John Gruber of Daring Fireball weighs in with his sources about what the upcoming iPhone revision will entail. His list of details corresponds closely with many of the circulating rumors.
Gruber believes the next iPhone processor will indeed be a "next generation" processor that will be disproportionately faster than clock speed alone would have you believe. Indeed, we've heard that the next iPhone will use the Cortex processor.
Let's say the rumors are right -- and I believe they are -- that the next-generation iPhone's CPU will be running at 600 MHz. In the same way that, say, a 90 MHz Pentium was more than 1.5 times as fast as a 60 MHz 486, the 600 MHz CPU in the next iPhone will be more than 1.5 times as fast as the current 400 MHz iPhone CPU.
Along with an additional 128 MB of RAM (256 MB total), this should result in faster app launches, faster web browsing, and better overall performance. Storage will, of course, increase to a max of 32 GB, also in line with rumors.
On case design, he suggests that the new case changes will be subtle and retain the current iPhone's form factor. Circulating rumors of a magnetometer and video editing are also believed to be true:
What the new iPhone's video capabilities might lack in terms of image and sound quality will be made up for by two things: convenience and software. Convenience in that the best camera is the one you have with you, and if youve always got your iPhone, you've always got a camera; software in that iPhone OS 3.0 is set to include basic video editing (think: selecting just the good parts) and uploading features that regular cameras, which aren't computers and which aren't networked, just can't match.
Other interesting tidbits include:
- Minor laptop refresh with branding change calling all aluminum-based notebooks "MacBook Pros" and leaving "MacBook" for the plastic units.
- "Heard things" about an iPhone mini 3/4 the size of existing iPhones but not necessarily at WWDC.
While much of what Gruber reports has been circulating for the past few weeks, he is known to have had accurate sources in the past. Apple is widely expected to announce the new iPhone at WWDC, which takes place June 8-12th in San Francisco.
