Post-CES: iPhone and iPad

Well, CES is just days behind us and the rumor mills are in high gear on Apple again. Actually they have been for days, even weeks.

Speculation on a Verizon iPhone has been running high for weeks. And now Verizon has announced a special event for the press in New York for tomorrow, Tues., 1/11/11, at 11am. With CES having just wrapped this past weekend, what could it be that they couldn’t have announced there? Well, everyone (and I mean places like the Wall Street Journal, you know, REAL news outlets) are saying a Verizon iPhone. After all the false alarms in the past, I am finally inclined to believe it. So, expect Verizon, perhaps with a cameo by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, to unveil a CDMA (i.e., not 4G LTE, that’d be too much to hope for) iPhone on Verizon’s network. And expect it to be available by the end of January, or first week of February at the latest.

Now, what else might be coming up from the fruited tech company? Well, a new iteration of 2010’s most buzzed about product, the iPad. There has been much speculation about when a new iPad might be announced and what it might contain.

As for what new goodies it’ll include, the one thing widely agreed upon is the addition of cameras on it’s front and even back faces. The reason: FaceTime. With the iPhone 4, iPod touch, and even the Mac (in beta form) getting FaceTime capability, the iPad is a no-brainer for the addition of a front facing camera (and maybe a back one as well, the iPod touch has one after all). So consider that a given.

The next things likely to see enhancements are the screen and the engine – CPU and RAM. I expect a faster processor, maybe even a dual-core one. CES was overrun by new tablets, many having dual-core Tegra 2 processors. While Apple is not one to play a tit-for-tat game in specs, I don’t think they’ll let this one pass without somehow taking a “leading” position. The Tegra 2 and other dual-core mobile CPUs have been coming for some time now. So expect some successor to Apple’s own A4 (A6 or A8 maybe?) that’ll be touted as the fastest or most efficient mobile CPU. Pair that with at least 512MB of RAM (the iPhone 4 has that much, twice that of the current iPad), and you’ll have a significant boost in speed. But knowing Apple, not at the expense of much in battery life. Expect the new iPad to match the old in long life battery performance.

That last part is why we probably won’t see a true “Retina”-class display upgrade. To match the 300+ ppi of the iPhone 4’s Retina display on the iPad’s bigger 9.7″ screen, you’d have to have a display with a resolution on the order of something like 2560 x 1920. That’d be a bit much to expect a current-tech mobile CPU/GPU to drive with any sort of respectable low power usage. Not to mention the likely cost premium of such a screen. That being said, a screen of something like 1280 x 960 or 1600 x 1200 wouldn’t be too much to ask.

Anything else? Well, the iPhone 4’s gyroscopes for gaming are a given. A bigger speaker (as some recent case leaks, including at CES, have hinted); maybe. A micro-USB port for charging in order to meet the new EU mobile standard; maybe. And count on something that none of us, including Apple’s competitors, have thought of… maybe not Earth-shattering, but I’m sure there’ll be something interesting.

Now when might we see such a beast? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an announcement anytime between January 19th to February 9th. And then I’d expect to see a release within no more than 4 weeks of the announcement. Some sites online have speculated about a late-January or February announcement followed by a late March or early April release, just like the original iPad. Well, that doesn’t make commercial sense. Last year Apple didn’t have a backlog of existing iPads to sell when it announced over 2 months before release. And except for the first-gen iPhone, they’ve almost always made a new iPhone available within 3 – 4 weeks of announcement. So, I expect a new iPad by late February or early March instead. If I had to guess, I’d predict an unveiling on January 27th, 2 days after Apple releases it’s quarterly earnings, and an on-sale date of February 18th or 25th.

Oh, and one more thing… I also expect some refreshed MacBooks and MacBook Pros using Intel’s new Sandy Bridge CPUs to arrive soon as well. With the new CPUs finally offering decent graphics performance onboard, Apple can finally fit i3 or i5 processors into their tightly packed and power sipping 13-inch models. These models are overdue for updates. So I hope for something in the MacBooks and MacBook Pros in February or March as well – earlier if the iPad is later, or later if the iPad is earlier – perhaps available around the time the new iPad is announced.

Well, that’s what I’ve got for now. Over the next couple months we’ll just have to see what actually happens. My wallet lives in fear!