Predicting the Future of iPhone OS

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In a few hours time, Apple will pull back the curtain on iPhone OS 4. As you’ll recall, Apple’s invitation stated that invitees would “get a sneak peek into the future of iPhone OS.”


Prior to Apple events, I tend to throw in my predictions. Last time I was wildly wrong. So this time I am going to keep things conservative. The usual suspects have spoken, and I am going to ride their coattails. There are three things I think will be added to iPhone OS:

  • Multitasking of some sort for third party apps
  • An advertising platform for free apps, and
  • Support for higher screen resolutions.

 Multitasking and screen resolution are the things Apple has been getting slammed on since the Motorola Droid and the HTC Nexus One Android phones came a-knockin’. Now, I’m sure Apple will have many more things to trumpet about. I’m just not sure what those will be.

I do, however, have my own little wish list.

Mail

  • Unified inbox
  • Threaded messages

iPod

  • Folder support
  • A freaking quick-scroll bar in the Playlist section
  • Get rid of cover flow

Lock Screen

  • Status summary of notifications/upcoming events/weather/etc.

Notifications

  • New system for presenting these. The blue grey pop up box just doesn’t cut it.

Tethering

  • I’d like to see AT&T actually support this here in the US. But, I’d actually like to see this taken one step further. I’d like to see the iPhone gain support for mobile hotspot. Some new smartphones are featuring this ability to take the phone’s 3G signal and then turn the phone into a WiFi hot spot for other devices. I’d love to see this feature, but I have doubts as that would cut into sales of 3G+WiFi iPads. 

Those are a few things I’d like to see happen with the iPhone. Some, like mobile hotspot, would likely require new hardware. Support for higher screen resolutions could be in advance of new iPhone/iPod hardware and/or taking a step toward unifying the versions of iPhone OS that iPhone/iPod run on versus the iPad’s flavor.

All will be revealed soon. Any last minute comments from the peanut gallery?