Marco.org

As previous rumors have suggested, the camera is said to be updated with higher resolution and autofocus, a digital compass is added, and the flash capacity will be doubled to 16GB or 32GB. The CPU supposedly will see a speed bump to about 600MHz and the RAM will be doubled to 256MB, resulting in performance that has “really improved.” The 3.5” touchscreen and battery will “regrettably” be the same.

I’d buy this and be very happy with the upgrade. An autofocus camera is my #1 wish, and additional RAM would tremendously improve interface responsiveness (as most applications would rarely need to release and regenerate their various screens’ views as they now frequently do, and SQLite-backed apps could increase their cache sizes).

I’ve never heard any complaints about the screen, but while keeping the same battery capacity would be slightly disappointing, it’s not a dealbreaker — especially since they’re likely to have improved the internals in ways that could reduce power consumption.

Keep in mind that the changes from the original iPhone to the 3G were really very minor to most people:

• Slight size and shape tweaks, but mostly the same.
• Real GPS, but most people were OK with AGPS.
• 3G, but this reduced battery life and didn’t add much speed in practice — most data slowness is caused by latency and radio congestion, not bandwidth limits.
• Flush headphone port, but most people use the Apple earbuds.

The real advance with the 3G was the lower introductory price. If they’re keeping the pricing the same this year, and bumping the hardware slightly to address a few (relatively minor) shortcomings, I’m perfectly happy with that.