iPhone 4G: What To Expect And What Not To

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iPhone 4G: What To Expect And What Not To

Prasad Naik, Mar 30, 2010 1240 hrs IST

What does the fourth generation iPhone have in store for us

The iPhone 3GS has been around for almost a year now. Even though it released in India just last week, it has been selling in the U.S. since the past nine months. Come June and we will witness the launch of yet another iPhone. This got us wondering how the new generation iPhone will be. What new features will Apple add to it? Will it be a major update or will it have just minor improvements, so that the device remains fresh without stealing too much thunder from the other major release of the year - the iPad. So we put on our thinking caps and set down what we think the fourth generation iPhone will come out with. As usual, if you have anything more to add, please do so in the comments section below.

Physical appearance

One thing you expect from newer versions of Apple products is; they will be slimmer and lighter than their predecessors. Unfortunately, that has not been the case with the iPhone. From what we understand of Apple so far, if it is physically possible to make something smaller, then they will make it. However, it seems that with the iPhone they just couldn't and each new version came with the exact same dimensions as the older one.

The reason for this could be because Apple kept adding new features to the iPhone with every new version. Newer features also require more power and hence a bigger battery. This is why they couldn't make the device smaller as it would then require a smaller battery.

With the fourth generation iPhone, we feel that Apple, instead of adding more features to the phone, will instead concentrate on how they would fit the current features into a slimmer and lighter body.

However, that would mean the fourth gen iPhone will have a fully plastic rear, just like the current iPhone 3G and 3GS, as it would be impossible to fit all the radio antennas inside a slim metal casing without disrupting their functionality. This was the reason for them to move away from the full metal back of the first generation model.

Another theory of ours is that instead of a slimmer body they will retain the current dimensions and instead make the rear side resemble the one on the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G model. This model of the iPad has a black plastic strip at the top where it hides the radio antennas. Since the iPhone has the exact same radio units inside the 3G model of iPad, it would work just fine. This would also make the iPhone a part of the ongoing aluminum-ising of Apple's product line.

Display

Conventional wisdom suggests that Apple would equip the iPhone 4G with a higher resolution display, possibly even an OLED display, like the one on the Nexus One. But I have reasons to believe that neither would happen. Allow me to explain.

First I'll explain why I think Apple won't bump up the display resolution on the iPhone. The reason is simple: apps.

The iPhone currently has 150,000 applications for it on the App Store, all designed to work for one resolution: 320 x 480. If tomorrow Apple introduces an iPhone with a higher display resolution, all the current apps would have to scale to fit the higher resolution display, just like they currently do on the iPad. They will work, but they won't look good.

But that's just one issue. What about applications that will be created after the iPhone 4G if a higher resolution display is released? The developers will then have to write apps that would work on the new as well as the old low resolution iPhones and iPod touches. They cannot ignore the new ones because higher pixels would let them do a lot of interesting UI changes and they cannot ignore the older ones because there are millions of them out there. This will be troublesome for developers and I doubt Apple would allow this to happen.

Also, an increase in resolution will necessitate changes in the UI and basically the OS itself. And since the iPod touch runs the same OS, it will have to be given the resolution bump as well or else Apple would have to keep working on two OSes simultaneously, which they wouldn't want to. Also an increase in resolution would also necessitate an increase in size of the device, which somehow I doubt Apple would do. So all in all, it seems to me that an increase in screen resolution seems unlikely, at least for now.

But does this mean the iPhone will never get a higher resolution display? Who know, maybe it will, if Apple manages to solve the above mentioned problems somehow.

Now I'll explain the OLED part of the argument. Now this time I don't have any solid reasons to back it up but just a gut feeling that says "they won't do it". I'm not saying that Apple hates OLED or anything. It's just that they don't find it worthwhile enough right now, just like Blu-ray. Plus they are heavily into the LED-backlit LCD panels now and their latest obsession is with IPS technology. I doubt they would use IPS technology on the iPhone as it wouldn't make much sense but what I doubt even more is Apple using OLED on the iPhone or on anything for that matter for the foreseeable future.

Long story short, we think the iPhone 4G might just sport pretty much the same display as the current model. However, you can expect minor improvements. It's not as if the display on the current iPhone is at the pinnacle of LCD technology and performance, and it can definitely be improved further without adopting any new technology.