The Guardian’s Charles Arthur offers up a handy “guide to knowing what Apple’s going to release next” and explains what to “expect in iPhone 2.0.”
• A three-megapixel camera
• Video
• WiMax (only about a 5% chance of this)
• 3G
• Better Bluetooth profiles
• Voice and speed dialing
As for “what won’t be there,’ Arthur writes:
• SMS forwarding. Americans don’t understand SMS, and aren’t about to start now.
• GPS. Expensive, sucks power, imprecise, and isn’t standard on the vast majority of phones, so Apple isn’t losing by not using it.
• a cheap one.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “The Macolyte” for the heads up.]
on the topic of iPhone2, I expect:
3g obviously
some form of GPS
higher resolution camera, including video
more ram and processor power
brighter screen
“Spam? Spiral slice it and get some cloves. Mmmm……”
Ironically, I don’t think anyone has ever been barraged with annoying e-mails from Hormel. Could you blame them?
Forget the iPhone.
This is the phone of the future….
http://www.flixxy.com/sumsing-turbo-3000-cellphone.htm
I want horizontal orientation in EVERY app. Especially Mail.
— jcw
Your Mom BluRay: That was excellent!
I want a WiFi Zune Proximity sensor. Then allow me to send a kill command via WiFi to have the Zune self destruct. Is that too much to ask for?
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I’m only looking forward to a universal landscape keyboard, copy & paste and all those wonderful new third party applications. So anything else Steve pulls out of his hat will be a surprise to me.
For those of you that don’t know his stuff- that’ll be most of you- Charles Arthur is generally an excellent and entertaining technology commentator and I think you must agree that his analysis of how Apple does things was equally spot on.
That aside, I’m sure GPS would doubtlessly be cool but I really would simply love a radio on my iPhone/iPod. I don’t know if it’s the case- correct me if I’m wrong- but I’ve been told that most radio in the US is not too good. Not so here in the UK. Among much else, I just love my BBC Radio 4- a spot of ‘The News Quiz’, ‘From our own correspondent’, ‘The Archers’ etc etc while out walking the dog makes my day- but, needless to say, I’m tragically forced to use a non-Apple product if I want to access the airwaves in addition to my recorded music. It’s called a Samsung mobile phone. Oh dear. But I’d have an iPhone (or iPod) like a shot if it granted me the reasonable consumer choice of having access to radio. Not much to ask is it? Not what you’d call cutting-edge technology.
Actually, Apple could go one better than any rival (as they always do) and incorporate DAB radio into their iPods and iPhones. I’d buy it tomorrow.
“SMS forwarding. Americans don’t understand SMS, and aren’t about to start now.”
asshole! i’m with @freefromdesign. sms and the 14-25 year olds get along just fine. however, makes sense that apple might not adopt it, since it would be a difficult feature to incorporate if apple wants the app to stay simple.
If it wasn’t for us Brits the iPhone would look more like a Zune (we all know how awful American designers are).
Well, that’s one part of your comment that’s possibly true – but I’d argue that Apple’s product design is probably a team effort.
Without America we’d be speaking German? Last I knew the USA joined the second world war when it was pretty much over.
It’s true that it took the USA the best part of 27 months to join in WWII and it’s also true that they did more than a little bit of business with the Nazis in the meantime: there are some truly photos of SS types drinking Coca-Cola that Atlanta’s finest would prefer people not to see.
However, it’s worth remembering that – at the time – American foreign policy was pretty much not to engage itself in the ‘Old World”‘s squabbles. Nazi Germany wasn’t officially an enemy of the USA until December 11, 1941 when the European Axis powers (for reasons passing understanding) decided to join Japan ‘s earlier declaration of war. Had Hitler and Mussolini not made that crucial error of judgement, it’s extremely likely that the UK would still have been fighting solo (with the support of the Canadians and ANZACs) in the European theatre even as the A-bomb was dropping on Nagasaki.
Maybe we wouldn’t be so anti American if you could stop invading counties for their oil and then pretending it’s to stop terrorism. How on earth is Iraq linked to the Trade Centre tradegy?!
With the best will in the world, we (the UK) got suckered into that as well. God save us from politicians with a sense of destiny.
Go blow up Hiroshima…. weapons of mass destruction indeed.
There were two choices available to the Allies in the Pacific: take each island one-by-one and incur and inflict hundreds of thousands of dead and injured and elongate the war in the Pacific by 18 months or drop the bomb and inflict a massive strategic blow whilst minimising the casualties of Allied forces.
Either way, people were going to die in massive numbers and whilst the massive loss of civilian life remains an ethical dilemma, it should be noted that neither the Japanese or German governments had any such qualms when they were in the ascendency.
In short, war is hell and it’s dirty: that’s why it should only be entered into in the most extreme of circumstances and by people who have an appreciation of the gravity of what they’re doing.
And before you say “yeah but but but it stopped WW2!!!!” Germany had already surrendered when you were busy nuking those Japanese families.
Germany – yes; Japan – not so much!
As I said earlier: Japan’s military was committed to making the US fight island-by-island using every available body including civilians.
Even after the two bombs were dropped and Emperor Hirohito was on the verge of announcing the surrender of Japan, elements of the Japanese military attempted a coup to prevent the surrender.
It could easily have taken 18 months to island hop to the main Japanese islands and then fight a war for the Japanese mainland in what is pretty difficult territory at the end of extremely stretched supply lines.
I may not be keen on the way the US throws its weight about in the here and now, but I’ll be damned before I accept that any of the Allied powers in WWII should have put the lives of soldiers at unnecessary risk, especially when many of those troops had already been through the hell of the Normandy landings.
a couple of nice features would be the ability to make shortcuts to turn on the Wi-Fi and to open Contacts.
I think I will buy one of the new iPhones along with an OtterBox case.
But until we know for sure what the new iPhone will be like, anybody’s guess is as good as anyone else’s.
I agree with MCCFR. Constantly bringing up WWII when discussing something which does not have anything to do with it is pathetic, but undermining the US’s contributions to the war and the subsequent course of history would be stupid. It is also irrelevant in this case, however.
It does not change the fact at all the Americans DON’T seem to understand SMS.
SMS is used significantly more in Europe and other countries than the US, where instant messaging and emailing – I assume? – is used more. The simple fact that the iPhone a) does not show the letter count when typing an SMS b) does not allow to save an SMS as a draft to send at a later point c) does not allow forwarding d) does not support emoticons, MMS or any other standard features of messaging present in any other European phone – is a strong hint that Apple does not consider SMS to be important.
I love my iPhone, and I’m hoping that some of these things will be amended in V2.0 and beyond – but I’m not surprised that an US based company with primarily US based interests and experiences did not find this features important enough to implement in 1.0.
FACT TIME:
Of course americans understand SMS, but they would rather use the telephone to talk to their friends. Americans are also a LOT more friendly than Brits.
In the UK, no-one can afford to call their friends, they have to text them.
The American government is shit, but americans (the people) are often the best you can find. Unlike the UK, where the government is shit and the people are mostly wankers too.
The USA supplied amazingly huge amounts of munitions and food and fuel to the Brits during the first years of WW2. When Mr Hilter decided to attack Russia, the pressure was off the UK, and they started to build up their pathetic army etc. again, with the help of stuff from the USA.
Who won WW2?
Hitler fucked up (lousy strategist), the Russians sacrificed millions of troops to stop him, and the USA supplied most of supplies to the UK and the Russians.
You decide….
Japan? Well Japan got it in the neck with the nukes because they had treated so many Allied troops so badly – torture, slavery, beheadings, etc. etc.
People were seriously pissed with the Japs, and for good reason.
The Germans treated allied prisoners well, for the most part.
i’m one of those euro-wise-guys, and i have never used SMS forwarding !
however, it is true that europe was far ahead for a while, better networks, better phones, much earlier adoption of SMS, etc…
Radio on an iPhone?
NEVER going to happen.
Thats what 3rd party crap is for.
Walk along the street listening to iPhone radio – IN THE UK?
Are you NUTS?
Mugged and beaten, iPhone gone.
Rest of the time, car or home, you have radio already.
Remember, in Britain, only criminals and police are allowed to have guns – the people have to use pointed sticks to defend their homes……
I personally wonder why the wireless carriers here in the U.S. actually charge extra for text messaging (relatively tiny bits of information) and voice communication (a bandwidth intensive / real-time critical task) is often just included in the plan. It seems backwards to me.
And all this political talk… AAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!
Blah, blah, blah. Some Brits get off bashing Americans (others get off bashing “the Continentals”, and even more enjoy bashing both). So the Brits have an inferiority complex to deal with. Big deal.
iPhone 2.0 will have to have GPS to be worth a buy (unless the heavy discounting they’ve been talking about – $200 for the phone – is true). I have GPS on my BB Pearl and it works amazingly well with Google Maps. I get a stronger, more immediate, and amazingly accurate signal with it than I do with my Garmin GPS receiver. And it is far better than the triangulation than my boyfriend has on his iPhone 1.0 or my brother with his Verizon En-V.
I don’t really understand what’s so special about SMS forwarding (unless it means something better than forwarding an SMS that you get from someone else, which, um, you can do now). Maybe that has a different meaning in the UK?
childish
Having been all over the world, I can say that a majority of people outside the U.S. understand that American citizens do NOT make choices such as going to war, or national and international policy decisions. In fact, most of us are against everything Bush has done in the past eight years and are embarassed by his actions. The fact that these morons are not aware of this merely indicates the level of knowledge/education they have.
Blaming a group of people for the poor decisions of their leaders is unfair. Bad leaders pop up all the time, in ALL countries. It doesn’t make the citizens bad people.
I hope the new iPhone has GPS, other than 3G that’s all I want.
My question is…who hasn’t used SMS somehow, someway? I find the current iPhone texting implementation just fine and dandy. If they can improve it…great! If not, I and most people aren’t missing much.
@outlaw:
I have two words for you……Lend-Lease.
You see, being a student of history, I already know that by the time America entered WWII, over two years after it started, Europe was mostly conquered. Only GB was left, and they were being pounded from above, and starved from below. Britian can be a lonely little island when the rest of Europe is in an enemy’s hands………………..
So when we came in in late 1941, “it was pretty much over”? Really? You really wish to live and die with that statement? So why did WWII last almost 4 more years? “Pretty much over” indeed. You, sir, need to read a book, get off the Daily Kos website, and gather a few facts.
As for the rest of your rant, it isn’t even worth commenting on. Again, more lies and stupidity taken right off the Daily Kos/Huffington Post/Moveon.org triad of America-hating silliness.
But please, pray continue your rants, They are worth many laughs.
“GPS is imprecise? They land planes with it, drop bombs through windows with it, and it takes me to within a few feet of the latest geocache. I wonder what the author would consider as precise, and how would anyone get it?”
sadly, they frequently drop the bombs in the wrong place, don’t they. getting a bomb in a window isn’t that cool if it is the wrong window….
…or in the current US expansionist wars case, in the wrong window of the wrong house in the wrong country.
“I want horizontal orientation in EVERY app. Especially Mail.
— jcw”
couldn’t agree with you more.
“As for the rest of your rant, it isn’t even worth commenting on. Again, more lies and stupidity taken right off the Daily Kos/Huffington Post/Moveon.org triad of America-hating silliness.”
nice SaleenDriver. i especially love the way you connect two totally unrelated things (liberal ideas and a posters lack of historical knowledge) and attempt to connect them in the best right wingnut fashion.
it may come as a shock to you, but being ignorant of history is not cornered by any particular political slant. although it does seem to be more popular in America than anywhere else.
“Having been all over the world, I can say that a majority of people outside the U.S. understand that American citizens do NOT make choices such as going to war, or national and international policy decisions. In fact, most of us are against everything Bush has done in the past eight years and are embarassed by his actions. The fact that these morons are not aware of this merely indicates the level of knowledge/education they have.
Blaming a group of people for the poor decisions of their leaders is unfair. Bad leaders pop up all the time, in ALL countries. It doesn’t make the citizens bad people”
the trouble is, in theory at least, in a democracy (ok, really a republic) the people choose the leader. so having chosen a moron, and then re-elected him after his credentials where well known, you can see why people might feel the general populace might deserve a little blame.
saying most of us are ashamed of the shrub is only proof. if that is true, how in the hell did he get the job, and why have we left him there? because we just don’t care enough to actually DO anything.
we deserve ALL the blame……
as an American I SMS your mom to let her know I’m coming by for a blow job with no problem…