Larger screen size
With the arrival of many handsets on the market sporting larger screens than the iPhone and the same apps as used running on the iPad as a comparison, it has become apparent to me now that the current iPhone screen size is no longer the ideal. With the older iPhones having a relatively poor display resolution the 3.5” inch display was great on models prior to the iPhone 4 but the iPhone 4’s high pixel density seems wasted on a relatively small screen.
Unfortunately, all of the apps currently available for the iPhone are made in a 3:2 ratio and without changing the size of the iPhone, the only way a 4” display could be fit onto an iPhone would be if the ratio of the display was changed to 16:9, a ratio popular in wide screen TVs and some computers. An example of how this could be done can be seen in the left picture.
To me an aspect ratio of 16:9 would be great as it would eliminate the black bars normally at the top of the screen when watching video.
If the current aspect ratio of 3:2 were to be kept and the screen enlarged to 4” the iPhone would look like the picture on the right, but the body of the phone would probably need to be wider than pictured. Personally I would not mind having a larger phone, though some people may feel differently. With this model all existing apps would be at the native resolution of the display.
Personally however it seems doubtful that Apple will change the screen size of the iPhone. A more likely expectation would be to see a new type of screen technology such as Super Amoled. If they were to make it larger however, this would be one of few things that would make me far more likely to want to upgrade from my iPhone 4.
Better battery performance
This is probably the most likely thing to happen out of those presented on this list. Throughout the four iPhone generations released so far the battery life has improved significantly. Apple is known to dedicate a lot of resources to improving battery technology and its devices are normally better than average in the field of battery performance. It would be nice to see an iPhone that could last multiple days with moderate usage but this may be asking too much. It would be reasonable to expect either moderate improvements to the battery life compared to the iPhone 4 if the new iPhone is the same size or smaller and substantial improvements if the next iPhone is larger than those preceding it.
Stereo speakers
While the iPhone 4 speaker is much better than the speakers in the three iPhones before it is still quite poor. For good audio performance it is pretty much essential to have stereo speakers and I would like to see this on the next iPhone model. Placement of the second speaker would ideally be at the top of the device. Whether it could be made to fit in with the design of the handset however is another question. With such a nice looking device as the iPhone 4 it is hard to see a speaker grille at the top of the device not spoiling it slightly aesthetically. It may seem harsh to criticise the iPhone for having poor sound quality considering the appalling quality of the speaker fitted to most HTC phones but for a company with such an illustrious history of making music players I would say this is an area requiring fast improvement.
Antennae fix
This problem does exist and everybody has it (although some people might try to kid themselves otherwise). Should be an easy fix with either the antennae break moved to a new position or coated in some kind of non-conducting material to avoid the gap being bridged. Personally for me, this improvement alone would not make me wish for an upgrade as even with my phone kept outside of a case I have had little problems with dropped calls once I learned not to put my hand over the gap. Left handed users however may feel differently. I would be stunned if Apple did not change the design of the antennae for their next iPhone.
Better home button design
Though the iPhone 4 (If treated well) seems to stand up better to wear and tear than its predecessors one aspect of the phone definitely seems to show its age as it did with the preceding models. After a long ownership period the home button tends to get less responsive to input and needs to be pushed harder and more centrally in order for an input to be registered. It would be interesting to hear how many other people have noticed this slight problem and it is difficult to think of an alternative to the current design considering many users would object to capacitive buttons as found on other phones. It seems likely that on the next iPhone there will be no great changes in this department though maybe Apple will manage to improve the durability of this part internally.
Images taken from tuaw.com
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