Apple to delight – or disappoint – with the 3G iPhone?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 10 April 2008 17:45

Your IT - Mobility

Infineon describes the chip as a “powerful multimedia engine integrated with the advanced dual-mode HSDPA/WCDMA/E-GPRS modem technology enables a wide spectrum of multimedia functionalities, mobile entertainment and office applications with high data rates of up to 7.2 Mbit/s.”

Unfortunately the specs only indicate a WCDMA upload speed of 384kbps - meaning the 3G iPhone will not be an HSUPA device (or HSPA device) - but only HSDPA. That's a shame - other phones on the market are now capable of both HSDPA and HSUPA - but it's not the end of the world.

The description for Infineon’s 3.5G chip of magic continues in its proclaimations that: “S-GOLD 3H based platforms enable handsets to provide consumer electronic quality such as camera support of up to 5 MPixel as well as video telephony, streaming, recording and playback with up to 30 frames per second and a resolution of up to 320 x 480 pixels (HVGA) in MPEG4, H.264 or Real video formats and advanced audio codecs, like enhanced AAC+.”

Could we finally see a 5 megapixel digital camera adorn the world’s most desirable digital device? This would surely set hearts ablaze with joy that Apple has finally brought the iPhone into the era of 5 megapixel digital photography, much like Samsung and Nokia before it.

But if Infineon’s specs are anything to go by, there will be no 640x480 video recording as Nokia has delivered as standard since bringing the very nice Nokia N95 to the world.

Still, we can expect video calling to be available, but who wants to bet that the next iPhone won’t allow the playback of videos in Real Player format, even though the chip is capable of it?

Naturally, MPEG4 and H.264 are features already in the 2G iPhone, but there is yet more: Infineon says that “The optimized S-GOLD 3H architecture makes it possible for the users to run several applications simultaneously; e.g. surf the internet, download emails or data to a SD-card with HSDPA category 8 (7.2 Mbit/s) while listening to MP3 music over a stereo Bluetooth headset.”

Although the current 2G iPhone does let users listen to music while performing other local activities on the iPhone, such as browsing through photos, checking one’s calendar or entering a note, the 2G iPhone is unable to let you talk on the phone and surf the Internet at the same time.

This seems mighty odd as you are then precluded from checking up an IMDB stat or looking up something in Google while chatting to a friend using the iPhone’s included wired handsfree headset or a Bluetooth headset – odd when my other phone - a Nokia N95 - has no such problems.

Apple seems to expect you to hang up, find out, and then call back on your existing 2G iPhone... was this done to keep AT&T and other telcos happy? Or was it a weird technological limitation?

But there is indeed hope that a 3G iPhone will be able to easily perform such a feat – we live in hope that the 3G iPhone can chew gum and walk at the same time – or in modern terms, let you surf and talk simultaneously.

We already covered all of the features that we – and some readers – would like to see in the any 3G iPhone, so we won’t go through them all again, numerous though they are.

Much rests upon Steve Jobs getting the 3G iPhone right, if he wants to not only duplicate the 2G iPhone’s success, but rather multiply it many times over. Please read onto page 3.