Concerned Citizens

Just in case you thought all I ponder is politics, politics, and more politics there is another side to me. In reality I’m a techie nerd that just happens to have a political side to him. To the tech side, I am anxiously awaiting to see if Apple is going to come out with a new model of the iPhone. I’m not talking about the firmware upgrade that’s planned but an actual new device. The usual announcement date is at the World Wide Developers Conference held in June. That’s when the last iPhone debuted. However this WWDC is a little different in that Steve Jobs could be absent from the conference. John Paczkowski of All Things Digital reports that Phil Schiller, Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing for Apple, will be delivering the keynote address this year, a possible sign that Jobs may not be ready to return to the company he helped found.

Jobs usually is the guy who trots out the coolest of the cool things at the WWDC. After all, he has a certain flair in delivering the message and is very captivating to listen to. Not having him give the big punch at WWDC could mean that the new iPhone will be debuted at a later date. The firmware update, while cool, is not that exciting compared to a piece of hardware. You can’t touch it like you can hardware. There are many rumors flying around the blogosphere including one that speculates the new iPhone is just not ready yet for delivery.

Several indicators have been reported earlier this year including Apple’s large order of NAND chips, the hardware behind the storage on the iPhone, signaling a possible storage bump up to 32GB. Some other speculations include the ability to leverage AT&T’s 3G+ network with speeds up to 7.2Mbits/s. A faster processor at 600Mhz, a new 3.2 megapixel camera, an FM radio, and a magnetometer (compass in techie terms) are also rumored for the new device. While the last seems a little odd it’s a critical component of turn by turn instructions.

So why do I even care? Believe it or not, I don’t have an iPhone currently. I acquired a Nokia N95 a couple of years ago right before a trip to Buenos Aires. The N95 at the time had many of the features Apple is now including in their phones. It has a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, 3G capabilities, an FM radio, a slot for a microSD card, and GPS. At the time it was a great phone and let me travel to Argentina and use it for my phone, my camera, and my path finder. Oh, and it was unlocked meaning I could use it on the Personal network paying only .69 a minute compared to 1.29 for AT&T’s international rate. I simply stopped by a convenience store, bought a reload card, and called a number to add more funds to my account.

That was around two years ago and now it’s time to start looking. For one, while the screen provides a great interface for browsing and map navigation it’s not touch. You wouldn’t believe how many times I have to coach friends on how to use it. They want to touch the screen to navigate so I guess that’s the norm now. It also has a 12 key ITAP interface for entering data. I’m getting better but it’s a pain at time as you may have seen from some of my misspelled Tweets. Currently Nokia’s iPhone killer is the N97, expected to be delivered some time this summer. It has a lot of features but it’s not an iPhone with it’s rich user interface.

So I’ll just have to watch and wait this summer to see what happens on the smart phone front. Hopefully I’ll be on an iPhone but if the wait is very long I’ll probably jump to the N97. Oh, in case you were wondering why not an Android? I’m just not that comfortable with it. I do have a co-worker that’s going to loan me his Android for a week to test drive it. More to come.