Though Apple has made no specific announcements about future iPhone releases, the company is widely expected to introduce at least one new iPhone model by June.
This would coincide with Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, with the anticipated release of its iPhone 3.0 software, and with the expiration of the two-yearAT&T (NYSE: T) service contracts signed by iPhone early adopters following the original iPhone's release in June 2007.
Apple news site DigiTimes in Taiwan claims that Apple has contracted with OmniVision for 3.2-megapixel CMOS image sensors that will be included in Apple's next iPhone. Adding credence to that claim is a report from AppleInsider that the next iPhone will feature video capabilities. What's more, as reported by InformationWeek's Alexander Wolfe, Apple in January filed a patent application describing a technique for videoconferencing on a mobile device.
In its current form factor, the iPhone would make a poor videoconferencing device because the camera is on the back of the iPhone while the screen is on the front, making it impossible to be recorded and view incoming video simultaneously.
Adding further weight to speculation about future iPhone video capabilities, AppleiPhoneApps.com on Monday reported that Apple's iPhone engineering group is seeking to hire "a Camera Engineering Project Manager (EPM) to drive the design, development, and integration of camera modules across iPhone and iPod."
The iPod Touch does not currently include a digital camera.
Over the weekend, AppleInsider reported that the beta iPhone 3.0 SDK includes a resource file that lists support for a new Broadcom chip in Apple's third-generation iPod Touch, making the improved wireless chip likely to be included in the next iPhone, too.
The Broadcom BCM4329 supports 802.11n wireless networking, unlike its predecessor, which was limited to 802.11a/b/g. As observed on 9 To 5 Mac, this chip also includes FM reception and transmission, in contrast to the previous model, which only allowed FM reception.
Austrian Apple blog Benm.at, meanwhile, claims that the beta version of the iPhone 3.0 software includes references to a video editing application.
If Apple is indeed planning to add a video-capable camera to its iPhone -- which it must if it wants to keep up with the capabilities of competing mobile phones -- then it would make sense to include an application to handle basic in-phone video editing.
Last month, Apple made the 3.0 beta version of its iPhone SDK and iPhone software available for registered developers to download.
The software provides several expected and desired functions, such as copy and paste, MMS, and push notifications. And the iPhone 3.0 beta SDK gives developers more than 1,000 new application programming interfaces to create new applications.
