by Even though the iPhone 5 has not yet been released, speculation has already begun about what to expect from the iPhone 6. Based on what we know about Apple’s trends in improving its products and trends in computing technology, what can we really expect from the future if the iPhone?
iPhone History
When the iPhone was released one of its nearest competitors was the Motorola Rokr, the world’s first phone with iTunes. It had a maximum capacity of 100 songs, and a MicroSD slot with a capacity of 512 MB. The first iPhone was truly years ahead of its competition by offering 8 to 16 times as much storage space with its 4-8GB hard drive, as well as a massive 128 MB of RAM.
The iPhone 3G was released shortly after and again doubled and quadrupled the amount of storage by allowing 16 to 32GB of data to be saved. And as the name suggests, it was one of the first devices to offer 3G connectivity. It was so far ahead of the market in offering this connection that service providers had to scramble to catch up, and many who wanted 3G connectivity had to wait until it was available in their area.
The Third and Fourth Generations
The first incremental iPhone upgrade was the iPhone 3Gs, which was the first generation offers the revolutionary iPhone voice controls, as well as a whopping 256 MG of RAM. These upgrades continued to set the bar for all smartphone competition.
When the iPhone 4 was released, it added a front camera, HD video, and nearly doubled the amount of RAM available to increasing it to 512 MB. Meanwhile Apple releases like the App Store, Game Center and iBooks allowed users to turn their iPhones into sophisticated gaming machines and miniature e-readers.
The Latest Development: iPhone 5
Details about the iPhone 5 were finally released in September, 2012. The newest iPhone is scheduled to include a larger screen, faster Wi-Fi connectivity and a brand new CPU chip — the A6 — which will run literally twice as fast as the current A5 chip. This means graphic speeds and load times will improve across the board.
The iPhone 5 is also planned to be 18% thinner and 20% lighter than the iPhone 4, and have battery life improvements allowing a maximum of 225 hours standby, 40 hours of music, or 8 hours of talk and browsing.
What about the iPhone 6?
According to market research, the things which iPhone users currently love about their phones include its usability, applications, design, camera and durability. The only areas that users were less content about are battery life and the price of the iPhone. At the same time we must acknowledge that users have a constant thirst for more power. The most commonly requested features for future iPhones include a high definition resolution, an even larger display, a quad core processor, 2GB of RAM and a 12 megapixel camera.
While the iPhone 5 has made major strides towards achieving the power desires of users, increased power means decreased battery life and a bigger price tag. If Apple wants to meet all of the demands of iPhone users, the iPhone 6 may begin to move towards a cloud computing model which might allow the price of the iPhone to drop while also increasing its battery life and power. There may be little need to add more storage space to future iPhones because there is a nearly infinite quantity available through the cloud. On the other hand, if users are doing their computing and storage online, we would anticipate a need for much beefier and ultimately expensive data plans.
While we cannot say for certain what is in store for the future of the iPhone, if past trends can tell us anything at all, it’s that the iPhone 6 will be stronger, faster and lighter than ever. While there is no official release date by Apple, experts predict that we can expect the iPhone 6 by the end of 2013.
