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Apple conducts next-generation iPhone trials - Rumour
There are rumours that Apple is testing a new version of the iPhone, hinting that a significantly updated model could be released next summer. According to MacRumours, a handset identifying itself as the “iPhone 3.1” was logged by Pinch Media's San Francisco-based public transport application, iBart.
Apple tends to change the first identifying number for all its product designations when it introduces major hardware changes, and did not do so with the relatively minor upgrade from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G. However, references to an iPhone 2.1 appeared just months before the release of the iPhone 3GS.
Though references to an a new model of iPhone have already appeared in software code, the usage, tracked by Pinch Media, is the first time a device has been discovered operating with the new product number. Hardware identifying itself as the iPhone 2,1 cropped up in October last year, eight months before the iPhone 3GS was released.
With the reported iBart use, Apple is apparently running some of the first tests of a new device with navigation services. This supports other evidence that Apple is planning to put renewed focus on the iPhone’s native map application, with the firm currently advertising for a new software engineer for iPhone Maps to work at its California headquarters.
Critics have attacked Apple’s failure to approve Google’s Latitude app, which provides advanced mapping features including the ability to track friends using a mobile’s GPS. Apple argues that the application too closely resembles the Apple's native maps app, but the absence of GPS puts the iPhone at a disadvantage to Google’s expanding range of Android-based handsets. There are also doubts over whether Apple will allow Google’s turn-by-turn navigation software on to its app store.
Apple has released a new iPhone model each summer since producing its first handset in 2007. The news that a new device may be in a test phase may take some attention away from the storm of speculation around an Apple tablet, which is expected to launch early next year.
