Whats next for the iPhone?

I’ve been trying to brainstorm what Apple could have in store for the 2010 iPhone. OS 3.0 and the new iPhone 3GS models seem to wipe out just about every major reasonable criticism (carrier support aside).

Lets start with hardware – the iPhone 3G S got a faster processor and graphics part. Its now on par with the fastest smartphones available on the market. The cellular baseband chip supports 7.2Mb/s HSDPA (and probably 2.9Mb/s upstream via the Infineon X-GOLD 618 3G GSM chip). And the storage capacity tops out at 32GB.

Its possible Apple could go with the dual core ARM Cortex A9 CPU next year. This would lay the foundation for limited multitasking. However, I’m willing to bet Apple may hold off one more year before going to dual core because of battery life – a theoretical 32nm dual core A9 would consume less power than the current single A8 at 45nm, whereas next years dual core A9 would still be fabbed at 45nm, causing an increase in power consumption when both cores are doing work.

Where would Apple go from there? The first upgrade would be to Wireless-N 1x, to allow for faster WiFi speeds. This comes at an energy consumption price, and Apple may not deem it worthwhile to upgrade to N until consumption numbers drop. You might ask why you’d go from G (54Mb/s) to N 1x (50Mb/s), the answer is that one Wireless G connection on a Wireless N network will cause the entire network to degrade to G specifications, bringing down network speeds.

Next would be FM reception and transmission. This is an issue with all GSM-based phones however because the GSM radio can interfere with standard radio transmissions. It would be a difficult engineering problem to solve. This is better solved as an accessory.

More storage space? Yea, this is an easy one, however we just transitioned to 30nm-class fabrication technologies for NAND flash recently (Q2 2009) and if we don’t move again for another 14-18 months (the previous transition was at the end of 2007), we wont get the next step in NAND flash density required for a 64GB iPhone (or 128GB iPod Touch) before a 2010 product launch.

4G LTE? Unlikely, I’ve looked around and there haven’t been many major announcements of LTE chipsets that are suitable for the iPhone. Infineon (Apple’s cell baseband chip supplier) did have a sample of their SMARTi LU LTE chip at the Mobile World Congress in February of this year. There are several reasons however to keep Apple from using this chip. First its GSM only, which means that if it were to let the AT&T exclusivity agreement expire then it would want a baseband chip capable of 2G/3G GSM, CDMA/EVDO and 4G LTE technologies so that Verizon customers would be able to use the phone with the Verizon Network (which is currently CDMA-based, and will transition to a GSM-based LTE technology). Also, Apple might choose to wait until the next process shrink (45nm) to use an LTE chip because of battery life concerns (much like the first gen 3G chipsets). Plus we’re still a long way away from an AT&T LTE network – AT&T’s roadmaps seem to indicate they’ll stick with HSPA+ at speeds of 20Mb/s (individual user speeds around 3-5Mb/s) for a little while longer, deploying the network in 2011 with 80% metro coverage by the end of 2012.

Finally is the battery. The 3G to 3GS saw a 6% increase of battery life in roughly the same volume. This will continue to be the case – while CPU performance may double every 18 months, batteries only improve at a rate of about 5% per year. This is why we aren’t driving electric cars right now. In combination with chips that consume less energy year after year, the iPhone will continue to see increases in battery life.

The other side is software – what can Apple do with a 4.0 OS? The big tick mark left would be limited multitasking (much like the Palm Pre) to allow the user to switch between Mail and Safari without having to close and open apps. However I can tell you Apple’s focus for the phone isn’t with multitasking, rather its with quick saving your app’s status to restore later. Apple would rather have your app store everything when it gets the signal to shut down instead of leaving the app running in the background. With a faster CPU and storage system you can store and load more data in the same amount of time. We see this in the 3.0 OS, when you get interrupted with something, when you’re finished you get put back in the app you were in before. This can make it seem like the phone is multitasking when its not.

Then there is Adobe Flash. This is a sticking point for me – all the people with nothing better to do than tear down Apple’s accomplishments by griping about this (and Java), and then if Apple were to allow it, they’d complain that it runs poorly. The truth is when Adobe gets Flash running properly on my Mac in OSX, then they can work on an iPhone port. Until then, keep working to make Flash in OSX consume the same amount of resources it would under Windows. Adobe would need to do some serious hardware acceleration to make Flash even reasonable for a mobile device. We see this with their partnership with Nvidia for the Tegra platform – mobile devices need GPU accelerated Flash to not suck the battery dry.

There isn’t many obvious checklist-type features Apple can add software-wise, optimizations and speed, thats about it. I think this will be one of Apple’s major problems over the next few years – coming up with innovative features to add to the phone that would allow it to capture consumer attention instead of just incremental performance and storage improvements. The App Store helps tremendously in this regard, and its why their advertising focuses on apps because they are now the driving force behind innovation on the phone.

Regardless of whether you like it or not, Apple gave the cell phone industry a swift kick in the junk with the introduction of the iPhone. I can stll watch the MWSF 2007 keynote and get chills when Steve introduces it. Now all the other wireless companies have a marquee phone, even if they aren’t as good as the iPhone, there is a goalpost to strive to hit.