Wired on What to Expect From Apple’s iPhone-centric WWDC 2010
We’re willing to guess the next iPhone’s back will detect multitouch gestures so you can control core features such as the music player while the device is still inside your pocket.
Brian X. Chen
Willing to guess? Willingness to guess and willingness to bet are about as far apart on the prognostication spectrum as one can be. I wouldn’t be willing to bet on analyst speculation either if pocket music controls were the best feature to come of it. I look forward to accidentally skipping tracks and deafening myself every time I reach for my phone, I guess.
That’s not to say a touch-sensitive backplate is a bad idea—a lot of game developers would kill for a control surface that doesn’t obscure your view into the game world—but music controls sound like the least interesting application one could invent for it. There’s a reason every pocket music device for the last two decades has had a Hold switch.
Still in prediction mode, Chen wonders how AT&T will support the bandwidth required by the videoconferencing inevitably tied to a front-facing camera. Simple: they’ll charge like a wounded bull, just as every other carrier on the planet does. Video calls are nothing new to 3G phones; as I recall, it was the only reason to buy one when 3G networks first debuted in the early 2000s. Mobile video calling is an awful, expensive feature that nobody ever uses, but that doesn’t mean Apple won’t support it. Last I checked they support MMS, too.