A Dash Of Web and Mobile Development

Apple is likely to announce an upgrade to their extremely popular iPhone line in June or July this year, and I’ve been considering what changes are most probable. With the release of the iPad, we have a pretty good idea of what will be in the iPhone; they wouldn’t want to undercut their iPad sales.

Overview
Since most people aren’t likely to read this entire post, here’s a quick summary of my expectations as far as hardware.

Faster Processor
The iPhone should have an improved processor. It may be the same A4 that is in the iPad, though it would probably be underclocked to 800MHz. It’s very unlikely that the iPhone would have a processor running at 1GHz because that means it would feel like it is outperforming the iPad because of the resolution differences.

Better Screen
The first thing nearly everyone notices about many new devices is the screen, and Apple really should improve the resolution of the iPhone. 320×480 is good, but it is no longer great. Unfortunately, more pixels causes problems. For starters, it means more processing has to go on for the display, which decreases battery life and can decrease performance (especially in OpenGL-based games). Also, Apple hasn’t had a native way of supporting multiple resolutions (and can’t just use the iPad version of apps, due to the physical size differences), so the phone would also have to upscale apps, which can look bad (unless they take a nice multiple of the current pixel format) and would use more processing power. So, an increased pixel density ultimately means lower performance and lower battery life. Therefore, I see it as unlikely.

More RAM
Apple would be absolutely foolish to not increase the amount of RAM in the next iteration of the iPhone, so it’s really a question of how much of an increase. My hope is for it to have 512MB, matching many other leading phones, and significantly improving performance. Plus, 512MB means that they can support multitasking in one form or another, even if it only amounts to widgets. Somehow, I think that 384MB is pretty likely. It will give a big boost to performance and be plenty for the iPhone if multitasking continues to be unsupported for 3rd party developers. Plus, it means bigger profit margins for Apple.

Buttons
Before the iPad was announced, I really expected Apple to add a few buttons. These can be dedicated parts of the touch screen, so a hardware change isn’t necessary. Having a menu button means that a menu doesn’t have to waste screen space on every app you use. However, having less screen space on an iPhone means people are more likely to see the need for an iPad, so there isn’t much incentive for Apple. A dedicated search button would be very effective because it means that Apple can have your homescreen be the middle “page,” with other pages both left and right instead of just right. This would increase the efficiency of selecting an app that isn’t on your home screen by 50%. Of course, I doubt a search button will be included either.

Customizable Home Screen
I think this one is pretty much a guarantee; it’s just a matter of extent. The new iPhone will surely support desktop backgrounds and probably allow you to place icons without having them forced toward the top left. Moving and interactive desktop backgrounds that can be created by 3rd parties seems very unlikely.

Multitasking
I definitely wouldn’t hold my breath for true multitasking. It requires better specs all around and changes the user flow. If the iPad doesn’t have multitasking, the iPhone won’t either. Widget support would be nice though….

Conclusion
I see the next version of the iPhone as being a very logical and calculated step in the same direction Apple is already going because that is working well for them and the iPad did not significantly deviate from the current iPhone versions. Incremental hardware increases are likely, but the software changes aren’t as obvious. What are your thoughts?