Sam OliverOn Monday, Emirates Telecommunications - Etisalat said that it had struck the first iPhone deals of 2009 when it announced in a local newspaper plans to bring the iPhone 3G to the UAE and Saudi Arabia (under the Mobily brand) later this month.
Mark Davis, Program Director for iPhone at Etisalat, later spoke with Dow Jones and revealed the precise launch date to be February 15th. The same report went on to say that the "next version of the device, which is due out in June, will be launched in the UAE at the same time."
The source of the June comment is not entirely clear, but appears to have come by way of Davis. That said, industry watchers generally expect Apple to take the wraps off its next-generation touchscreen handset in June, approximately one year after the iPhone 3G made its debut.
To this end, the hardest supporting evidence to date has come from Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller, who in a post Macworld 2009 interview last month outlined the Cupertino-based company's general product cycles, which he said include an iPhone cycle in June.
Recently, references to an iPhone 2,1 have begun to crop up in weblogs and versions of Apple's firmware, suggesting testing of the next-gen iPhone is beginning to heat up.
Unlike the original iPhone and iPhone 3G, which were referenced as the iPhone 1,1 and iPhone 1,2, respectively, the iPhone 2,1 designation appears to signal a major architectural overhaul that is more significant than last year's upgrade.
Specifically, a lengthy breadcrumb trail laid by Apple and its partners suggest the new model will include the use of customized "System on a Chip" components developed by Apple using ARM processor cores and incorporating new PowerVR video and graphics processing core designs developed by Imagination Technologies.
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Andrew Orr
88 Comments
Well the only hardware changes I would like seen would be:
-Forward facing camera for iChat AV
-Higher end Digital Camera on back to help with motion blur and low light environments
-"N" Wireless chip. I'm finding a lot of "N" only networks that I cannot connect to.
Well, I owned the first iPhone and have the 3G, but now that I have the 3G they are gonna have to have some really good features to make me upgrade.
I love my iPhone so much!
Well the only hardware changes I would like seen would be:
-Forward facing camera for iChat AV
-Higher end Digital Camera on back to help with motion blur and low light environments
-"N" Wireless chip. I'm finding a lot of "N" only networks that I cannot connect to.
Umm... How about more ram and a faster processor so that applications can run in the background.
Apple is going to have a new iPhone product this June just like the last previous 2 years. Must be a slow news day.
Apple is going to have a new iPhone product this June just like the last previous 2 years. Must be a slow news day.
That was my initial reaction to this article, too. But it is worth pointing out that the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G was 1.0->1.1, and this year's jump is 1.1->2.0. Which leads to wilder speculation. Which is what rumor sites excel in.
The 3G upgrade last year didn't really change the chips substantially. They were still the same processor (with a tiny speed bump, I think), acceleration, screen, etc. I would expect this year's machine, especially considering the App Store's success, to really focus on gaming performance. I suspect it will blow the Sony PSP and their ilk out of the water. It will probably be comparable in performance to a "2.5G" console... and if you can hook it up to a television easily, will essentially *be* one.