Apple is announcing its new iPhones tomorrow, and there's plenty of speculation as to what will appear in Cupertino: an iPhone 5? A faster, but less expensive iPhone 4S? An iPhone on Sprint, but not T-Mobile? Our editor-in-chief Dan Costa will be at the event, liveblogging here on PCMag.com starting at noon ET/9 a.m. PT.
But as PCMag's phone guy, I have my own wish list about what I'd like to go into the iPhone 5. Some of my desires are almost sure to be cruelly shot down. We're unlikely to see LTE, for instance, and chances for a T-Mobile iPhone are slim. If I were designing the iPhone 5 launch, though, this is what I'd include.
1. All four national carriers, including T-Mobile. It's time for everyone in the U.S. to be able to get iPhones. Holding back the iPhone from T-Mobile—probably because of merger-related pressure from AT&T—would be a cruelly anti-consumer thing to do.
2. LTE. We are entering a 4G world, and by the middle of this iPhone's life, Verizon will have blanketed more than half the country with 4G LTE. To release a phone only supporting "4G" HSPA+ would give the AT&T iPhone a major advantage over Verizon's model, and would make the iPhone 5 look hopelessly out of date once consumers have had it for about 18 months.
3. Redesigned antenna. The external antenna is the iPhone 4's number-one flaw, and it basically requires that the phone be contained in a case to get the best reception. Apple needs to fix the antenna design and provide a phone which can be held any which way.
4. Siri magic. A long, long time ago, Apple had a handheld that could automagically guess what you wanted. You could just tell the Newton, "schedule dinner at 6 pm with Abby," and it would make a calendar entry. Fast-forward fifteen years, and Apple now owns a company called Siri with that sort of intelligence amped-up with voice recognition and Web capabilities. Siri-powered, Web-enabled artificial intelligence would be a killer app—consider saying, "iPhone, make two reservations for 7 p.m. at a Turkish restaurant with three-star reviews and dishes under $25."
5. Larger screen. In a world of 4.3-inch phones, the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen is looking a little cramped. Let's bump that up to four inches to give iPhone owners a bit more room to play while making sure the phone still stays sweet and petite.
6. Camera improvements beyond megapixels. I've reviewed hundreds of cameraphones, and let me tell you, megapixels are not cameraphones' problem. Their number-one problem is low-light performance. Number two is dynamic range (handling dark and bright areas in the same photo.) Number three is autofocus delay. I frankly don't care if the new iPhone camera is more than 5 megapixels: if it can lick a digital still camera on indoor shots, that's what really matters.
7. A new body. The iPhone 4 is slim and handsome, but its attractive body has some design problems. The glass on the back is prone to cracking, for instance. It would be neat to see a new design, perhaps with a tapered metal back that echoes the MacBook Air.
8. Better power management and battery technology. There have been some recent innovations in battery technology that I'd love to see in a new iPhone. Innovations in power management (for instance, being able to quickly power Wi-Fi up and down) and in battery design could solve a major complaint people have about their iPhones—that they don't get to use them enough before they run out of juice.
9. A prepaid model. Not just a less-expensive iPhone—an iPhone on less expensive service plans. Releasing a $99 iPhone 4S is fine, but it doesn't really save people money; I like to say that's a $2,500 iPhone as opposed to a $2,600 iPhone. Apple needs to take that budget iPhone and put it out on systems like T-Mobile's Monthly 4G, Simple Mobile, MetroPCS and Cricket. That would truly make everyone able to afford the iPhone.
Notice I didn't include NFC, which I still think isn't going to take off in the U.S.A. I also think the IPS screen is good enough and haptic feedback would harsh Apple's mellow. What would you like to see from the next iPhone? Tell us in the comments below.