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Comment by caiusdurling | Hacker News Reader

Wonder what they're going to announce in the iPhone 5. Better battery life and perhaps a better GPS is all I really want over my iPhone 4.

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I'm pretty sure they're going dual-core processor as well (like the iPad 2).

Improved camera would be nice.

Interesting. I have heard from so many friends that current iPhone camera is about as good as it can get. Curious what you are expecting more - just bumped up mega pixels? Not sure how much that would matter - going from 5MP to 8MP for e.g.

The resolution is adequate for most uses, but any improvements for lower light conditions will always be well received.

8mp, 1080p, etc.

The Android world (the HTC Sensation being the first to pop into mind) has finally surpassed the iPhone 4 in camera and video capture quality.

I imagine Apple will leapfrog them again as usual for a healthy competitive market.

Megapixels != quality. Lens and sensor are far more important.

Can you show me a review that honestly shows new Androids beating an iPhone4 in actual results despite the megapixels?

I didn't indicate anywhere that megapixels == quality.

When you just about max out the quality of a given MP value with given hardware constraints, as I think the iPhone 4 has done, the only real way to go up is increasing MP.

I can't be bothered to dig up some review for you, as my observations come from personal experience. Your best bet is to look for HTC Sensation reviews with unmodified example shots and videos.

There was a photo posted online from within Apple that someone analyzed, and there was circumstantial evidence to suggest that it was from a new iPhone. There was a spec bump to 8MP, but the extra resolution didn't really add additional detail (which is common for 8MP phone camera sensors).

I guess we'll see next week whether that was the real device or not.

If you look at some of stuff at SIGGRAPH in computational photography, you could add a couple of more 5mp sensors and create some truly amazing images given the iPhone's programability. A 4 sensor iPhone (5mp or the newer 8mp) would be amazing.

I agree, but I do not see how one would fit them on an iPhone, and leave room (for both left- and right-handed users) to hold the thing.

Just put them right next to each other in a 2 x 2. The amount of room is pretty small. They should also improve the camera API to allow full use like the FCam API.

ref: http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/fcam/

Nice. I was thinking of 3D stuff, though. That could be sort-of done in software (let user move the camera, estimate motion from images & sensors, compensate images for motion artifacts), but having two or four cameras at corners of the device would be easier, allow for photographing moving objects, etc. (pan iPhone is about as tall as human eye-eye distance, so this should enable non-macro 3D stuff.

I do not think we will stuff like that before we have 3D screens on our iPhones, though.

You can do some pretty amazing stuff to get much better pictures with multiple cameras. The stuff they did with the Nokia phone with 1 camera is pretty impressive, but having multiple can really do wonders. The other advantage to multiple cameras is the ability to have less dense sensors allowing more light.

I am not a big fan of 3D currently. I just don't see it as good for small devices and it is hard on the eyes. I really think that the other uses for computational photography would make for a killer feature on a main stream phone.

Better lens; more light in == better pictures(broad generalization). A teardrop shaped phone would allow it to have a larger longer lens up top but still feel relatively light and thin. I haven't done research on the iPhone 4's current ccd chip but there is always room for improvement on things. Not necessarily an increase in specs but an increase in response time, decrease in noise levels, larger ccd, etc....

In what way? It's already on par with most point and shoot cameras and better than many. Resolution is well beyond useful levels for a phone; I'm surprised Apple is chasing higher megapixel numbers when 99% of iPhone photos get cut-down for web use anyway.

It's probably cheap to do so, and helps with the specs race.

I don't expect it to be announced here, but a full touchscreen would be nice... one without a physical button.

I hear this a lot. Why do you want a full touchscreen?

I disagree only b/c this creates accessibility problems for some users.

> "I disagree only b/c this creates accessibility problems for some users."

Capacitive buttons create accessibility and usability problems for all users. They look great in demos and quick previews. They're crap for use.

Right, totally agreed. But are we talking about a capacitive button or a no-button, touchscreen-only front?

I'd imagine capacitive buttons. iOS doesn't work without a home button. And as for the obtuse undiscoverable gesture concepts that go along with the no-button ideas: Apple has to be the last company that I would expect to ship a phone that cannot be taken from any state to making a phone call while held in a single hand.

Oh man, how many times I hit "back" when I meant "menu" on my android phone.

Apple is helping with long fingernails, I'm hoping the iPhone 5 will have something that discourages high heels.

I'd like the full touchscreen for more screen real-estate without the necessity of increasing the size of the form-factor.

The physical button is pretty important for force-exiting a frozen app. I can't imagine it going touchscreen.

I can't imagine there being a difference between a physical button and a capacitive one when it comes to interrupting the kernel to say "hey exit this process". It's all in the design in how the kernel handles interrupts.

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