iPhone - next

At the time of writing this, Apple's annual iPhone keynote is just 1 hours and 45mins away. As always, I'm among one of the millionth fans from all around the world waiting anxiously/excitedly/nervously, x-x-ly of whatever they might announce.

First of all, I would like to make some sort of prediction based on all the rumors and "leaked" info floating around the net before the actual event.

Looking at the picture above, it's the one sent out to the tech journalists around the world as an invitation. People started analyzing this. All icons are obviously from iOS itself or to be more accurate, iPhone itself. first 3 icons (top left, top right, bottom left) seems to be pretty straight forward.

Top left = Calendar app = 4th Oct 2011 = date of the actual event today

Top right = Clock app = time of the event = 10 a.m. P.S.T.

Bottom left = Map app = Cuppertino office , Apple's campus where the keynote is held

the mystery one would be the 4th icon :-

Bottom right = Phone app = with 1 badge above signifies a miss call.

now people have been speculating about this. some say the number 1 represent only 1 new iPhone model that's going to be introduced. This excludes the model of iPhone 4 which would be dumbed down to just 8GB of storage and would be available with contract for $99 in the States. The new model would be of a new design (be it radically new or just moderately new) of iPhone 4s or 5.

the last part of the invitation reads "Let's talk iPhone". Now, when Apple held its annual keynote during last June 2011, it has a tag line "back to the Mac". When i see that, I read it as "Apple is now focusing its attention back to the Mac lines, not just purely iOS devices" which makes sense. It's still part of the company's product although now their main income mostly comes from the sale of iOS devices. So based on that knowledge alone, this sentence today might not be so straight forward. It could literally means "lets talk, iPhone". Apple acquired Siri - developer of personal assistance app for the iPhone awhile back. Many speculate that they will debut the "Assistance" feature today for the new iPhone which would be astounding. It should be regarded as a fundamental improvement to the way voice command works. Right now, the current version of iOS supports limited voice commands to call a person, dial certain numbers, play song, ask for the song title, artist name but it's all fairly limited. Google's Android allows the user to use voice over to capture and perform search as well (although there's a similar app for that for iOS called Dragon Dictation) but i guess all these still requires fair amount of accuracy and only accepts certain verbs/noun as inputs. If Apple does this right (usually they do), it would be a high selling point, not major, but could be a potential hit.

With that said, looking at another perspective is that iPhone generally is being iterated by Apple averagely about 12 months (plus/minus). This time around, it took them more than 15 months to even announce a new model. Other competing company e.g. Google and Microsoft with their Android and Windows Phone 7 (except this one, Mango a.k.a. 7.5 was just released a few days ago) is already catching up to iOS not to mention about the phone manufacturer for these OS e.g. HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, etc. These people releases new or reiterates new version of their phones every few months or so and with the rate that they do this, it's already surpassed the mighty iPhone 4 in terms of CPU and ram. They still fall behind Apple's gorgeous ultra high density - Retina display though. So with that said, all eye's on Apple today and if they merely just release a new iPhone with the same housing a iPhone 4 just like what they did with iPhone 3Gs vs iPhone 3G they are going to disappoint a lot of fans and maybe lost a few along the way as well. I would not budge, but would not be that compelled to upgrade to it.

With all these pressure from competition and there's really not much breathing space left anymore in the mobile phone market, wrong move or being ignorance over your success will be costly. think Nokia and Blackberry, they were giant once and look at them, struggling right now to even keep up. They have loyal fans still but how far that will take them in the future? Palm tried, failed, bought over by HP, tried again, failed. Competition is always good, and it's good for the consumers like us.

With that said, here's my final prediction and hope for today's event.

1) new iPhone design (I don't really mind the name, 4S, 5, iPhone HD, whatever)

2) perhaps higher resolution screen (3.7" or 4", currently iPhone 4 has around 70% of iPad's resolution, they could cramp in another 30% if they increase the screen size, which in turn would allow the new iPhone to perhaps run all of the existing iPad apps?)

3) iPhone 4 to be released alongside the new iPhone with trimmed down storage of 8GB and sell for $99 for contract.

4) iOS 5 launch today for existing customers

5) iPhone (new) availability in the states from next 2 weeks or even 3

6) most likely no new iPods holiday lineup (unlikely as they said it's "let's talk iPhone" event)

Okay, here's the final stretch and I'm all fired up for the keynote later.

Let's go Apple. Ball's in your court. your move.