Obligatory iPhone predictions
Am I going to be rewarded for my wait until June with a new iPhone? I know that’s what everyone says, but is this really likely?
The first iPhone was released in late June, 2007 after being announced at a conference 6 months prior.
The second iPhone was released in early July, 2008 after being announced at a conference 1 month prior.
There’s a conference on June 8th, 2009.
At most, won’t it be evolutionary and not revolutionary?
That depends. Rumors are all over the place. Here are some of my predictions of new hardware features with my guess of how likely they are:
- Faster CPU: 75%.
- Faster radio: 75%. Most people are under the mistaken impression that this will increase data speeds. In practice, it won’t: usually, data is slower than you’d like because AT&T’s network is too crowded or the signal isn’t strong enough. You’re rarely maxing out the phone’s radio bandwidth. But this would be nice for marketing, and could have real-world benefits for battery life if it comes in a more efficient chipset.
- Video capture: 75%, because it’s so close to being able to do it now that it wouldn’t take much — although a faster CPU would help dramatically.
- More RAM: 60%. (Not storage capacity.) Every iPhone and Touch so far has 128 MB, and increasing this will have more of an effect of general performance than a CPU upgrade.
- Increased battery life: 50%. Would probably be done by reducing power consumption with new components, not increasing the battery’s size.
- Autofocus lens: 20%. This, not more megapixels, would dramatically improve the photo quality. But it would increase the size and cost of the camera hardware.
You’re right, this is unlikely to be a revolutionary hardware release. But June isn’t very far away. Wait it out.