Who’s Excited About iPhone 4.0?

By: @hilzfuld

It’s that time of the year again! The rumors about the next iPhone are all over the place. Let’s do a short summary of what we know or think we know about the Apple announcement that is supposed to take place on Wednesday January 27th. According to Boy Genius Report, the new iPhone will have multi touch across the entire platform. I am not exactly sure what that means besides the fact that you will be able to pinch zoom for example in the Settings screen and not only in pictures and the browser. Other enhancements include improved UI, which will make navigating the iPhone more efficient, even though to me it seems pretty darn efficient now. It will also include some sort of new and improved syncing ability, and will be available for the iPhone 3G and 3Gs, which will supposedly give them a big edge in the smartphone market.

All that is nice, but nothing compared to the big improvement supposedly hiding within the iPhone 4.0 update. According to all the reports I have read, the new iPhone will include multitasking abilities. Let me stop right there and describe my morning to you. On my way to work this morning (I was not driving), I had my BlackBerry Bold connected to the car stereo and was easily switching between songs using the phone’s music-designated hardware button. In the meantime, I was running Snaptu and reading up on the stories I had missed overnight. Any story I found interesting enough, I tweeted to my followers from within Snaptu. I was also running Ubertwitter in the background and replying to people, as well as seeing all the retweets from the articles I tweeted from Snaptu.

In addition to all that, I was replying to emails throughout the ride, and here is the kicker. I actually started writing this post on the BlackBerry WordPress app right after I read the Boy Genius Report’s article in Snaptu. Now, I know that takes a lot of processor speed from the BlackBerry, and to say that the Bold did not hiccup a few times during the ride, would be a lie, but I ended up getting all that done, before I got to the office. Who said men cannot multitask?

So, why am I telling you this? Well, I have been thinking a lot recently about replacing my Berry with an iPhone, and when I experience mornings like today, I am quickly reminded that even with the 130,000 apps on the App Store, and with the iPhone’s gorgeous UI, I still need my BlackBerry (or at least an Android). I need to multitask, and the thought of running one app at a time on my phone makes me realize the iPhone is not for me. The way I see it, what are 130,000 apps worth if you can only run one of them ata a time?

However, all that is supposedly about to change next Wednesday, and that changes everything for me, and many other heavy users out there. If the iPhone wants to compete against the big boys and appeal to “real mobile users”, and not lightweight mobile enthusiasts, there are two things it has to support. One is multitasking, the other is a better email system. It seems like we can make a check next to the multitasking as of next week and the question remains, will thew new iPhone offer a better email system to compete with RIM? I surely hope so.

Even if the email stays the same though, the addition of true multitasking, background processing, or any other name you want to call it, might just push me over the edge and make me go over to the dark side. So, to answer the question in the title “Who is excited about iPhone 4.0?” Me! What are your thoughts? Is this going to change your mind (or confirm it) about the iPhone?

Check out this nice Mashable visualization of all the iPhone rumors!

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