What if something godforbid happens so that Apple is unable to deliver thefourth-generation iPhone in time for the summer unveiling? Worry not, they have a backup plan in place calling for a minor iPhone upgrade that will carry the platform until the premium upgrade that is the iPhone HD. The news came via the Taiwanese trade publication Digitimes, a reliable source of Apple reporting in the past. The publication interviewed a Digitimes Research senior analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, who dropped a bomb with insider tips that Cupertino, California-based Apple keeps two new iPhones in its labs, although they’ll ship just one.
The other phone, Kuo said, is a minor upgrade kept as Apple’s insurance policy if unforeseen manufacturing issues endanger the expected June 7 iPhone HD launch. Should any unfortunate turn of events lead to this grimmest of all nightmares, the device code-named “N91”, will help Apple minimize the damage. According to Engadget, the iPhone HD is being referred to internally as “Mammoth/N90.” Kuo shed more light on Apple’s plan:
According to our sources, Apple actually has another product codenamed N91 for the project, which offers less change from previous iPhones compared with the N90. It’s a parallel product to back up the N90 in case there are major delays due to significant modifications in casing, display resolution, digital camera support and so forth.
The analyst said Apple begun working on the iPhone HD “at the end of 2008,” adding the device is most likely a lost iPhone prototype that Gizmodo exposed to the world. In terms of display resolution, Kuo said the iPhone HD must offer a “significant enough” upgrade from the 480×320 pixel resolution of the original iPhone. It’ll be most likely up to 960×640, a bit more than Android’s current maximum at 854×480. New iPhones “in the next two to three years” should run this resolution in order to simplify third-party development, he said.
Corroborating an earlier Digitimes report, Kuo reiterated that the iPhone HD will feature IPS (in-plane switching) panel with FFS (fringe-field switching) technology, resulting in a great view angle and lower battery consumption, a natural fit for rumored e-reading features. Interestingly, he said Apple ditched AMOLED panels from Samsung Mobile Display due to the high cost ($34-$38 for AMOLED versus $20 for IPS panels) and production issues. The panel maker could apparently meet only half Apple’s requested AMOLED output. Other interesting tidbits:
- the A4 chip was a joint effort between Apple, Samsung, and a chip designer Intrinsity acquired by Apple
- the iPhone HD will sport 512MB RAM because current iPhone 4 Beta is “quite memory hungry” and needs 523MB RAM to run smoothly; the phone will run the A4 chip with a single-core Cortex-A8 CPU rather than a multi-core Cortex-A9 CPU because Samsung won’t have the latter ready before the year’s end and iPhone OS 4 lacks the support for multi-core processing anyway
- shipments of 24 million iPhone HDs from Foxconn to Apple could translate to 18-20 million sold units in calendar year 2010
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