yuppies and soccer moms who think they are so damn important that they need to speak on the phone while driving a 5000lb weapon.

Of course, their vehicles are twice as heavy as those around them because they feel they are entitled to the safety afforded to their status, and that if it means they are twice as likely to kill an innocent, they've earned this.

About two years ago, I was answering a phone call, and missed a redlight and nearly creamed someone. They pulled over to the side completely freaked out. I pulled back, even though it wasn't an accident and appologized saying I had absolutely no excuse and told them if they felt the need to call the police because of my wreckless driving, so be it, I'd wait. She said that she would have seen me if she hadn't been on the phone and said she was never going to drive while on the phone again either.

Guess what? Two years later, and still won't answer the phone while driving. Pull the fuck over jackass. You'll be five minutes late. And yes, I was a fucking jackass too (and now an overly moralistic one to boot).

I hope they make it so inconvenient to use the phone while driving that yuppies just naturally kill themselves off. No voice dialing for me...its the act of using these things that make them dangerous. Taking your eye off the road only makes it slightly more.

Re:

[Jellybob]

Since it's running Mac OS, and Mac OS already has voice control built in I think it's a fairly safe bet it'll have voice dialing, and once it hits Europe it will be practically a requirement, since at least in the UK it is illegal to use a phone without hands free whilst driving.

Re:

[moochfish]

The iPhone has two batteries. One is exclusively for making calls.

Re:

[powerlord]

I can only imagine the number of idiots trying to press "buttons" on their flat touch screen while driving.

Well ... they HAVE confirmed that it has bluetooth, and I know a lot of GPS systems with touch screens also include Speakerphone and Remote-Dialing via bluetooth. My wife and I picked up a stand-alone GPS (instead of trying to integrate one into a 10 year old car :) ), and I surprised her by using it to dial our home phone from the living room (while she was sitting next to me, and she went to go answ

Re:

[Sciros]

If you're paying $600 for something that forces you to use "self control" so the battery doesn't run out because you tried to use what you paid for, that's pretty pathetic. If it were a $200 device, that would be different.

Re:

[Sciros]

You missed the point by a mile. When you can spend FAR less than $600 on a couple of devices that let you both watch *more than one movie* and listen to music for like *ten* hours and and make calls for, like, *two or three days,* then spending hundreds more just to combine them into one device that needs charging twice as often doesn't seem like that great a bargain.

Running a battery down on a phone in and of itself is nothing to discuss. It's *what it takes* to run down the battery, and how much one is pa

*waves iPhone around*

[simong]

Oooo look shiny. Sorry, that's an automatic reaction to iPhone stories.

I think it means second production run, but probably for Europe. It will have to pass CE certification for Europe and I would guess that the European partners have probably pointed out that 3G would be a good idea as we have more of that than wifi at the moment.

synesthesia

[Gary W. Longsine]

You must have synesthesia [wikipedia.org]. Most people react that way to *pictures* of the iPhone.

You wrote:

"Oooo look shiny. Sorry, that's an automatic reaction to iPhone stories."

Re:

[nasch]

It seems you may not have read the subject line. "*Waves iPhone around* Oooo, look shiny." Meaning the iPhone is shiny - which it is.

Wait a minute...

[norminator]

So, Apple's going to release a product which was officially announced with tremendous fanfare 5 months before release, and now supposedly they're going to release the second rev 3 months after the release? And the 2nd rev order has already been placed with the manufacturer, even though the first rev won't be released for another month still? And it has a different case design (boy, that would piss off the accessories manufacturers)?

There are so many things wrong with this "story" I don't know where to begin. I think one of two things is happening here:
1) As someone above mentioned, this is a widescreen iPod (which has been rumored in the past to be released in September), not a new iPhone. Remember, both revisions of the Nano were announced in September as well. Or more likely,
2) There is absolutely nothing to this rumor at all.

Re:

[Ohreally_factor]

Yeah, 2)

Frankly, this shit cracks me up. Of course there is a 2nd Gen in the works. But that people are starting to cream their panties over it before the 1st Gen is even released is ridiculous.

Re:

[daviddennis]

If there's anything to this at all, it seems more likely that they are coming out with a 3G model for European markets. Many have said that this is necessary for the phone to be competitive in Europe, where 3G is apparently already the norm, or close to it.

Heck, even in the Philippines, the least developed country in Asia, the two big cellphone companies are battling with each other to see who's the first to widely deploy 3G technology, and one is even trying to leapfrog into 3.5G as their 3G deployment is

Re:

[pev]

Is it beyond the realms of possibility that they're developing a new model for europe? No. The long development time after announcement makes this quite feasible, as does the .eu release three month after the US release. Additionally given that the European market has significant differences in network hardware requirements and device certification this necessitates a parallel development. I'd say this is perfectly plausible.

~Pev

Second gen or just different casing?

[UnknowingFool]

The reports seem to suggest that the phone will be out in Sept. That's 3 months after the iPhone. I doubt it's really a second gen. Most likely it will be a different casing. Kinda like the iPod Shuffle 2G. It was launched in time for Christmas. By February, there was one additional color. Or the iPod nano which didn't have Product Red(tm) model in the beginning and not in a 8GB model.

These kind of news remind me of...

[Masa]

Adam Osborne [wikipedia.org] and his statements, which led to the bankruptcy of his company, Osborne Computer Corporation.

I'm not implying that Apple would face similar fate. I'm just wondering, why these kind of news does not damage the company nowadays like in the "good" old days.

Re:

[MBCook]

As great as that story is, you should realize that it is largly a myth. While he did pre-announce, it was the Kaypro company that ate their lunch. See the bit in Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

Confirmation

[geauxtiggers]

I was in a Cingular store on Friday, talking with the store manager about the iPhone and number portability. He mentioned that a second version of the phone would be out for Christmas of this year. The later version is supposed to be 3G capable. Since Cingular doesn't have the 3G coverage all in place just yet for all cities, I am not too concerned about it. My nephew will get the first gen hand-me-down when the 3G one actually makes it to market.

Re:

[soft_guy]

Yeah, I'm sure Apple trusted some manager at a Cingular retail outlet with that information. He was talking out of his ass.

The Onion Reported this First

[__aawdrj2992]

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/apple_ hard_at_work_making [theonion.com]

Re:

[pimpimpim]

Amazing! Also with the gilette blades they had it right. Is this a proof that anything that sounds nonsense today sounds completely acceptable for the marketing departments of tomorrow? Or maybe the engineers at Gilette and Apple read the onion as well and tried to pull a practical joke on the marketing departments to see if it would work: "Hey, look what we've made, 5 blades, this will be a big hit!". Or maybe the onion should start a trend watching division, they'd surely score better than the predictions

For Europe ... already announced to ship Jan 2008

[gig]

Apple already announced the iPhone would ship in Europe in January 2008. Seems like these would be the European iPhones.

Re:

[Jellybob]

I (and lots of other people) think it's more likely they'll be adding support for 3G networks, which give us Europeans near broadband speeds just about anywhere, unlike wifi which is taking off but only slowly (largely because the phone networks would rather we all spent the money on their networks).

It'll also need multi-lingual support, since we don't all speak English.

Why on the front page?

[Guanine]

I love the iPhone news; in fact, I've watched the keynote more than I care to admit... but speculation about the _next_ generation of the phone before the first has been released is ridiculous. It has no place on the front page--of course the next generation will have more memory, a different feature set, blah blah... but holy crap let's wait until the first generation IS RELEASED before posting articles like this.

Confirmed?

[Hieronymus Howard]

"Second-gen iPhone Confirmed?"
How can you use 'confirmed' with a question mark? It's either confirmed or it's a rumour. The word 'confirmed' is not intended to be ambiguous. In this case, it is definitely not confirmed.

Re:Confirmed?

[Rude Turnip]

Question marks are often used in news headlines to make a libelous statement look more like a question, to avoid litigation. That's not the case here, but that is the origin.

Re:

[suv4x4]

"Second-gen iPhone Confirmed?"
How can you use 'confirmed' with a question mark? It's either confirmed or it's a rumour. The word 'confirmed' is not intended to be ambiguous. In this case, it is definitely not confirmed.

You see... it works, because when in an article you end with "?", this means "we're talking bs and we're well aware of this".

So none of your, otherwise sound, logic applies, I'm afraid.

Re:

[pev]

Normally in English the addition of a question mark turns a statement into a question instead. For example :
    You understand how to speak English (a statement)
becomes :
    You understand how to speak English? (a question)

Thus, the original headline can be interpreted as a question. To paraphrase - "does this confirm a second-generation iPhone?"

~Pev

NOT a second-gen iPhone for US

[EverlastingPhelps]

There is no way that this is a US phone, if it is anything. All phones in the US have to be FCC approved. It is public record, and we would know if a design had been submitted. Everytime Apple changes the iPhone, they will need new approval, and it takes 5-6 months. Apple is not going to kill sales of the current iPhone by submitting a new design to the FCC before the current one even launches.

Maybe it is a Canadian phone, maybe it is a European phone, maybe it is just an iPod. What is isn't is a next-gen US iPhone.

No Feedback?

[escay]

How can you design a 2nd generation model when there is zero consumer feedback to base it on?! Apple has always partially relied on consumers' criticism to initiate a design iteration, and justly so. Especially for a market that Apple is newly entering - does the phone capture good signal in different environments, is the price point good, do batteries blow up, is there something blatantly simple that they missed - these only come out after widespread usage (not intra-company circulation). It could be that the first design had flaws that Apple already noticed but are going ahead with it in order to keep the June date - that doesn't undermine the logic of waiting for feedback of customers as well before placing an order with Quanta.

This is most definitely not a II gen iPhone. I would go with this being either a European/3G version or a widescreen iPod, assuming that news is true and not another fake email.

"Next"?!

[Cajun Hell]

Is the Osbou-- um, I mean -- iPhone one even out yet?

Finally!

[TobyRush]

It's about time! The picture I have of the first-gen unit has been great, but it has its limitations and the workarounds are cumbersome. I've been looking forward to a picture of a revised unit since the initial iPhone was announced; Apple's second-gen models are always more reliable than the initial ones.

Re:

[powerlord]

Yeah ... and by the time the third rev is out, you know things finally start to stabilize so it might be worth getting ... oh wait ... thats MicroSoft ... never mind.

I think I'll take my Ipod process and apply it.

[kinglink]

First iPod came out, ignored it, second, third, nano, shuffle, 5G... and the rest of their apple crap...

I then purchased an ipod last year at 20 GB for 100 bucks, works fine. It's 3rd gen with the click wheel and at about 1/3 the price plus it works PERFECTLY.

iPhone? I think I'm going to be waiting again until the 4th generation and all the other versions come out to pick up a cheap one. Apple does make great products but all these generations and additions just make the intelligent consumer have to wai

"Confirmed"?

[nevali]

No; the product is confirmed when Apple announce it.

It's confirmed because some partner might possibly maybe has designs on building such a device (especially when they work with other companies too).

Re:

[nevali]

Er, obviously there should be a "not" in the second sentence there...

You mean it's not a single-run product?

[MBoffin]

This is a joke, right? Of course they're making a second generation. It's like saying that rumors are confirmed that there will be a newer version of the Linux kernel. Umm... ya think?