Here’s the new iPhone Pro, something that we don’t expect at MacWorld 2009 at all. However, we do expect something like this to come at a later date. Why? Because it just makes sense.
Click on image above for higher resolution version
This concept started as a Photoshop idea by Giz reader Mat Brady. He wants to get rid of his Nokia N95 but can’t get himself to buy an iPhone for the same reason other people don’t like the current iPhone. Lack of a physical keyboard, lack of a good camera, and not enough storage.
I’ve an iPhone 3G. I love it. In fact, now that I’m in Spain and I can’t use the 3G–because AT&T will nail me for the data roaming at a buck per megabyte–I miss a lot of things, from Maps to Facebook. But even while I can’t live without it, I can see those shortcomings. In fact, I’ve bitched about the camera and the storage quite a few times. Mat made his concept and called it iPhone Elite: an iPhone with 60GB of storage, true 16:9 aspect ratio, slide-out keyboard, one megapixel front camera for iChat, and a high quality camera, with good lenses, optical zoom, and video capability.
That’s good, but we thought it could be a bit better. We fixed the keyboard to make it more rational and compact, losing some unneeded keys. With the space, we added what it’s really needed to make the iPhone a true Nintendo DS competitor: A direction pad and two buttons. For the D-Pad, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and just copied Nintendo’s tried-and-proved design.
Is this doable now? Technologically, it is. We’ve seen designs by HTC that get close to this, although they don’t have the software and the final polish that this class of Apple product may have. Would it be more expensive to produce than the current iPhone 3G? Of course. Would we want to pay extra for it? Definitely yes.
Wouldn’t you? [Original design by Mat Brady]
Matias
December 30, 2008 at 11:12 PM
That is the most awesome thing I have ever seen. I have an iPhone and I concur. The keyboard is incredibly frustrating, I could do with more storage and the camera is less than adequate for the supposed “cutting edge” technology we usually associate with Apple.
My thoughts however lean to a more sinister and business minded plot. The world was frothing at the mouth with the release of the iPhone, I was desperately waiting for it to finally arrive in Australia. They knew it’d sell no matter what. I’m of the opinion that they have something closer to the above waiting in the wings, and have had for a while. The iPods are a perfect example of their social saturation methodology. And we’ll keep buying. I for one am waiting for a real leap, like the above example.
In short, get to it Steve and make nice with Nintendo, I want to rock some Mario on a real keypad.
Report PermalinkKaldo
December 31, 2008 at 1:49 AM
Looks great :P does the screen tilt up ??
Report Permalinkcan’t wait for it to become a reality. I would buy it just to rub in the faces of friend who think they are awesome because they have an iPhone and I don’t (which is true…)