Now that rumors of an Apple tablet have manifested themselves in the iPad, speculation about the next iteration of the iPhone can begin in earnest. In a research note published today, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty offers a few thoughts on what a successor to the iPhone 3GS might look like.

"We expect Apple to launch new iPhones in June that offer both a lower total cost of ownership and new functionality, potentially including gesture-based technology," she wrote in a note to clients today. "As we've highlighted in the past, the cost of device-plus-service plan is currently the biggest barrier to incremental demand in both mature markets like the US and emerging markets like China."

Now, when Apple introduced the 3GS in 2009, it dropped the price of the iPhone 3G to $99, so it seems reasonable to expect the company to follow a similar pattern when it introduces a new iPhone. Might the price of the new device itself also be lower than expected?

More intriguing than these ruminations on price, however, is Huberty's mention of new "gesture-based technology." The analyst doesn't offer any details on what this might be, but presumably she's referring to advances disclosed in some recent Apple patent filings.
 Among the possibilities here: A touch-sensitive bezel that would turn the outer edges of the device into intelligent "sense lines" that give users quick and easy access to their favorite applications, and some camera-based swipe controls that offer one-handed control over a variety of iPhone functions.

Here's a description of the latter from Patently Apple, which does a far better job explaining these things than I ever could.

    [This] patent reveals yet another innovative concept that is designed to help users control their incoming calls and voicemail by simply swiping their finger over the external camera lens. It will control rewinding and fast forwarding voicemail. In addition, the new methodology will also enhance one handed navigation of Web pages, documents, a contact list or your iTunes library by simply swiping the camera lens in different swiping motion combinations. In the future, the iPad may be able to take advantage of this feature if the camera is positioned correctly. This would theoretically allow a user to simply flick a finger over the camera lens to turn the page of a book or scroll a webpage without ever having to move your hand.

somepeople thought about iPhone Battery & Heat Problems

Multiple cases of iPhone’s overheating and the battery of the phone quickly depleting have been causing iPhone users Apple iPhone 3G WWDC 2009problems recently. Most believe it’s down to the software, the 3.0 firmware that Apple released a few weeks ago as it only seems now that users are having these problems.

Apple blame the overheating on the hot weather and are blaming people for leaving there iPhone’s in hot places but the battery issues must be in some way connected to the new firmware as I experienced today.

My iPhone 3G which used to run 2.2.1 would run under moderate use each day without getting into the 20% battery area, with heavy usage it would get down quicker and I would have to charge. But today whilst at a friends house I decided to do some live streaming using Qik, however after about 10 minutes I noticed that my iPhone had heated up considerably and the battery had lost maybe 30/40% of it’s charge. Now I know for a fact this isn’t usual as I’ve used Qik before and the phone didn’t have the same problems using 2.2.1.

It seems that there must be something not quite right with the 3.0 firmware which is causing maybe the CPU to be overused, causing the phone to heat up or something in some setting which isn’t coded properly and causing these problems.

I’d be interested to try out the 3.1 Beta to see if it had the same issues, however I’m not currently a developer so can’t try it but if anyone has tried it leave a comment about if you experience the same issues.

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