Next iPhone — Front-Facing Camera, A4 Processor 327
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."
More speculating? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Front facing camera? (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly, god forbid someone wants to use Skype for video conferencing!
Re:Front facing camera? (Score:3, Informative)
The front facing camera would be in addition to the higher resolution camera at the rear. It would be used for video conferencing.
Re:Front facing camera? (Score:5, Informative)
So taking pictures of yourself is more important than having a prevew of what you are taking a picture of so it will come out level and properly framed? I fear for the future of photos...
A front facing camera - in addition to the normal one on the back - has been common on other phones for many years. They were part of one of the launching features of 3G - video calls. Unfortunately for the phone companies hoping that this would increase traffic and revenue, noone liked holding their phones half a meter in front of them to do a call and the technology is still unused.
Personally, I hope Apple doesn't add one. It's pointless, and takes space/cost that could be used for other things. I had one on my Nokia N95, and used it once.
Re:Hopefully Not (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Front facing camera? (Score:3, Informative)
3G elsewhere in the world isn't as bad as in US. Here you can get unlimited 5Mbit/s 3G for $30 a month and its stable connection. Hell, we already have 4G in largest cities (128 Mbit/s downlink and 56 Mbit/s uplink)
Re:Hopefully Not (Score:3, Informative)
iPlayer already works on the iPhone - they specifically added H.264 streams to support it - just one of the developments away from Flash that people are looking for.
Re:A4 processor? (Score:3, Informative)
The A4 CPU is already in the iPad, so you could have been familiar with it. It's basically a "system on a chip", like the SnapDragon, designed and developed by Apple themselves. It's basically a Cortex-A8 CPU core combined with a PowerVR SGX GPU in one device.
It runs at 1 GHz, it's pretty powerful for the amount of power it consumes and it looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipad-a4.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Re:Recurring lesson about Apple (Score:2, Informative)
If there's one thing history teaches about rumors regarding upcoming Apple products, it's that nobody talking knows anything.
That's not always the case; sometimes, far from it. The source for this information [daringfireball.net] comes from John Gruber over at Daring Fireball [daringfireball.net]. It's well known, and John says as much, that he has sources inside Apple. As a reliable critic ('critic' as in Ebert, not hostility) of Apple, it seems his sources are either known to the company and the leaks are green-lighted, or else Apple simply doesn't care enough about smaller announcements to ferret out the mole. I'd bet heavily on the former.
John doesn't always make predictions of a declarative nature, but when he does, you can more or less take them as stated fact; for example, his "predictions [daringfireball.net]" for last year's WWDC.
Re:And this is different from the 10000 other rumo (Score:3, Informative)
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).
Really, are you joking? The vast majority of apps that would work well as backgrounded apps are network connected apps. Things like IM clients, GPS tracking, etc. When you're looking at a cellphone, "drawing" is hardly the biggest power draw, think about 3g, turning the antenna on and constantly transmitting, and using GPS. Big drains.