iPhone 3G: No GPS, Same Old 2MP Camera

The next major revision of the iPhone, expected during this year's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 9, could be a major disappointment for those who were expecting more than 3G connectivity on this new model.

Sources who can be trusted told MacScoop that the next iPhone will of course have 3G connectivity, but not much more, as it will lack built-in global positioning system (GPS) chip and include the same old 2Mpixel digital camera.

Unless there is a second super-secret higher-end model, the two probably most requested features made by current and potential iPhone customers won't come as soon as expected.

During the past few weeks, at least half a dozen of reports on the Internet indicated that Apple was adding built-in GPS and more hardware improvements to the iPhone, in addition to the obvious 3G connectivity support.

Other sources told MacScoop that we shouldn't expect miracles in terms of battery-life as 3G chips are still way more power-consuming than those supporting only EDGE. That would either mean that the forthcoming iPhone has become a bit thicker than the current version so as to include a physically bigger battery or that we shouldn't expect significant improvements in that area.

However, it is also known that Apple has made major efforts so as to keep the power-consumption reasonable and that next version of the iPhone's software will include the possibility to disable 3G connectivity so as to save battery-life when this feature isn't used as it's already the case with Wifi on the current model.

This new iPhone could include other improvements but our apparently well informed sources decided to not take risks and just tell us what it won't have. For example, the also rumoured video-conferencing feature was neither confirmed or denied by our sources.

Those who would have found the GPS feature useful shouldn't lose hope either, as Apple could provide support for external GPS modules as some hints at this possibility have been noticed in recent iPhone 2.0 software seeds sent to developers.

Since Apple announced the iPhone Software 2.0 along with the iPhone SDK in early March, we've learned about the software–related improvements to the current and the forthcoming iPhone. The biggest of them are the ability to download and install third-party applications and a set of enterprise features, including MS Exchange support.

Most recent iPhone SDK builds provided to developers also revealed a few other features like Chinese handwriting recognition, Safari picture saving, or photo geo-tagging.