Are they planning to release one every year?

I thought that was the generally accepted norm. They have fairly regular release schedules for all their hardware.

Besides, the iPhone 4 is current slightly behind the tech trend for smart phones.


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=53.851065,-1.531013

IIRC they pretty much have done that so far, although I think the iPhone 4 has hung around a bit longer than that. Apple don't bother with the HTC model of 'new phone every month that's slightly better than the last one'. They tend to be more.. discrete than continuous. Although there's about a 50/50 split rumour wise between 'iPhone 5 will be entirely new' and 'iPhone 5 will be an incremental upgrade'.

I assume they'll be redesigning the antennae either way

Thinking about it, in the phone market one a year is quite conservative.

Makes you think. Well, makes me think anyways.

I keep forgetting about that problem. I hold my phone in a way that it doesn't affect the signal but a friend wanted to search for something on the internet and every time she held the phone the signal dropped completely.

It was embarrassing more than anything else and I felt like a right tit trying to explain that she wasn't holding it properly.

Depends on whether they see other mobile OS's as a threat I guess.

No she was holding it correctly, it's just designed badly.

Less about competing OSs and more about competing hardware. The iPhone 4 will run the new OS, and according to Wikipedia so will the 3GS.
Phones over the last year have become duel core, coupled with more memory (1GB anyone?) and better graphics the iPhone needs an upgrade. Users of the 3GS will find themselves quite hard pushed to run new apps as developers ignore these older models and concentrate on iPhone 4 and 5 devices.

I know that and I said that to her but it's hard to not sound like a tit when you're telling someone to hold a phone in a certain way.

It's not really excusable, but the problem does go away with a case.

true it does and I do like the free case I got because of it. Though I do expect at the very least this issue does not crop up again for the iPhone 5.

That's the main reason that I think we'll see a completely redesigned phone.

En garde!



One a year is about the norm. for flagship handsets, it'll be interesting to see how it measures up to the Nexus Prime.

Furthermore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq-e0getf4M

IMO, it's the case that we'll see this increasingly with gadgets as 'increment lifespans' continue to fall. My opinion is for pretty much any thing or design, there's an optimum. Over time, all the various things trying to do a particular task will all evolve towards that optimum as they iterate. Therefore, logically, they will all tend to end up doing that thing the same way or looking the same.

If you look at small cars for example, all the sort of Micra/Fiesta grade cars all look much more similar than they did 20 years ago because there is an optimum shape, aerodynamically, for a car of that size to be. Same with, I dunno, toothbrushes. All toothbrushes - beyond the dirt cheap 'we don't really care if they're any good, just sell them' ones you get for pennies - are evolving towards the same curvy shape, because there's an optimum way you hold one in your hand when brushing your teeth and everyone's hands are pretty much the same design. All compact cameras are pretty much the same because when you have a lens and a screen and a battery, there are only so many ways you can arrange them into a small volume that makes sense.

So yes, you should still have intellectual property and if one company copies another's innovation, there should be compensation for that because we need to encourage people. But I'm increasingly of the opinion that such rights should be relatively short-lived in areas were new iterations are brought to market frequently. if you're in a market where the typical product lifespan is measures in months instead of years, evolution is going to progress at such a rate that you're going to end up bashing up against the 'optimal design' issue within the period of current copyright legislation. At which point the only purpose copyright serves is either to promote a monopoly and/or make for a market full of products that are slightly less good than they should be.

Basically, you can sue for copyright for the life of the product in question. As soon as you 'end of life' the product, any particular innovations in it's design become unprotected and can be reverse engineered by others if they wish. By then (given you've EoL'ed the product) apparently you've made about as much money from the product as you wanted to anyway?

Jon