It was no surprise that Apple came up with a second, or indeed third iPhone. The first edition was an enormous success, but it lacked some key features that were commonplace on less ambitious but cheaper rivals. Key among these was 3G connectivity. Less of an issue In the US, this was a serious omission in Europe, where this faster technology is more commonplace than the Edge networks used in the US, and on which the original iPhone was built. But while this may have been the guarantee that a second iPhone would be built, it was by no means the only factor that led to a second edition - or a third.
So where does Apple go from here? It has surely fixed everything on the third attempt, hasn't it? Well no, not quite.
The camera
The original iPhone — and its follow-up — was criticised for having only a two-megapixel camera, while some competing cameras had already reached five megapixels. Steve Jobs explained that the decision was made to stick at two megapixels because at that level the company could be assured of the quality of the pictures it would produce. This is surprising as many Sony Ericsson phones already exceed this and still manage to produce images that can rival those taken with a low-end digital camera.
An upgraded camera was, therefore, considered by many to be a dead cert for the second-generation phone, and so the fact that the iPhone 3G stuck stubbornly with the same two-megapixel unit was a disappointment. Even the three-megapixel chip in the iPhone 3GS is conservative, though, and we can expect to sec Apple improve it over time — particularly now that it has started building in additional camera features, such as video recording and user-defined focussing. The chances of it recording movies at any resolution you'd like to view on a TV screen, or photos you'd want to print much larger than 7 x 5in are slim to nil, but as sensor manufacturers continue to refine their products, it is a dead cert that Apple will follow their advances.
Now that it has integrated faster 3G chips, the iPhone should also be looking to add a second camera on the front, somewhere near the earpiece, that can be used for making video calls. At the moment it would conceivably be possible for the company to make the necessary amendments to its software to allow the back-mounted camera to send live video but, as the phone would then be turned away from the user, they would be unable to see who they were talking to.
The battery
Although Apple seems no have overcome the problem of providing decent battery life with more power-hungry 3G chips, it could still work to improve on the five-hour cut-off for either mobile Internet use or talking when the 3G processors arc working. The 12-and-a-half-day standby time is truly impressive but will rarely be attained in practice as any active use will eat into it significantly. Increasing both this and the talk-time makes it conceivable that the ultra-light traveller could pack just their iPhone and no chargers, relying on MobileMe for data interchange and being confident that their battery will not run dry over the course of a week long business trip.
Why is this important? Because by scaling up the iPhone and providing no way to easily access its insides, it is not possible to take a spare battery with you in case you run out of juice.
The screen
The iPhone screen is better than most and, with a density of 163 pixels per inch, it is capable of producing impressive results when viewing photos or watching movies and TV shows. However, lower power technologies such as OLED will enable Apple to extend the battery life still further and reduce the iPhone's current body depth, while alternatives that do not require a backlight should remain readable in all lighting conditions and optionally remain in view on the scrccn even when the iPhone is powered down. Do not expect this technology any time soon, though. Although development started in the 1960s, OLIEDs remain expensive to produce and problems with the blue diodes mean that they have shorter lives than the red and green ones that go to make up each array. If the iPhone is ever to rival dedicated eBook readers (and we hope that one day it will), it will need to adopt a low-power, low-glare screen technology that won't drain the battery just as we reach our novel's climax.
Capacity
One of the best things about the iPhone is its simplicity, provided in part by the sealed box approach mentioned above. The downside here, though, is the fact that the storage capacity you choose when you first buy your iPhone is the one you are stuck with for good. Download a 300MB half-hour TV show and you have already used up a sizeable chunk. Transfer a movie to watch on a flight and you have eaten up even more. Even if you do not plan on using it as an iPod and so only ever use it to transfer data over MobileMe, it would still be good to know that if you make heavy use of the camera you have the safety net of a removable card to get at your photos should the unthinkable happen. The 32GB capacity of the top line iPhone 3GS will be adequate for most users of today, but over time as our demand for ever greater quantities of portable data increases and we install a wider selection of third party applications we may start to feel the pinch.
Long-term maintenance
Over time Apple will continue to maintain the growing legion of iPhones already in existence in the form of software updates delivered either through iTunes or, eventually, possibly over wifi and the 3G network. These will have as much of an effect on existing phones as they will on later hardware revisions, but you can almost guarantee that they will do as much to encourage further purchases as they will to shore up security holes in ageing kit. We have already seen this, with iPhone 3.0's MMS features unavailable to users of the first-generation iPhone. We also hope that Apple will pay MobileMe the attention it deserves, upgrade it at suitable intervals and ensure that performance is equal around the world.
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