It’s also the best clue yet that Apple isn’t about to upstage the iPad with a smartphone that’s more powerful, faster and less-expensive than its quick selling tablet.

Earlier this week, A Vietnamese forum published photographs of what it claimed was an iPhone. Several of the images were of the iPhone during and after a teardown, exposing internal components, including the logic board.

The exterior of the Vietnamese iPhone closely resembles the case of an earlier prototype photographed by technology blog Gizmodo, which paid $5,000 for the device. The Gizmodo-obtained iPhone prototype raised a ruckus when it was disclosed by the site last month, with Apple demanding its return and California police involved in an investigation into possible theft charges.

A 21-year-old California man was identified by his lawyer as the person who took the iPhone prototype from a Redwood City, Calif. bar after an Apple software engineer left it behind.

Unlike Gizmodo’s iPhone, the one that surfaced in Vietnam is labeled with production markings that identify it as a 16GB model.

When photographs of the Vietnamese iPhone are blown up, markings on the processor closely match those on production models of the iPad, the iFixit Web site noted Wednesday. According to iFixit, the markings mean that the next iPhone will be powered by the Apple-designed A4 SOC (system on a chip), which also runs the iPad.

“That makes sense,” said Aaron Vronko, CEO of Portage, Mich.-based Rapid Repair, a repair shop and do-it-yourself parts supplier for consumer devices, including Apple’s iPod and iPhone. Vronko regularly tears apart Apple hardware products — most recently the iPad — to get an idea of how they’re built and what capabilities they have.

“That completely gels with the direction Apple is heading,” Vronko added. “They’re loathe to make a device and have it less expensive and more powerful than the iPad. So it makes sense that the iPhone will use the same processor, as long as it’s not more powerful than the iPad.”

When Gizmodo published photos of the iPhone prototype it had acquired, Vronko speculated that Apple would also use the A4 in its next-generation smartphone.

iFixit claimed that the markings on the A4 showed that the fourth-generation iPhone will include 256MB of system memory, the same amount as the iPad and last year’s iPhone 3GS.

That, too, fits with Apple’s announced plans to debut a limited form of multi-tasking with the next iPhone, said Vronko. In March, Apple previewed iPhone OS 4 and announced that the mobile operating system upgrade would allow specific forms of multitasking via seven new APIs (application programming interfaces).

“Call it partial multitasking,” said Vronko of Apple’s approach. “It’s a handy way for them to handle it, since they then control what apps multitask. Most apps have little or no need for multitasking.”

The 256MB of system memory is enough to allow partial multitasking in the next iPhone, Vronko said. If the iPhone had more — say 512MB of memory — it might mean Apple has bigger multitasking plans than it has publicly admitted.

But contrary to reports, Vronko wasn’t buying the idea that the latest leaked iPhone was brought to Vietnam from the U.S. To him, it made sense that it popped up in Vietnam.

“Chinese companies have invested billions in Vietnam,” he noted, referring to electronics production and assembly plants. “This could have leaked from a draft production facility in Vietnam.”

Although he retained some skepticism of the iPhone’s legitimacy, he said it was probably a production unit, or one very near production quality. “If it’s real, that fits. Apple has to have three, four or five million iPhones in the pipeline at launch, so they’d have to have started building them this month,” Vronko said.

Apple is expected to unveil the next iPhone June 7, the opening day of its annual developers conference in San Francisco, and start selling the smartphone later that month.

But after this spring’s leaks — unprecedented for Apple — what’s left for Apple to talk about at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)?

“I imagine they held back a few key things on iPhone OS 4,” Vronko. “Maybe they’ll show how the video chat is supposed to work. That may be the big ‘wow’ moment.”

Both the Gizmodo and Vietnamese iPhones have a front-facing camera in addition to the usual camera on the back of the smartphone. Most analysts and pundits, Vronko included, have assumed that the front-facing camera will be used for video chats and calls.

“How will that be used?” Vronko asked, saying that question was one to keep in mind over the next month as Apple introduces, then starts selling, the next iPhone. “Once they sell a few million [new] iPhones, there will be a few million people who suddenly have a video telephony-ready phone. How will American consumers take to what will be the first realistic large-scale video telephone?”

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com.

He has a few thoughts on what the blogosphere has been creating, have a read after the jump.

MM: Hey Aaron, thanks for taking my call today, can you give me a bit of background info on you and Rapid Repair?

AV: Hey Fabrizio, I’m the service manager for Rapid Repair, our company was founded 6 years ago and we repair mobile devices, gadgets, ipods, iphones, zunes, video game consoles and handheld consoles. We get shipments from all over the world and repair close to 500 a week. We also contribute to our general knowledge-base by buying the latest gadgets, taking them apart, and putting out repair guides on our website.

MM: That’s great, thanks. So lets get down to business, what do you think Apple will do with the iPhone 4G?

AV: I think that the big changes to expect for the iPhone 4G (4G meaning 4th generation, not the network), in contrast to the iPhone 3GS, will be the exact opposite. The iPhone 3GS changes were focused on the hardware, the horsepower, the core of the device and the kind of performance it can offer. It was basically 95% the same phone as the 3G, just a faster version of it. With the iPhone 4G it will be more or less with the same hardware capabilities, but totally revising the design of it and heavily tweaking, revising and adding to the software functionality but not necessarily in the core applications, but in the most common periphery apps.

MM: Can you tell me more about what you think the direction will be with software?

AV: The thing that made the iPhone successful in the first place was that it did about four applications that everyone who wants a smartphone wants, and it did it better than anyone else ever had. Those four or five applications will be about the same, its just the next 80 or 90 they will improve functionality on.

MM: How do you think the iPhone 4G will be compared to the iPad in terms of platforms and hardware? Will there be any cross-platform integration?

AV: I think its interesting to see to what extent they want to integrate iBooks, they probably most likely want to avoid that. They’ve got another market they are trying to create with the iPad, trying to offer the same functionality on the iPhone, and with that small of a screen size is not that effective for reading books (even though I think they might bump the screen size on the iPhone 4G). I wouldn’t be surprised to see it more focused on reading periodicals, daily news, weekly news. Perhaps expanding on the content delivery that the iBooks content delivery will use. Which I think is a great move, that’s one big piece that the iPad is missing is just one killer app and that it’s not way better than any other device that has come before it.

MM: Well we don’t know that for sure just yet.

AV: Yeah, based on what was shown. It’s not a better e-Reader than Amazon’s Kindle, its not a better computer than the MacBook Air, so far there is not one thing that’s better than everything else.

MM: How about hardware?

AV: I do think the iPhone 4G will use the same processor that is in the iPad. The new Apple A4 as they call it, or it may be called the A3, when it comes down to the hardware it will be the same basic design. The CPU inside that application processor will be an ARM Cortex-A9, the graphics processor will be a PowerVR SGX, probably a 535 or 540. But what they will do, instead of running that CPU at the same clockspeed as the iPad, they will just underlock it to about 600Mhz on the iPhone 4G. The reason they would do that is to save significantly on power.

By comparison, the processor that is in the iPhone 3GS is also running at 600Mhz, the new processor set could easily be 25% more powerful even if they ran it at the same clock speed. In fact, they could even slow it down to 500Mhz and it would still be a more powerful processor set, and it would use maybe half the power as the iPhone 3GS processor and still get just as much done. And thats a result of using a newer and more powerful processor design. Largely due to using a smaller manufacturing process.

MM: Do you think Apple would open up the iPhone 4G for multitasking?

AV: No, I would say not. They didn’t indicate it in the iPad so I would think not. They won’t want to change it from the iPhone 3GS. They have a pretty good history in doing this with the iPods. In one cycle they change the design, the next cycle they beef up the hardware with kind of the same design, and then the next cycle they change the design again. The really good reason for that, which makes a lot of sense for phones, is every 2 or 3 years peoples contracts expire and they can get a new phone when that expires. So it makes sense for Apple to make a device with substantially different capabilities, but nothing more than that. If you make phones with substantially different capabilities every year, then you end up with too many classes of applications and too much confusion of compatibility.

MM: What do you think about these “touch-sensitive case” rumors?

AV: The touch sensing case rumors are interesting. A design concept I think Apple might be playing with, but not an enhancement that would be in the next iPhone, this sounds like something what would more suit the iPad. I believe they will however tweak multi-touch, so you can come up with new gestures, but nothing changed at the core. The case should be an aluminum uni-body.

MM: How about hardware specifics, what will be inside this iPhone 4G that we haven’t talked about?

AV: Memory will be at 512MB, the cost is right and I couldn’t see Apple staying at 256MB for the cost differences. I think storage capacity will be in the options of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. No removable battery, if the iPhone is thought of as having a 2 year life cycle. On a 2 year basis most people are reasonably happy with their battery life.

MM: When do you think Apple will release the iPhone 4G?

AV: I would expect it to be close to the typical annual release, unless there is something groundbreaking that no one would expect there’s no reason that it couldn’t be out. The iPad is going to be out in March with that processor already on display, so processor production shouldn’t really hold them up. But they will need more for iPhone’s, I would say early June to mid-July. Whoever the fabricator is for the iPad A4 chip, will be the fabricator for the iPhone A4 chip. OLED screens are already available in the size Apple would want to use, the only thing they may want to be waiting on is Samsungs newer generation of OLED screens which are 25% brighter. They are in the mobiel handset form factor where you might get a reasonable level of performance in direct sunlight.

MM: What will it cost?

AV: It’s going to be the same or less. Certainly not more, $99, $199 and $299 are the most likely targets. Going any lower to that doesn’t net them any additional sales and thats the price point for most mobile phones, and they could make a killing on it because they are not upgrading most of the hardware inside, its a year later and a year cheaper and for the same price.

MM: There are rumors of video conferencing, what are your thoughts on that?

AV: I don’t think Apple is convinced that the customer they design for (North Americans) demand this feature.  Our mobile networks, (especially the beleaguered AT&T) are nowhere near ready to handle the heavy network demand and usage of these technologies, meaning it would be a WiFi only app and Apple doesn’t want to make their headline feature one that “just works… sometimes.”

MM: Anything else you might want to touch on, perhaps gaming, whats it all really about?

AV: I think its more about design and form factor, not performance on this. They are using newer chips, but thats mainly to increase battery life. Thats the trade off, you can increase battery life and increase performance with some level of trade off. I think you could see some pretty awesome games and battery life. If they use an OLED screen with the A4 chip, clock it all the way down to 500 or 600MHz, you could double the battery life in pretty much all applications from what the iPhone 3GS was. Or they could make the battery smaller and take it off the size and weight of the device with still a 50% increase.

MM: Well Aaron, thank you for your time and our readers will definitely appreciate your thoughts on this.

In this case, that means Apple’s iPhone OS 4, the next version of the company’s mobile operating system, which was previewed yesterday to reporters, bloggers, analysts and industry watchers.

Apple’s a few weeks late — the last two years it’s touted the new iPhone OS in mid-March — but it’s not so late that it puts a mid-summer release at risk. The company’s vast network of developers still has plenty of time to start building apps that will take advantage of the new before Apple does its usual unveiling of a revamped iPhone.

So, what’s in iPhone OS 4? A lot of catch-up, say some, a whole lot of goodness, say most. That’s the quick analysis, anyway, of the next generation software that will add a bunch of features, including a few, like multitasking, that users have been yapping about for years, to the growing collection of Apple’s mobile devices.

iPhone OS 4, like its last two predecessors, has more than a single FAQ can cover; this will play out from now until June, the presumed ship date for the next iPhone, and long after. But we wanted answers to the off-the-bat questions right away.

When do I get iPhone OS 4? True to form, Apple was no more specific than “this summer” for the upgrade’s release, although developers got their hands on a beta and the SDK (software developers kit) yesterday.

But only iPhone and iPod Touch users get the new OS this summer. iPad owners have to wait.

Wait? Wait until when? iPhone OS 4 won’t reach the iPad until “fall,” said Jobs today. But he didn’t say why.

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, wondered whether the delay was to give Apple time to set some hardware ducks in a row. “I’d like to be able to scan [photos] into the iPad,” he said, and noted that others have asked for direct printing from the iPad, rather than requiring users to e-mail files to or sync files with a PC or Mac.

In fact, Apple may already be vetting hardware vendors, said Aaron Vronko, CEO of Rapid Repair, an iPhone repair firm and experienced teardown expert. There’s a USB controller inside the iPad, says Vrnoko, who disassembled an iPad last Saturday. The evidence is Apple’s online store, where the company’s selling a kit that connects s camera’s USB port to the iPad’s sync and charging port.

Vronko’s bet? Apple will allow select hardware manufacturers to access the controller — again the Apple’s control of the iPhone/iPad ecosystem — for, say, printing.

f these experts are right, maybe Apple requires time to line up those vendors, who need to write drivers, and will add those drivers to iPhone OS 4 between its release for the iPhone and iPad.Or Apple’s just jerking the chain of every iPad owner. Hard to tell.

How much will I pay for the update? Apple didn’t say today, but in the past it gave away upgrades to iPhone owners and charged iPod Touch users $10.

However, there’s a good chance that the upgrade will be free to everyone. Last year, Apple received approval to change its accounting practices so that it could recognize iPhone revenue immediately, rather than spread the income over 24 months. That older accounting method was what Apple used to justify the upgrade charge to iPod Touch owners. With that now moot, Apple’s in a position, accounting-wise, to provide free upgrades.

What’s in iPhone OS 4? Not surprisingly, Apple said the upgrade is a big deal.

Yesterday, the company boasted that iPhone OS 4 includes over 100 new end-user features, although it described only a handful. It also claimed that the OS offers developers more than 1,500 new APIs that can be used to add limited multitasking, open e-mail attachments, access the iPhone’s calendar and more.

What’s the most important, or at least most impressive, new feature? As always, your mileage may vary, but multitasking would be our pick.

With iPhone OS 4, some apps will be able to offer multitasking for specific purposes. The Skype VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol), for example, can use one of seven new APIs to craft a new version that receives calls while other apps are in use, and lets users put callers on hold while they check something out in another app. The Pandora and Rhapsody music-streaming services, on the other hand, will be able to play tunes in the background, just like the native iPod app does.

How will I switch between apps that multitask? Double-tapping the home button brings up an app-switching tray that shows the active programs. Think of it as a dock for multitasking apps that slides up from the bottom of the screen.

While analyst Gottheil drew comparisons to Windows’ task manager, Jobs disagreed. In a Q&A session after the preview presentation, the Apple CEO denied any similarities. “In multitasking, if you see a task manager…[Apple's designers] blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.”

So I can finally switch between apps without closing the first, pressing the home button, then launching the second? Yes, you can.

Apple, in fact, called its “fast app switching” the biggest news within the big news of multitasking. “This is probably the easiest for developers to adopt, and probably the most important,” said Forestall.

Software that uses Apple’s fast app switching API can be put into what Forestall called a “quiescent state” in the background. We’d call it what it is … suspended. The app is frozen in place — “It’s not using any CPU at all,” Forestall said — and then resumes when you return.

“Most people don’t need multitasking,” said Gottheil of Technology Business Research. “They just want a way to quickly switch between programs.”

Will my instant messaging app use multitasking? What about Tweetdeck? Not really.

Apple is still, pardon the phrasing, pushing push notifications, the feature that debuted with iPhone 3.0 last summer. Push, sort of a poor man’s background processing, has the iPhone pinging Apple’s servers to see if there are, for example, new messages waiting for your instant message client. The upside? Push consumes less battery power than true multitasking.

Apple did add what it called “local notification” to iPhone OS 4. By using a new API, app developers can push notices from within the device, from their own apps. Until now, all push has come from Apple’s servers, sent to the iPhone. Scott Forestall, Apple’s senior vice president of iPhone software, showed how a television programming guide could ping you when “The Colbert Report” was about to begin.

But that won’t really help out the Tweetdecks of the world.

Why is Apple doing multitasking this way? Why not just do it full bore? Battery and performance, said Scott Forestall, Apple’s senior vice president of iPhone software.

“How are we adding multitasking while preserving battery life and performance?” Forestall asked, then naturally answered his own question.

Apple has long cited battery drain and processor strain as the reasons why it didn’t implement multitasking on the iPhone, a feature familiar not only to computer users, but to smartphone owners. Google’s Android operating system, offered multitasking from the get-go.

Concern about the battery was also the reason why Apple went with the “multitasking lite” push notification last year.

But I’ve heard only some people get multitasking in iPhone OS 4. What’s up with that? You heard right.

iPhone OS 4 brings Apple’s form of multitasking to the iPad, iPhone 3GS and the third-generation iPod Touch, which first went on sale in early September 2009.

Have an iPhone 3G or iPod Touch from the line that debuted in 2008? Sorry, Charlie. You can upgrade to iPhone OS 4, and according to Jobs, “run many things” with the older hardware, but not multitasking.

Apple said nothing about the original iPhone, the one that doesn’t do 3G, or the first-generation iPod Touch. Here, the expression, “No news is good news” probably doesn’t apply. Don’t expect to run the new OS on the oldest devices.

This isn’t the first time that first-in-line customers have been stiffed. Last year, for example, iPhone 3.0′s new MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) support wouldn’t work on the 2007 iPhone hardware.

I want more than multitasking. What else does iPhone OS 4 have?

• Folders, finally, to organize apps into some semblance of order. You can drag-and-drop apps to and from folders.
• Universal inbox that drops messages from Web mail, MobileMe accounts and multiple Exchange accounts (that last also a first) into one place.
• Support for BlueTooth keyboards. The iPad has this now; iPhone and iPod Touch get it this summer.
• iBook. Apple’s bringing its iPad online bookstore and e-reader app to the iPhone and iPod Touch, albeit scaled to fit the smaller screens. It offers Kindle-esque features, including bookmark and last-page-read synchronization between devices.

Is there a list somewhere of the 100+ new features? No, that would make it too easy, wouldn’t it?

As is Apple’s wont, it only touched on what it considers the highlights of the upgrade, but didn’t recite, or provide, a full catalog of changes. Apple hits those same notes on its Web site, and gave a bird’s-eye-view of some of the new APIs on the iPhone developer site.

And I’ll be seeing ads in my apps, is that right? Yes, indeed.

Jobs talked for quite some time yesterday about the new iAd mobile ad service that Apple’s kicking off with iPhone OS 4.

He took a swipe at now-fierce-rival Google when he got started. “On a desktop, search is where it’s at,” he said. “But on mobile devices, that hasn’t happened. Search is not happening on phones. People are using apps. And this is where the opportunity is to deliver advertising is.”

Apple’s plan: Ads run within apps — that’s where the eyeballs are, Jobs essentially said — and those ads can be interactive and include video. Apple will sell and host the ads, then drop them into cooperating apps. Developers, said Jobs, can add iAd capability to their software in “an afternoon,” and get the big end of the 60%-40% split with Apple of the advertising proceeds.

From the demonstrations that Jobs gave yesterday, many of the ads will resemble, if not apps exactly, then apps within an app.

Will you see ads? You bet you will. Yesterday, Jobs claimed that the iPhone-iPod touch-iPad universe could provide as many as 1 billion ad impressions — one impression is one person seeing an advertisement one time — each day. Say that again: 1 billion ads each day.

How come we didn’t hear about a new iPhone? Not the time, wouldn’t be prudent.

The last two years, Apple has trotted out a preview of the next version of the iPhone OS in March, but waited until June to announce new hardware, then three to five weeks later, put the brand spankin’ new handset in stores.

So Apple’s just following iPhone protocol.

“The iPad’s typical use scenario is sans power cord, whereas the power cord travels with the laptop,” says Aaron Vronko, CEO of Raid Repair, which services broken iPods and iPhones and replaces worn-out batteries. “It’s the biggest device to be used off the power cord most of the time. That makes the battery a huge factor in the success of this device and how it’s received by its audience.”

Apple’s iPad $99 battery replacement service is a bit of a misnomer; Apple will replace the entire iPad, not the battery.

Already, the iPad battery has come under fire. The iPad’s 10-inch LCD display requires a battery that’s more than five times the capacity and size of the iPhone 3GS battery. The screen alone consumes roughly 2 watts per hour, Vronko says, and will drain the large battery in 12 hours by itself.

Apple, which claims the iPad has a 10-hour battery life, doesn’t want the iPad to face the kind of vitriolic complaints regarding battery life that the iPhone has endured since its debut.

Bad News: Your iPhone Battery Is Dying

Every time you go through a charge cycle on your iPhone, you’ll permanently lose anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute of battery capacity. Typically, you’ll get 250 to 500 charge cycles before a lithium ion battery has outlived its usefulness, Vronko says.

(A charge cycle covers the entire capacity of the battery. For instance, if you drained a third of the battery and recharged it, and then used two-thirds of the battery the next day and recharged it, this would still be considered a single charge cycle.)

Using your iPhone in extreme temperatures—below 40 degrees Fahrenheit or above 95 degrees—will degrade the battery capacity faster, he says. Also, you shouldn’t regularly run your iPhone battery completely down before recharging it. Doing these things will shave maybe a minute and half off the total battery capacity per charge cycle, Vronko says.

However, it’s a good practice to run the battery dead before fully recharging it once a month to keep the chip on the battery and the chip on the device that measure the current flowing back and forth in sync . This is one of Vronko’s six tips for cleaning and caring for your iPhone.

There are ways to improve battery life of a single charge cycle. Here are three tips for getting more juice:

1. Disable power-hungry features such as Wi-Fi, Notifications and Location Services.

2. Buy a battery pack, especially if you plan on taking your iPhone to places that don’t have a ready power outlet like, say, a golf course. (Check out my review of iPhone app Golfshot GPS.)

3. Get it tested by an Apple Genius, because anecdotal evidence suggests there are a lot of iPhone 3GS lemons with poorly performing batteries on the market.

Time to Replace Your Battery?

Eventually, though, you’ll need to replace your iPhone battery.

Vronko says the battery-replacement demand curve starts with a 10-month-old iPhone. “That’s when we get the first run of customers,” he says. These customers are often heavy iPhone users who may have lost up to 30 percent of the original battery life—and 70 percent of the remaining battery is not good enough for them.

Next, Vronko sees a pick-up in demand for battery replacement with 12-to-15-month-old iPhones. The peak age for battery replacements is 18 months.

Rapid Repair charges $20 for just the iPhone battery, although you’ll have to be brave enough to put in the new battery yourself. Or it’ll cost $50 for the battery and Rapid Repair to do it.

For do-it-yourself folks, swapping in a new battery on an iPhone 3G or 3GS isn’t terribly difficult. The units have tiny screws for removing the outer shell, and the battery has a pluggable module. This wasn’t the case with the original iPhone, which had a battery that was soldered to the unit.

Vronko hasn’t seen the iPad yet, although he figures battery replacement won’t be easy given the iPad’s unibody design. Another sign is the fact that Apple itself plans to replace whole iPads rather than batteries.

“My guess is that the iPad is going to be more difficult for end users to open up the case without damaging it, in order to replace the battery,” Vronko says.

Tom Kaneshige is a senior writer for CIO.com in Silicon Valley. Send him an email at tkaneshige@cio.com. Or follow him on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline.

With all the hype over Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s iPad announcement now behind us, Apple-eyes have now turned their attention to what might be on the docket for the anticipated release of iPhone 4G. We’ve torn down and rebuilt thousands of iPhones over the last few years and talked with scores of customers about how they’re using it and what’s important—and not important—to them. Based on Apple’s past patterns of gadget refreshes plus the design and hardware unveiled in the iPad, here are our predictions for what we can expect from the iPhone 4G, which is likely to drop sometime early this summer.

Redesigned aluminum unibody styling

Starting with its iPods, Apple has settled into a fairly predictable pattern of releasing a physical redesign one year and hardware performance upgrade the next. The venerable iPhone 3G embodied the total design overhaul (while keeping hardware performance nearly unchanged.)  A year later, the 3Gs came as an identical twin, but with a surge in performance due to a faster CPU, graphics processor and upgrades to even the minor chips. Since third-party iPhone apps and users are just starting to really take advantage of the new power from the 3Gs, it’s unlikely Apple is ready splinter it’s market again by upgrading performance in the 4th generation iPhone (aka iPhone 4G.)   The 4G’s new cutting edge energy sipping chips will instead be used to make a slimmer and sleeker exterior design of the Mac unibody styling, similar to the iPad with a single piece of aluminum casing with single glass front panel.

Chip change

Apple will likely integrate its new A4 chip into the iPhone 4G, albeit a clocked-down version to meet performance demands without unnecessarily sapping battery power. The 1Ghz A4 for iPad will likely be underclocked to around 600Mhz—ample horsepower for a device that doesn’t support multitasking. Besides, from a marketing perspective, Apple must leave a market segment for the iPad to have a unique purpose. To launch an iPhone with nearly identical hardware capabilities would undermine the company’s own market leadership and complicate the app store with three tiers of iPhone/iTouch app performance.

OLED screen

As much as they might have liked to put an OLED on board the iPad, the technology and manufacturing was at least six months away in displays of 7 inches or more. For the iPhone 4G, however, an OLED screen makes perfect sense. OLED screens up to 5” have been popping up in most of the latest class of new gadgets since late 2009.  While the current class of OLEDs can be hard to view in direct sunlight, Samsung has announced the first production runs of its new Super AM-OLED screens that are 25% brighter and may finally be a solid option for daylight use. Samsung has been a major supplier for Apple’s mobile devices in recent years and may be keen to preserve that revenue stream and showcase their lead in OLED screen tech with Apple as the first OEM customer with its new screen.

Improved secondary/tertiary app performance

The iPhone’s 4 or 5 headline functions (docked apps) likely won’t change much on a 4G version, but we are likely to see some changes to the secondary apps (the ones that come with every phone, but aren’t docked.)

A revamped developer’s kit

Apple’s been wise about cultivating the app industry it’s created, so last year Apple was careful not to alienate older iPhone users when they unveiled apps with superior performance on a 3Gs.  This cautious step forward left many developers content to code for the lowest common denominator (iPhone 2G) for an easier. The iPhone 4G launch will likely bring with it a focus on tweaking the developer’s kit and store so that app developers are empowered and encouraged to leverage the 3Gs and 4G capabilities for more powerful, engaging, and useful apps.    This year Apple will be keen to retain its leadership position by putting the focus on apps that require a 3Gs or better for full function.

Not going to happen

No discussion of predicted iPhone 4G features would be complete without the one it likely will not have: a front-facing web cam. Yep, you read that right: despite lots of rumors that video chat is coming, it just doesn’t seem plausible—yet. The fact is that North American networks simply are nowhere near capable of handling the demand. AT&T (NYSE: T) already takes considerable heat for its lack of capacity to handle iPhone traffic. When it debuts, video chat will be a headline feature for the iPhone, but Apple won’t do that if, “it just works… sometimes.”

There is, however, much greater demand and capacity for video chat in the European and Asian markets to the extent that phones without it may be seen as old tech. This begs the question: could an international version of the iPhone be on the horizon?

Editor’s note: We’ll know more about the iPhone 4G – or whatever Apple decides to call their next-generation iPhone – in the coming months. Stay tuned!

About the Author

Aaron Vronko is the founder and service manager at Rapid Repair, the most well-known and reputable national online repair service for digital electronics, including the iPhone, iPod and more. The company dissects more than 500 devices every week at its repair shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan. For more information, visit www.rapidrepair.com.

While many analysts are expecting high-end processors and massive hardware improvements, Vronko was much more reserved. He expects the iPhone 2010 will pack a similar (if not identical) chip to the iPad. However, he also predicts that the iPad’s processor will be underclocked, down to around 600 MHz.

“It is not going to be much faster than last year’s 3GS. I think we’re talking about a 25% increase in hardware speed. The reason they’re doing this is for battery life.”

Vronko believes that, with the same size battery, the iPhone 2010 could almost double the battery life of the 3GS. Even if they cut the overall size of the battery, the iPhone 2010 will almost certainly see a substantial leap in battery life. Boosting the iPhone’s battery life would be a much more worthwhile endeavour than adding a 1Ghz processor.

“…Apple doesn’t want to move the target again, they do not want to turn app development into a hardware racing game.”

A massive jump forward in hardware would effectively add a partition to the App Store. Apple generally prefers to update hardware one year, and design the next.

“I think what we should really expect, hardware wise, for this next generation of iPhone is a design overhaul. The size, style, and some app functionality may change… Focus will be on second tier apps, as well as on the style of the phone.”

And what changes can we expect for the design of the iPhone itself?

“I think it will most likely have a Mac unibody look. Overall it will have the appearance of being one piece of glass, and one solid piece of aluminium. The most likely [design] will be an even thickness all around.”

There’s a pretty good chance that screen will be OLED, according to Mr. Vronko. He was unwilling to call it a total lock due to the strain on battery life, as well as the issues OLED has in sunlight.

“They could be the first company to use Samsung’s super OLEDs. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple be the first OEM to implement that, since Samsung and Apple have a strong working relationship.”

Vronko was doubtful the memory size categories will change. He does think it is likely that the iPhone 2010 will see a RAM upgrade, up to 512 MB. The camera will almost certainly bump up to 5 MP.

I closed the interview out by asking Mr. Vronko when he felt Apple would finally implement multi-tasking.

“If Apple enables multitasking, I doubt it will make it in until mid-2011. Apple is loathe to create ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in their user base. The 3GS is capable of handling multitasking, but the 3G and 2G are not. Once you’re in 2011, you’ve eliminated those handsets from your mainstream users and Apple can afford to intro multitasking.”

Earlier this year, reportedly faulty exploding iPhones in Europe caused a whole lot of finger pointing at Apple and its suppliers-but more often than not, iPhones get sent to the repair shop because of user slip-ups.

Aaron Vronko, CEO of Rapid Repair, an iPod and iPhone repair shop, and one of the first technicians to take apart the iPhone 3GS and write a repair guide, has seen his fair share of reasons why broken iPhones need emergency surgery. Here are his six favorites, along with advice on how to triage the problems:

1. “My iPhone went through the washing machine.”

Liquid is public enemy number one of the iPhone. One reader wrote to me that Apple refused to fix her broken iPhone because the Apple technician saw a red line on the base of the phone where the charger attaches. “It’s some kind of liquid submersion indicator,” she says, adding that her new iPhone was never exposed to water, rain or humidity. “They insisted I must have somehow submerged the iPhone in water, voiding all warranties.”

When an iPhone gets caught up in the washing machine, you’ll probably have to kiss it goodbye. “This all-too-common cause has a high mortality rate due to the thorough and prolonged penetration of the water,” Vronko says.

2. “I plugged my iPhone into my car charger, and it started to smoke.”

Chances are you’ve fried iPhone circuits because of a power surge. The 12 volt electrical system of cars used primarily for headlights and interior lights was not designed to handle the loads of modern cars with their big stereos, myriad gadgets and electronic features. “It’s common to have power surges simply because we’re overloading a small capacity system,” Vronko says.

The good news is that the iPhone probably can be repaired cheaply, unlike the iPhone in the washing machine. In the iPhone, the dock connector acts as a kind of protective layer to the main board, and so a power surge will likely fry just the dock connector. You’ll need an inexpensive dock connector replacement, Vronko says. Of course, you’ll still have to go a couple of days without your iPhone.

A big power surge, of course, can make it to the main board. In these cases, it’s bye-bye iPhone. “It wouldn’t make economic sense to fix it,” Vronko says.

Vronko doesn’t make many recommendations about iPhone accessories, save one: Buy brand-name chargers because they’ll have a better fuse to protect the iPhone. A brand-name company will also be more likely to help you out if its product causes damage to your iPhone.

Also, if you’re intent on using a car charger, try not to have the iPhone plugged in when you’re starting or turning off a car. That’s usually when electrical spikes occur, Vronko says.

3. “I dropped the iPhone and the screen cracked.”

You may pull an iPhone from your pocket or bag 40 times in a day. Its thin shape and slippery plastic shell is a disaster in the making. I’ve probably dropped my iPhone once every other week, luckily on carpet, and thus had to replace the screen’s protective film or live with the scratches on the back. With a drop on concrete, though, it’s easy to see the potential for cracked screens.

A cracked screen is fixable, says Vronko. The combined LCD-digitizer screen module on the iPhone 2G will need to be replaced. On the iPhone 3G and 3GS, only the digitizer usually needs replacement, Vronko says.

4. “My iPhone won’t charge.”

When an iPhone won’t charge, consumer fears may turn to the highly publicized iPhone battery lemon phenomenon. More often than not, however, the problem is far less dramatic. “This is usually the result of a misaligned dock cable or a foreign object being forced into the dock connector, causing damage and requiring that this module be replaced,” Vronko says.

The advice is simple: take care when plugging the cable into the iPhone. Also, make sure it’s the right cable. Yes, people often try to force in a wrong cable into the socket.

Along these lines, some iPhone owners complain that their iPhone won’t charge fully-that is, the iPhone indicates a less-than-100 percent charge. Yet the problem might be that the chip on the battery and the chip on the device measuring the juice flowing back and forth are out of sync.

Vronko advises customers to run the iPhone completely dead and then charge it until it can’t take anymore charge. Repeat this process, “and this should sync up the chips,” he says.

5. “I tried to repair my iPhone myself, and now it doesn’t work.”

This common response often is accompanied with a bag full of parts and screws, says Vronko. Chances are, if you play Dr. Fix-It, you will do additional damage to the iPhone.

While we all took apart bikes or computers when we were kids, a person must know his limitations. Seek professional help when dealing with high-tech devices like the iPhone.

6. “My son (or daughter) says nothing happened, it just stopped working.”

There are just two kinds of parents, Vronko jokes: the parent who believes the teenager, and the parent who knows better. It’s a good bet that the son or daughter let water get into the iPhone, dropped it, or jammed the wrong cable into the iPhone dock connector.

Earlier this year, an 18-year-old French teenager complained his eye was injured when his girlfriend’s iPhone overheated and the device’s touchscreen shattered, according to a report by the AFP news agency.

After researching the case, Apple responded: The glass cracked “due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone,” and not internal heat, Alan Hely, a London-based spokesman for Apple Europe said.

Wiens runs iFixit, a tech company that can be described as eccentric, to say the least. The staff of 20 engineers and college interns specializes in disassembling gadgets while documenting the process with photographs and writing. The end result of their work is an unofficial, illustrative instruction guide on taking apart and repairing each gadget. Their stated goal is to help consumers avoid the hefty costs of professional repairs or buying new products.

But it’s also a savvy marketing strategy in an increasingly competitive slice of what the tech industry calls “teardown culture.”

Some other companies, including RapidRepair and iSuppli, run similar businesses taking apart products. Hardware hackers, too, disassemble hardware as a hobby to learn how to tweak their devices into the gadgets of their dreams.

But teardown businesses don’t make money tearing down these gadgets, taking pictures of their insides or offering manuals. Rather, iFixit and RapidRepair both sell the parts for consumers to order and perform their self-repairs. And if customers are too afraid to do their own repairs, RapidRepair offers their professional services for a fee.

Photographing and documenting the teardown process, then, is mostly a marketing tool for these businesses to gain media attention and exposure in an effort to attract customers. IFixit, for instance, regularly sends tech publications (including Wired.com) their teardown observations and free photographs for use in articles.

Playing the “time zone game” with iFixit’s 2007 New Zealand flight gave the crew a head start of 27 hours before the iPhone was released on the U.S. West coast, where Wiens lives. But they still faced a number of challenges.

First, they had never been to New Zealand, so they had no office to work in and knew nobody who could help them. They couldn’t just set up shop in a hotel room, either: They needed lots of space, light and a fast internet connection to upload high-resolution photos documenting their process. Fortunately, the owner of a copy shop was generous enough to offer his facility for their use.

They got to work on the toughest part yet: disassembling a brand new product whose innards nobody, except Apple’s engineers, knew anything about. It turned out the first-generation iPhone didn’t even have screws to get inside. The team was momentarily stumped on just how to take apart the iPhone.

Then — eureka! They found they could pop off the black antenna shield and pry off the metal back.

“That was monstrously difficult,” Wiens said in a phone interview. Surprisingly, his team didn’t break the device, though its metal band was slightly bent after they reassembled it.

Marketing aside, why are geeks so fascinated by looking at the chips, wires, ribbons and glue — the hideous part of a gadget — when the gorgeous part is on the outside?

It’s quite simple: By peering into these gadget’s “souls,” you learn their secrets. A teardown of the new iPhone 3GS (the top photo in this article), for example, revealed the handset has an underclocked processor, presumably to preserve its battery life. And when iFixit disassembled the iPod Touch released in September 2008 (shown above), the company found a hidden bonus: an apparently unused Bluetooth chip, whose functionality Apple would later unlock in summer of 2009.

Aaron Vronko, CEO of RapidRepair, added that teardowns serve as a check on a company’s claims. Apple’s Steve Jobs, for example, recently said the latest (third-generation) iPod Touch lacks a camera because the gadget’s focus is gaming. However, iFixit’s teardown of the new iPod Touch found a small compartment that would be perfect for a camera.

“I don’t believe Steve’s explanation,” Vronko said. “I think in six months tops we’ll see an iPod Touch with a camera.”

The more interesting facet of looking inside is the opportunity to see forward, Vronko said.

“Teardowns give us insights on what’s coming up on technology and what kind of technologies people are choosing to integrate,” Vronko said. “It’s cool to see first hand the progression of design.”

A clear observation from teardowns is they keep getting more difficult, as gadgets progressively become smaller, more complex and more tightly packed with components.

Andrew Bookholt, a Cal Poly student studying mechanical engineering and an iFixit intern, flew to Newark to pick up a fifth-generation iPod Nano for teardown. He described the process of tearing down the camera-equipped iPod Nano as “a pain.” Copious amounts of glue held together the miniature device, and the click wheel was not removable and had to be popped out. It was so hard, in fact, Bookholt broke the Nano on his first attempt.

But Bookholt’s hard work (and iFixit’s money) was worth it, because the Nano’s guts spilled some fascinating hints on what’s to come.

“Apple is integrating everything more and more toward the iPhone-sized computer that will do everything,” Bookholt said. “I think they’re just going to shrink everything down, and maybe eventually have a Nano have all the capabilities of an iPhone, plus more. The trend is going toward an all-in-one device that has a lot of functions.”

IFixit’s Wiens has been taking apart gadgets for six years, and he said his favorite observation is the inadvertent harmony between rivals such as Apple and Microsoft. The two are fierce competitors, Wiens said, but once you look inside their gadgets, many of them are made by the same people. The Zune HD and the iPhone, for example, were both made by Foxconn, a major manufacturer in China.

“You’ve got these arch nemesis devices, and they’re the culmination of years of effort by Microsoft and Apple,” Wiens said. “But they’re being assembled and shipped out of China by the same company. At the same time you know the product managers at Apple and Microsoft hate each other’s guts.”

Click through to the next pages for more photos of naked gadgets (all SFW, or safe for work, unless your coworkers are easily shocked by wanton destruction of consumer electronics).

My first assumption was that it was time for a new computer. Ours was about five years old, relatively ancient in technological years.

But then I started thinking — should I be so quick to assume that computers and the other gadgets of modern life, like iPods and game systems, are always ready to retire after two years, or three or four? For economic and environmental reasons (repairing is better than replacing), shouldn’t I look into the possibility that we could salvage our computer?

I decided to call Adam Sanderson, chief executive of Computer Overhauls, based in Manhattan. I interviewed Mr. Sanderson about four years ago for a column and have since hired him occasionally for emergency computer problems.

Mr. Sanderson remotely peeked into my computer and confirmed my worst fears — the hard drive was dying.

We could go out and buy a new one. Or, he suggested, we could ship or bring in the tower that contains the hard drive and he would replace it for about $150 — far less than the cheapest desktop we could buy. Prices can be higher for more powerful hard drives and up to about $200 for laptops.

“We would clean out the whole machine, reinstall everything fresh and it would be like a brand-new computer,” he told me.

But then my software wouldn’t be upgraded, would it?

No, Mr. Sanderson told me, but you may not really need to.

“It depends on what you’re using the computer for,” he said. “If you’re surfing the Internet and doing e-mail, which is what the bulk of people do, then you’re only using 5 to 10 percent of the actual power of your computer anyhow. Most people don’t need upgraded software.”

The turnaround is about 48 hours, he said, and comes with a three-year guarantee.

On the other hand, he said, if you are going to work on video editing or movie production, you probably want the newest software available. Also, any computer older than seven years should probably be replaced if it’s having difficulties, he added.

Mr. Sanderson also repairs iPods and iPhones, and his business is booming.

“There’s definitely a huge surge in the amount of repairs” in this economic climate, he said, as people choose to keep what they have rather than spend twice as much on the newest model.

Once I started looking into it, I found a surprising array of repair options, ranging from specialized experts to a community of techies who offer free advice online.

Rapid Repair, for example, based in Kalamazoo, Mich., “tries to serve an underserved population,” by fixing game systems like Nintendo Wiis, PlayStations, Zune MP3 players, iPods and iPhones, said Aaron Vronko, service manager for Rapid Repair.

The company, which does not repair computers, was founded in 2004 and fields about 500 requests a week, Mr. Vronko said. In general, he advised, repairs make sense if they can be done for less than half the cost of a new item.

“If you have a $200 gadget and you can repair it for $80 or $90, the customers sees value in saving over $100,” he said. “There’s a certain feeling you get buying something new, but saving money is also good.”

Suppose, for example, that your 30-gigabyte iPod with video has some problems. If the device is still under warranty, you send it back to Apple. If the warranty has lapsed, you can still send it to Apple and it will cost $129 to repair or $59 for a new battery, which is often the problem.

At Rapid Repair, the highest repair cost would $90, but often runs less if the trouble is minor. The company also offers to replace batteries for $20.

“About half our customers buy the parts and do their repairs themselves,” Mr. Vronko said. He suggests, though, that once the item is about five years old, it’s probably not worth fixing.

What if the product is still under warranty, but something that isn’t covered breaks, and you want to get someone to fix it for less than the manufacturer will charge? You need to check if the repair company is authorized by the manufacturer. If it is, then typically the repair can be done and the warranty remains valid if other problems crop up.

Here is another option. Let’s say you have a technologically savvy friend who is willing to help you figure out your computer’s problem. But she lives in California and you live in London.

There are a variety of services and software that allow you to remotely control a computer. I checked out a company called CrossLoop, which offers two options. You can download software from the company’s Web site that allows you to remotely gain access to another computer system — either MacIntosh or Microsoft Windows — and diagnose the difficulty.

To protect security, said Mrinal Desai, co-founder of CrossLoop, each time you and your friend use the software, you must type in a randomly generated 12-digit code that is changed for each use. And both of you have to do it within two minutes.

Or, if you don’t have a friend willing or able to help, you can hire one of the 14,000 experts listed on CrossLoop’s site. They are posted with their experience, prices, customer ratings and where they are located — which can be anywhere in the world. CrossLoop takes 15 percent of the experts’ fees.

Mr. Desai says that his company does not vet the experts, but rather, like eBay, the online community weeds out the bad ones through reviews and ratings.

And if you like your expert, you can return to him again and again. “He becomes your I.T. guy,” Mr. Desai said.

Want an even broader base to draw on for repairing just about anything? Try FixYa.com. If you have a problem with your lawn mower, computer, toaster or car, you can tap for free into the 250,000 “enthusiasts,” as FixYa’s founder, Yaniv Bensadon, calls them.

And if one of the enthusiasts is especially helpful, and well, enthusiastic, that person can be promoted to premium expert. For $20 you can have a live chat with your expert; for $13, you can have a one-time e-mail exchange; or, if you have a lot of fixing to do, you can sign up for a $10 monthly unlimited e-mail exchange.

So, back to me and my failing computer. In the end, we decided that because the computer was five years old — with a sticky keyboard and a few other problems as well — we would opt for a new one.

I’m still getting used to it, so it’s nice to know that there’s a world of experts at my fingertips, just waiting to help.

What: Fast repairs for electronic devices
Who: Ben Levy and Aaron Vronko of RapidRepair.com
Where: Kalamazoo, Michigan
When: Started in 2004
Startup Costs: Approximately $1,500

Four years ago, when Ben Levy broke his iPod after tinkering with it, he began searching online forums for a solution. What he discovered, however, was that many people were in the same boat and Apple’s warranty often didn’t cover certain repairs, or they were very costly.

He and his friend Aaron Vronko, 25, decided to purchase a few broken iPods and teach themselves how to fix them. Before long, they were offering low-cost repairs on iPods and other small electronic devices. As demand for their services grew, Vronko and Levy, now 28, officially launched RapidRepair.com in 2004 with $1,500 from their personal savings.

Today, the site handles more than 500 repairs a week from across the nation and 65 countries worldwide, with customers mailing in their broken products to be serviced within 24 to 48 hours. The 15-employee Kalamazoo, Michigan-based company also boasts some offerings unique to its name: It is the first to offer color modifications for iPods and is the creator of the iVue clear panel, which is available for several iPod models.

“[The biggest challenge for us] was making the transition from a small group of friends getting paid to do what interests us to a medium-size professional organization of co-workers with divergent interests, skills and priorities,” says Vronko.

With 2008 sales projections at more than $3 million, Vronko sees the company evolving in the next few years to meet the rapid changes of the technology market and says its success is largely due to the low cost of launching the site.
“We wouldn’t have been able to open a store in Kalamazoo and be supported by a walk-in customer base,” says Vronko. “Being an online business has allowed us to reach a larger customer base and has gotten us to the status we are at today.”