iPhone 4.0: What the world knows

It’s 8 April and we’re all waiting for Apple’s unveiling of the new iPhone OS.

A lot of people have a lot to say about this update and along with it, the launch of the new iPhone. Even the man himself – Steve Jobs – was reported to say that Apple will deliver updates to the iPhone that Android/Google won’t be able to keep up with.

If indeed that this is true, the iPhone OS will be da bomb yo! But as we’re is still hours away to Apple’s announcement, we can only immagine and speculate.

So let’s do just that. Here’s our pick of some of the more interesting predictions for the new OS and the new iPhone from around the web.

The new iPhone will flaunt HD display with 940 X 640 resolution. Loads of sources from everywhere are saying this. Many are also saying it will be the same capacitive type but there’s no indication on whether Apple will go AMOLED or stick with the run of the mill LCD. We think going AMOLED would make sense as it will save power and eliviate the iPhone’s achiles heel – it’s pathetic battery life.

It will be called iPhone HD not iPhone 4G. This one makes sense. We can immagine the confusion the name 4G will conjure up. On a mobile phone, 4G could imply that the device supports 4G connectivity like WiMAX of LTE. Obviously the new iPhone will not support LTE and WiMAX, so the name 4G might not be appropriate. A small number of people are touting that the new iPhone will be called iPhone 3Gi instead but we like HD more.

Will run a simillar A4 processor as the iPad. In economics of scale terms, yes this makes sense. Apple invested heavily to devlop a bespoke processor for the iPad and it would be silly to just use it on one device. 1GHz would be a nice bump up from the 800MHz Samsung processor that’s in the 3G S right now (though its underclocked to 600MHz).

Multitasking. Apple’s been holding out on this for the longest time. Some argued that the reason why it was never implemented in the previous incarnations of the iPhone OS was due to security, UI practicality and performance reasons (how would the UI togle between apps, how would multiple apps running in the background affect the phone’s performance, if apps are allowed to run in the background would it expose iPhone to malware?). Now with possibly a faster processor and a new UI, multasking could finally come to the iPhone; and some are betting it will work along the lines of “Expose” on Mac.

Front facing camera. When we made the jump to iPhone, we thought that we would miss not having a front facing camera. Turns out, not at all. So whether this does make it on the new iPhone or not, it doesn’t really matter to us.

Flash support. CNN is predicting that this is coming. After what Jobs said in his townhall meeting not too long ago, we are inclined to believe otherwise. In case you’ve forgotten this is what Jobs thinks about Flash: “Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5“. If he’s walking that talk, we wouldn’t hold our breath for Flash to come to the new iPhone OS.

Built-in photo editing. You can cut videos in the 3G S why not let us crop pictures? We’re really hoping this makes it to 4.0.

New home screen. We’ve mentioned before, with multitasking, Apple will need to find a sleek way to juggle between active apps. Mac’s Expose interface could be the ticket; but how do you call up Expose on the new iPhone? Well, it could very well be through a new look and feel home screen.

WiFi .11n as standard. Faster wireless connectivity perhaps to accomodate direct printing? No reason for the new iPhone not to have it.

Touchy feely back panel. Emulating the clickless interface of the Magic Mouse. Some camps are saying the new iPhone’s back panel will behave in a simillar fashion. We don’t know how this is going pan out but based on how we hold and use our iPhones, we think that its going to be weird and might not actually materialise.

Up to 64GB of storage. Pretty straight forward progression from the 3G S.

5MP camera. The Nexus One has it, why shouldn’t the new iPhone? But personally, we don’t care too much about the MP number. What’s important is how those MPs are utilised. Given the same chip size a 3MP camera would very likely outshine a 5MP one. So we’d love to see if 5MP on an iPhone makes that much of difference.

Those are the big ticket items. Most pundits are also looking forward to enhancements in notification management, better voice control, better file management with the inclusion of folders and lesser dependency on iTunes.

One important factor that is almost not talked about is, how much will it cost. For our sakes, not much more from the current 3G S we hope.

We can’t wait!