New iPhones Coming Later this Year?

iphone-3g-pic-3

The current iPhone 3G

So, you saw the post about Palm Pre possibly getting 4G that I found out at Best Buy? Well, I actually had a like 5-10 min conversation with that Best Buy guy that night and he told me some real cool stuff coming out beyond the Palm Pre. As you can see, he told me about some new iPhones as well and one of them is something I’m already saving up for! Remember, this is unconfirmed by Apple, and we’re keeping the info in here as just RUMOR until we hear more. Now that the disclosure is out of the way, let’s talk new iPhones, and he told me about 2 new ones to come this year.

1. 2 GB iPhone/cheaper, lower-end iPhone

A 2 GB model I’m a little more skeptical, as I would expect at least 8 GB in the cheapest model at this point, with the prices for the chips to be used continuing to drop in price. Anyways, he said that we should expect a low end iPhone model (he said 2 GB, though again I would suspect more) to come this summer, though we didn’t talk much more on this so I can’t say what it will look like and price (though rumors of a low end iPhone like this are pretty strong around the internet, and most expect it to price in at below $100– which assuming it is something like an 8 GB iPhone 3G, should make for a great deal).

2. Whole new iPhone with slide out QWERTY keyboard

Yeah, we spoke more on this, and he actually said he saw one in person and showed me a pic similar to what he saw, online (see below). This looks to be THE iPhone, and something that would not only give the Palm Pre (4G or not) a rough time, but could be the final piece that starts luring BlackBerry users to the iPhone. He said the size is the same as the current iPhone 3G (awesome!) with the screen being really thin (think like the chrome/silver ring around the screen being the thinness of the ENTIRE screen), and the black (or white if you got a white iPhone 3G) back being a slide out full QWERTY keyboard. Yeah, awesome I know, and even though its a rumor, the guy seems to be really confident in this.

When should you expect to see this new iPhone? Well, this guy at Best Buy told me this iPhone should come in September– not as good as a summer launch (though not that far off), but hey what better way to go back to school then to make your friends jealous of your cool, new iPhone.

iphone-qwerty-concept

An iPhone with a real keyboard? Note: this is not an actual picture, just a mock up, but the Best Buy guy I spoke to said it looked pretty much like this when he saw it, minus the big pad on the left side of the keyboard

This info also seems to fit well with new iPhone 2,1 and 3,1 designations found in the 3.0 beta (the original iPhone was 1,1 and the 3G was 1,2– so the 2,1 and 3,1 must have some new hardware/ different hardware that get it the new numbers. The 3.0 beta, for those who don’t know, is the next version of the iPhone/iPod Touch software coming this summer. See our post here).

Also rumored to be coming to new iPhones this year are:

Better, updated camera (some say 3.2 megapixels compared to current 2)
Video capture (FINALLY!!!)
WiFi wireless N (the latest and fastest version of WiFi out there, this just really started getting big last year)
FM radio and transmitter (not only listen to music, news and sports on the radio, but also play your music wirelessly on speakers– like in your car or house– using the FM transmitter)
Updated memory to 32 GB or more of storage (compared to either 8 or 16 GB currently)
iChat ON your iPhone-the second coolest thing to be rumored to be coming to the iPhone this year (2nd to getting that QWERTY keyboard). This rumor is really strong, and the tech is very popular in Europe, found on pretty much every phone there, so it wouldn’t surprise us if the new iPhone had a second camera for iChat video chats/calls.

Oh, and AT&T has begun increasing their network speeds (and overall strength- I know from personal use that the iPhone on AT&T’s network is not always the easiest thing to use, with signal drops and such), so we expect whatever new iPhone that comes this year to be ready to harness it fully (and make it struggle to keep up, like it did to the current AT&T network ).

So there you have it. You should now be fully caught up on iPhone rumors, and we even gave you 2 you probably never heard of before

By the way, Apple is holding their Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC for short) on June 8th– this is where they last year announced the iPhone 3G, so I guess we’ll begin to find out then if any of this is happening or not

So, what you think, you like? Would you get an iPhone 3G if it was below $100? You waiting to get an iPhone till it gets a real keyboard, and now gonna get one (assuming this RUMOR- I got to stress the false hope thing)? And if youre a free bird and looking to choose between iPhone and Palm Pre– which would you get, Palm Pre with Sprint 4G, or an iPhone with real QWERTY keyboard and AT&T 3G? We wanna hear your opinion on this, so sound off in the comments!

anon

haha you’re going off what some idiot at best buy told you XD
dz

thats why its called a rumor fool
iPhone Hawk

That Best Buy guy is feeding you bull about seeing the iPhone in person and you’re eating it up. He has not seen the new one in person. Read below and you’ll see its improbable that any lowly end sales guys in the retail stores have been shown it yet. He’s probably reading the same rumors online that we all are and then regurgitating it to you with some embellishment.

Think about it. There are hundreds of Best Buy stores around the country. The guys selling the phones are as worthless as the ones in the back selling the PC’s when it comes to knowing what they are talking about. There are thousands of associates selling phones at Best Buy across this country. And you found the one that saw the new iPhone in person despite the great lengths that Apple and AT&T have gone to keep the details secret. Never mind why they would be telling an even larger group of sales people while trying to keep the secret.

One need only look at any other carrier (Sprint, for example) for how “secrets” quickly get out once the end-sales people are told about it…..which is precisely why none of the end sales people have been told the new iPhone yet. In short, they can’t be trusted. The guy selling you phones at Best Buy isn’t high enough up in the food chain to get privileged information like this until right before launch. The announcement is at least 6-8 weeks out and actual availability may be one to three months after that, so I guarantee you they aren’t ready to share privileged info with the end sales guys at any retail shop.

Once the sales folks are told, you will see dozens of the same reports cropping up every where and with enough consistencies between them to make them fairly accurate. But that isn’t happening yet. So I’m not buying your Best Buy source as anything but a mean person playing on your willingness to believe him. His rumors are no more meaningful that the countless others out there talking about the same features. You’ve been had.
http://teentechblog.com Eli Blumenthal

Hey iPhone Hawk,

I see your point and it makes a lot of sense to me. It could very well be that I’ve been had and this guy just made it all up (why he would do this though I got no clue). But as I said in reply to a comment on the Pre post, it also makes sense that these guys do know, as they need to get trained on the devices before they get released in order to better make sales (particularly with the big devices like the Pre, iPhone and BlackBerry Storm). Also, the guy said he saw one in the “wild” in NYC so perhaps some high exec somewhere already has one (also a possibility as these things go through a lot of testing before seeing the hands of the consumer, and I highly doubt they just test them in a dark room in Cupertino, California (Apple’s HQ) ). He also may have seen info on new devices from an inventory system in the store (again, possible as he does work at Best Buy and employees have access to that info).

That’s why I stressed this was a RUMOR, I can’t say whether it will actually happen until some exec from Apple announces it to the world and says it’s coming. I’m only writing about this because I think it is interesting (the iPhone topic generally is), and thought our readers would like to be up to date on what might be coming soon (the second half of the post is a summation of other rumors of a new iPhone found across the web).

Listen, Apple is having their WWDC conf on June 8th (the place they announced the iPhone 3G last year, I btw updated the end of the post with this info), so I guess that will be a nice indication of what’s coming (or not coming)

Best,

–Eli

New iPhones Coming Later this Year?

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