The hype is in overdrive that there’s a new iPhone coming on Monday. On the other hand, I’ve been hearing that Forbes/Financial Times/Barrons’ rumors of troubles in getting the new 3G iPhone design done and to production are correct and that there’s no way that it’ll be ready to ship this month. It’s very possible that my source is working on a phone that’s coming later this year and there’s another one coming from another team that my source (who, obviously, needs to remain anonymous because Apple employees and contractors aren’t allowed to speak with the press and/or bloggers) isn’t involved in (which, if true, demonstrates that Apple is probably working on several iPhones to be released by the end of this year).
I’m also hearing that the new processor (that’s not ready yet, my source says) they are working on is a four-core design ARM (my source says it’s an ARM 11) that Apple has designed — the first processor in the original iPhone was a three-core ARM (my source says it was an ARM 7, but Wikipedia says it’s an ARM 11) that was integrated into a chip designed by Samsung. I’m also hearing that the new iPhone (again, the one that my source said isn’t ready yet) will have a much better graphics processor, too, but he wasn’t sure of the technical details on that, so we’ll have to wait and see. What will the one released on Monday have (if an iPhone is getting released at all) is still unknown.
But, again, my sources aren’t that good and Apple really makes sure that any one employee has absolutely no idea what else is being worked on, so who knows what we’ll see on Monday? Over on TechMeme (still my favorite news site, although FriendFeed has taken over my obsessive “noise” reading — news is breaking on FriendFeed 15 minutes to 75 minutes faster than TechMeme, but you gotta wade through a lot more noise to find that news) iPhone is already dominating the page, and within minutes of the announcements that Steve Jobs will make on Monday.
Me? I’m not going to WWDC. I’m going to some fun stuff up in Seattle instead. Translation: there’s absolutely no reason for any journalist except for the A list to be at the press conference — it’s going to be the most overcovered event of the year). That said, I’ll be watching Engadget and TechCrunch like a hawk to see if I should run to an Apple store (they do the best early reporting on Apple’s live events). If Apple does indeed, ship something, I’ll buy one of the first ones and let you know what I think.
