iLounge reports that they’ve been told the next generation iPhone will come in two storage capacities (we’d guess 16GB and 32GB) and three radio flavors, 3G, 3.5/3.75G, and China CDMA. Consumers won’t be able to choose which radio model they buy, each carrier in each local region will simply offer the one that best suits their network. Some choice in color — black or white? — should remain.

The design is said to be roughly the same with the exception of a new, more scratch-resistant matte finish for the back plate, which has been rumored for a while now.

And no, unfortunately, Chinese CDMA won’t run on Sprint or Verizon in the US. Different frequencies.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple to Launch Six New iPhones with Matte Finish? Sorta…

Yeah, provocative headline, but we’ve lamented in that past that the Palm Pre was too iPhone-like for us — based on the involvement of transplanted Apple brain trust — and how we’d have loved to have seen a truly next generation Palm device. Could it be, however, that the former have saved us from being tragically wrong about the latter?

We’d heard before how the previous Apple iPod-lead Jon Rubenstein argued and lost with Steve Jobs over a hardware keyboard on the iPhone (much as Tony Fadell, “father of the iPod” and another former Apple exec, argued and lost over using Linux rather than OS X on the iPhone). Flash forward and Rubenstein is recruited by new Palm backers, Elevation Partners, to help oversee the development of Palm’s next generation handset — and potential company-saving gadget — the Palm Pre. (And Rubenstein brought over iPhone engineers and Apple PR people to help).

So what’s new? According to Fortune (via PreCentral.net) it turns out Rubenstein first had to save the Palm Pre from Palm:

Rubinstein started, in his words, “hanging out” with Palm people in late June. He didn’t like what he saw. The hardware for the Pre needed to be scrapped and rebooted. For one thing, prototypes were using old “resistive” touchscreen technology that responds to a user physically pushing the screen, not the newer “capacitive” technology manipulated by the electricity in the user’s body. Rubinstein tossed out the old phone’s hardware and built a new one in about 15 months. “We were basically running a marathon and doing a heart transplant in the middle of it,” says Rubinstein.

We’ve joked before that the device we all know and love is Steve Jobs’ vision of the iPhone, and that the Palm Pre is Jon Rubenstein’s vision of the iPhone, and guess what? We might have been exactly right.

(And does that mean if Rubenstein and Fadell had won their arguments, maybe the iPhone would have been the Palm Pre fully two years ago? We’re ecstatic they didn’t and it wasn’t because now we get to have both visionary products to choose from — and to compete for our choice.)

Only question is, where can we see that Palm-like Pre prototype?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

How Apple’s iPhone Team Saved the Palm Pre?

I was hoping Apple’s third generation iPhone — widely expected to be announced at WWDC 2009 — would have a huge screen and lend itself perfectly to the name iPhone HD. After all, Apple has been promoting HD a lot lately with their iTunes offerings.

Absent that huge screen, however, the last Phone different podcast had Dieter and I wondering what else Apple could have up their black, turtle-necked sleeves when it comes to branding?

• iPhone 4G would require 4G LTE wireless networks, which haven’t even begun to be rolled out yet, so last year’s scheme is out.
• iPhone 3.5/3.9G is likewise a non-starter. HSPA+ radio or not, that’s just too inelegant for Apple,
• iPhone 32GB is what the telco leaks have been splashing all over the internet. This too seems unlikely, as it paints Apple into every bit as much of a techno-corner as the radio-based names.
• iPhone Pro fits with Mac Pro and MacBook Pro (and even Final Cut Pro), but Dieter points out that beyond my little Apple-verse, that terms is already used and abused by Palm Treo Pro, HTC Touch Pro, and a variety of other stylus-wielding Windows Phones. That alone might sour Apple.
• iPhone, sans descriptor is always a possibility. After all, it’s not iMac X, Y, or Z, it’s just iMac. Whether internal documents say iPhone 2,1 or iPhone 3rd Generation, Apple could be ballsy enough at this point to just stick with the unadorned moniker.

What do you think, one of the above or something else entirely? Come WWDC, when Schiller or Joz or whomever whips out that new iPhone, what are they going to call it?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

What Will Apple’s Next Generation iPhone 2,1 be Called?

Zen Jar looks like an interesting experiment in social networking. You write something, send it off into the iPhone inter-ether, and see what karma — good or bad — other users ascribe to it. Personally, I prefer the direct bludgeoning I take for ill-conceived comments on Twitter, but for those tiring of the same-old micro-blogging, status-updating experience, Zen Jar is certainly an alternative. It comes in Lite (Free - iTunes link) and Paid ($0.99 - iTunes link), and you can check out Bela’s review in our iPhone Apps & Games forum for more.

If you give it a whirl, let us know how your karma turns out — mellow harshened, or child-like sense of wonder restored?

Namaste!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App: Zen Jar Karmic Social Networking for iPhone