UPDATE: NO FORWARD FACING FRONT CAMERA AT WWDC!!
noSight in sight
I wanted a walkie-talkie wrist watch since I first saw Dick Tracy. Then a few years ago I bought some cool walkie-talkie watches. They were pretty sweet and came in handy for quick communication at a newspaper I used to work at. Total Recall made me want a video phone soooo bad and I drooled over a prototype I saw at Staples in the early ’90s. It’s 2008!!! … I mean, we have the tech to fake a moon landing, but the iPhone can’t make video calls?
Why doesn’t the iPhone have an iSight?
I’m not sure, but looking at the diminutives of it at the top of my iMac, and on the macbook air, it should be possible. I mean, how freakin’ dope would it be to video call using Skype, or iChat? Perhaps, the molasses of Edge is what kept it from being introduced in the first place: ATT doesn’t want bandwidth hogs.
Possible Features
I’m very hopeful that the 2nd generation iPhones will have a built in iSight feature. The following is a list of features I hope are included in the next iPhone hardware revamp:
Native iChat client…
…that supported the coverflowesque group video chat and slideshow photo sharing would rock. And with support for Powerpoint presentations in the works, this would gel very well with corporate users.
Visual Voicemail is not Visual until…
Well, you get the point.
An h.264 hardware encoder
You know, to speed things up.
TV Out support
I love the TV Out feature on my iPod Touch and use it all the time to watch movies and music videos on the TV. Villains love to order to their minions around via huge televisions screens. Landscape video conference support to an HDTV using the A/V cable accessory would really make you feel like you’re the head honcho, or at least your neighborhood billy bad ass in no time.
Camcorder
There’s been a million times when I’ve needed to record something impromptu… disasters, family moments, police abuse… film festivals? PXL THIS is a film festival established in 1991 in which directors debut short films recorded with the Fisher-Price PXL 2000 toy video camera. Hello iPhone, I’m ready for my close-up.
March 24, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I completely agree. Adding a personal recording device to the list of features of the iPhone would be an enormous boon to the whole industry. Quite the challenge to other manufactures, as well.