Wow why is Apple refreshing all of their devices so quickly First I bought the original iPhone and then 6 month later a price drop but I got a 100 dollar credit so not so much on that. Then the iPhone 3g came along and I seriously need it for work but my lazy boss says no buy your own 3g service or lose some cash in your paycheck, but I decided to just bring a laptop and tether it to the slow edge and also another price drop. Then the iPhone 3G S came along and now that I can upgraded I decided to and now Apple is about to release a new iPhone with dual core. Damn Apple let your customer rest their wallet but that dual core is mostly geared to the iPhone 3G contracts that is about to end so I could see why they might do this.......
Hmmmm..... Interesting... So this means that our batteries will generally last longer, but when we play games, it will die faster. I'm not sure I'm happy or worried about this lol...
Even a game wouldn't be maximum load. The chip is dual core so in order to max it out a game must be using both cores to their limit. Apple won't let that happen I'm betting one core will handle the phone functions, push notifications and an idle app which runs in the background. Then you have one whole chip to play a game on. Apple bought out P.A. Semi which has an amazing reputation of taking ARM chips and making them more efficient. If Apple refines the firmware and creates APIs to easily add a low power idle mode to apps and more efficient usage of the cores... We're talking better battery life with the same battery, though it might be less depending on what other hardware changes... *cough*OLED*cough*
And this is why statements about Apple competing directly with Sony or Nintendo are laughable. Apple is squarely in the mobile market, where somewhat drastic true generational upgrades occur in product lines every year to two years. I'm not talking Apple speak "gens" which Apple uses to denote minor redesigns (like 1st "gen" iPhone to iPhone 3G), but actual leaps (like iPhone and iPhone 3G to 3Gs, which has a different and much more powerful CPU, GPU and double the RAM). Sony and Nintendo? Portable game systems have the same average life span of home consoles: 5-6 years before the true "next gen" upgrades. Again, different markets. I still say Apple's doing this too soon, btw. If dual core Cortex A9MPs are due next year, why even bother right now with the 3Gs? Just extend the older iTouch/Phone hardware another year, as it's the software and "brand" that really sells the platform to consumers, and then hit us with the multicore ARM CPU and maybe even a more powerful variant of SGX than used currently.
The drop to $99 would offset that. Had they simply spec'd up the current hardware to 2nd "gen" iTouch standards, or slightly better, would the average iPhone 3G owner have been the wiser? Are the vast majority of 3G owners simply going to stop using the 3G once their contract ends, or are they more likely (or would have been) to get another contract period? The costs for Apple would've been lower, which would mean higher margins of profit. Then when the market is really ready, hit us with the dual core ARMs and higher spec SGX variant. Would've been win-win for all of us, really.
