You just know that Apple is working away on the next version of the iPhone- like iPods, I’d expect them to be constantly refreshing their platform. 2.0 was a big upgrade to the operating system, allowing 3rd party applications to be added. So what’s going to be included in 3.0?

This is probably more of a wish list than a prediction, but these are the things I expect to see. Note that I’m not going to talk about obvious upgrades- Webkit in Safari being upgraded as the desktop version carries on being developed, for example- I expect that kind of thing to come with the incremental updates- 2.2, 2.3 etc.

    More Mac-like.

    The Windows mobile platform always felt to me like it was the Windows concept in a mobile form. The Apple mobile platform feels like it’s been built from scratch. However, the underlying technology is apparently identical to the Mac- even Safari seems to be identical in terms of how it renders pages and it’s ability to run Javascript (although not necessarily to trigger it- more about that later.) So I expect to see more features from Mac development making their way across to the iPhone. While other platforms work to catch up to the iPhone, the ability to eventually bring Mac applications would turn it into a real pocket Mac. I figure that must be the eventual goal- but a big jump in one step. So I expect to see movement in that direction.

  • Overhauled user interface

    Safari is a great browser, but it has one problem; you can’t do drag-and-drop-type actions in web pages that use that kind of functionality. It’s actually more related to the user interface in general; because the touch-and-drag action is used to deal with the problem of moving around a page, it can’t be used to select blocks of text the way you would by clicking and dragging with a mouse.
    Another consequence of this is that selecting (and therefore copy/pasting) would be possible…
    The most obvious way to enable this would be to use the multitouch screen; a tap with a second finger could become the ‘right click.’ a second finger touch could either activate the drag/select functionality (deactivated when you let go, or maybe when you tap a second time- that would get around the restriction of the screen space.)

  • New home screen

    The iPhone has the same problem that Facebook did; a clean, good design that became cluttered when it was opened up to third parties. When you’ve got a few dozen applications, it’s awkward to move around between them.
    The obvious solution would be to have folders to put your home screen icons into. Simple, easy to understand.

Something I don’t expect to see- but would like- is a greater degree of personalisation. Again, it’s the Facebook-like nature of the iPhone; while MySpace allows it’s users total freedom to personalize their pages, Facebook keeps a strict control over the page design (and the platform itself as a kind of gatekeeper.) While Android users will be able to completely redesign their homescreen becausenof the open source nature of the project, there will be some bad homescreens. It’s inevitable that, like MySpace pages, some will be ugly, have accesibility problems, and the platform will suffer as a result; people will associate the ugly homescreens with Android. This is a competetive advantage that Apple will be keen to capitalize on.

I’d expect it to be released along with more upgraded hardware (like the 2.0 release), although I’m not sure what road that would go down; I’m guessing a choice of colours, more storage space and battery life in the same size and shaped device (to keep confirmity for all the cases and docks etc.) No doubt an improved camera- probably adding video capabilities in the software. The software will probably be a free upgrade again, while the phone will probably be the same price.

Timing? My bet is An announcement in January, and a release soon afterwards.

Can’t wait.

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