John Gruber says he’s spoken to informed sourced about the next iPhone, and here’s what he found:
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.
Much of what the iPhone does now is constrained by its CPU. App launching speed, for one thing — faster app launching should make it feel more like switching between apps and less like quitting/relaunching them. Web page rendering is also significantly constrained by the CPU. When I first used NetShare I was amazed at how fast Safari on my MacBook Pro could render web pages using the iPhone’s cell network connection. Web page rendering on current iPhones is hindered at least as much, if not more, by the CPU than by the speed of the 3G network.
More RAM will significantly help performance, too, and I believe the new iPhones will sport 256 MB of memory, up from the 128 MB in all current models. Prices will stay the same — $199 and $299 — but storage will increase to 16 and 32 GB. The improved performance will be one of the major new features that Apple will tout, but the only tech specs Apple will publish will be the storage capacities — just as with previous iPhones and iPod Touches Apple won’t publish any specific technical information regarding RAM or the CPU. (The CPU in particular, I believe, is something Apple regards as secret sauce.)
Industrial design changes will be subtle, perhaps very subtle. I expect that cases designed for the iPhone 3G will continue to fit the new iPhone, and that the only colors will remain black and white.
Two other significant internal additions frequently mentioned in rumors are indeed accurate: a magnetometer (a.k.a. a compass) and an improved camera that will shoot video (and improved still images, thanks to an auto-focus lens; the existing iPhone camera lens is fixed-focus). Video, in fact, will be one of the major features Apple plans to tout regarding the new model.
