Why Apple Should Put The Brakes on 3D Technology For the iPhone 5

A schematic in Apple's patent for a 3D camera. Could it end up on the iPhone 5?

A recent Apple patent for a 3D camera and other rumors suggest that Apple might be toying with 3D technology for the iPhone 5. Read why Apple and Steve Jobs should be careful about wading into the 3D waters with their next big iPhone.
You may have heard some faint rumors of 3D camera technology someday coming to the iPhone by way of some mind-blowing Apple patents that have surfaced over the past year or so. It’s no wonder that Apple would be exploring 3D technology in its research and development efforts: we continue to see the application of next-generation 3D technology in motion pictures, such as James Cameron’s Avatar, as well as the new Nintendo 3DS. In addition, television and computing sectors are beginning to invest vast resources into deploying 3D effects into a wide range of different media outlets.
Apple has two intriguing recent patents that focus on 3D: a 3D screen that would allow users to see the effect without 3D glasses, and a small 3D camera, which, by way of three separate camera sensors (see schematic to the left) would allow users to actually create and render 3D images themselves. Once deployed in a mobile device like an iPhone, this tandem of 3D inventions would most certainly turn mobile computing on its head: combined with gesture control as seen on the iPhone and iPad, it could even allow users to navigate their gadgets in a third dimension. That’s some futuristic stuff!
Whether or not 3D technology could show up on the iPhone 5, however, remains to be seen.
I have postulated for the past few months that the iPhone 5 may in fact offer a groundbreaking new feature that few if any of us have even speculated on. Could this pairing of 3D technologies — the 3D screen and 3D rear-facing camera — be the hook that boosts the iPhone 5 into legendary status? After all, given Steve Job’s ill health, for all we know, the iPhone 5 could be his swan song. He may be inclined to make the iPhone 5 a total game changer in mobile computing.
However, given the recent intelligence on the increasing possibility of an 8 megapixel camera for the iPhone 5 — served up by the folks at Sony — it would seem unlikely that Apple would be able to keep the lid on the additional components needed to construct a 3D camera. It could be possible that the iPhone 5 could debut its 3D screen without the pairing of a 3D camera — Nintendo 3DS already has a 3D interface, after all — but it should also be noted that, just because Apple has a patent for a 3D screen doesn’t mean that the technology itself is imminent: it can take years for new ideas to become reality, as highlighted in this other article about a possible changeable topography touch screen for the iPhone 5.
And then there’s also the possible dangers of 3D technology as a whole.
3D Technology Is A Possible Health Hazard
For as much as 3D technology seems like the wave of the future, Apple should be wary of deploying it in the iPhone 5. Ever since the debut of Avatar, 3D has been fraught with averse, well-documented side-effects that call into question whether man was meant for 3D technology. Remember: this isn’t the 3D technology of old, complete with the funny-looking 3D glasses. Next-generation 3D technology renders images in holographic fashion by projecting images in staggered frames, so that each eye is processing images at different intervals, thus creating a three-dimensional image in the brain.
When Avatar was released, the use of 3D imagery, together with the larger-than-life, computer-generated landscapes, drove a portion of viewers to experience a broad scope of side-effects, from short-term nausea and dizziness to more serious long-term side-effects like depression and suicidal thoughts. TechRadar has an article that documents the phenomenon, with writer Marc Chacksfield reporting on how the realism of the film, combined with the utopic landscape of Pandora, left many moviegoers feeling empty and depressed. This combination of realism with other-wordliness has been attributed to 3D imagery.
In short, James Cameron opened Pandora’s Box.
Cameron and other filmmakers tried to shrug off the early criticism of the dangers of 3D technology, but newer news of the ill effects of 3D in Nintendo’s 3DS has corroborated the claims that not enough is understood about the effects of 3D imagery on the brain. A recent article in the Sun reports on how sickening side-effects have plagued Nintendo’s wondrous new portable game console, reporting on Nintendo’s damage-control disclaimer that “the console is not safe for under-sevens and advised playing in 3D mode for less than 30 minutes.”
Considering that the whole point of buying the 3DS is to play games in 3D, this development should give Apple pause if they were thinking of releasing the iPhone 5 with any kind of 3D technology.
The fact of the matter is, the research on the effects of 3D has not yet caught up with the actual technology. It is a temptation to think that as humans, if we can build it, then it must be safe. After all, there are plenty of human developments over the past century that are both groundbreaking and unwieldy (nuclear energy and that scary supercollider in Switzerland immediately come to mind). Apple is most likely looking to hit a home run with the iPhone 5, but they should be careful playing with 3D tech right now — it is an unknown quantity.
And if the iPhone 5 does end with a 3D screen and/or camera, my advice would be to consider waiting to see the effects on users first before buying it.

<< Read Now >>

iPhone 5 Coming In June After All? Don’t Be Holding Your Breath In Anticipation

 

Charles Moore sorts out the conflicting reports about the iPhone 5 release date.

When it comes to the iPhone 5 release date, who are you going to believe? U.S. sources and Wall St. say it will come in late summer/early fall. Asian sources say the iPhone 5 is on track for June. How can you sort it all out? Charles Moore explains:
I’ve been following Apple new product releases attentively for nearly 20 years now, and I’ve concluded that the only certainty about them is that nothing is certain until the official announcement. Consequently, I think the best policy is to be interested, but not too impatient, or put much serious stock in rumors.
And so it is with the iPhone 5. Everyone knows it’s coming, but no one, except Steve Jobs and his coterie of closest confidants knows when. Indeed, it’s possible that even the Cupertino inner circle doesn’t yet know the precise release date, which may be partly contingent on renewed supplies of components that had been sourced in Japan prior to the earthquake/tsunami disaster.
Until about a month ago, it had been widely anticipated that Apple would introduce the iPhone 5 at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference that starts June 6 at Moscone West in San Francisco. This seemed a relatively safe guess based on past history, since iPhone releases and updates have been a tradition (if you can call anything that’s only been in place since 2008 traditional) at the WWDC over the past few years. However, this year maybe not so much.
As noted, about a month ago, some of the rumor mills began pulling in their horns a bit and suggesting that the iPhone 5 might be might not be ready in time for the WWDC after all, and that its release date might be pushed back until late summer or even into October or November. In any case, the arrivedat general consensus for the past couple of weeks has been pretty much that the iPhone 5 won’t be coming in June, especially after Apple posted a press release on March 28 saying that at this years five-day conference Apple will unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS, including demonstrations of the new kinds of apps developers can build using Apples advanced frameworks, and more than 100 technical sessions presented by Apple engineers.
At this years conference we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS, Philip Schiller, Apples senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing commented in the release. If you are an iOS or Mac OS X software developer, this is the event that you do not want to miss.
Nothing on the agenda about the iPhone 5 or any other hardware. That’s more unequivocal than Apple usually gets about conforming or denying major product releases and events. the inference I draw from it is a pretty categorical no iPhone or any other major hardware announcements at the WWDC, although it’s not completely beyond the realm of possibility, however remote, that Steve Jobs might be planning one of his patented one more thing surprise announcements in a keynote. I wouldn’t bet on it though, and it’s more likely that the ailing Mr. Jobs might not even show up at the conference.
However, on Tuesday, several news sites linked to a report on the Korean site ETNews.co.kr, declaring that Steve Jobs had confirmed a direct public iPhone 5 release coming at an Apple special event during the 4th week of June depending on how you parse the translation. My Korean is non-existant, and even Google Translate seemed to have difficulty producing coherent prose from the report. you can check it out for yourself here: http://bit.ly/gzTxtE
Anyway, the rumor mills cranked up, even though it would be peculiar, to say the least, for Apple to “confirm” a release date for the iPhone 5 to a Korean Website before announcing it in the U.S. In counterpoint, The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, a former MacCentral and Macworld staffer who is well-connected in the Apple orbit, posted a categorical rebuttal, declaring that his sources tell him that rumors of an iPhone 5 release at the end of June are completely false.
I have no insider insights to relate, but based on experience and deduction, I’m in Jim Dalrymple’s camp on this one. Speculating about unreleased Apple products is fun, and Oriental news vendors, being closer to and better connected with the actual production sites, are often sources of leaked information about forthcoming Apple hardware that turns out to have been accurate, or at least in the ballpark, but they’ve also been known to be spectacularly wrong at times, and it’s prudent to take anything they report about unreleased Apple products with a big grain of salt.

<< Read Now >>

Did Sony CEO Howard Stringer Spill The Beans About An 8MP iPhone 5 Camera?

Will the iPhone 5 have an 8-megapixel camera?

We’re recently reported that very few new features appear to be solid for the iPhone 5. But a recent slip-up by the Sony CEO suggests that an 8-megapixel camera might be a definite upgrade for the next iPhone. read Charles Moore’s new article:
MacNN, Appleinsider,, CNET, and several other Apple-watcher sites reported over the weekend that Sony CEO Howard Stringer may have inadvertently revealed that Apple is gearing up to equip the iPhone 5 with an eight-megapixel camera.
9To5Mac’s Seth Weintraub, who attended the event, reports that Stringer, in a Talking Tech with Sony event interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in New York, commented that his company’s camera sensor plant at Sendai, Japan, is among 15 of the company’s facilities damaged by last month’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, and that the supply interruption will delay shipments of sensors to Apple. Since Sony sensors are not used in the iPhone versions 4 and 3GS, which employ 5-megapixel and 3.2 megapixel OmniVision camera sensors respectively, it’s not a major deductive leap to infer that the higher-resolution CMOS sensors sourced from Sony would most likely be destined for the next revision iPhone 5.
A PhoneArena blog from six weeks ago notes that OmniVision shares nosedived last summer when a rumor spread that due partly to complaints about a yellowish color shift in still photos shot with the OmniVision sensor camera, Apple might be moving to Sony for its next generation iPhone camera sensors — possibly Sony’s Exmor R sensor unit that is used in the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc and Xperia neo. That 8MP sensor is backlit to help it finesse low light conditions, similar to the way the iPhone 4′s 5MP OmniVision sensor does. Indeed, rumors of Apple dropping OmniVision in favor of Sony as its iPhone camera supplier are longstanding.
PhoneArena also reports that OmniVision has announced that it has an 8MP camera sensor of its own coming, the OV8820, which incorporates the same low-light performance enhancements, plus HD video at 60fps, and Full HD at 30fps, and which had been projected to begin mass production in March, but that production problems have occurred.
Not everyone agrees that Apple will use Sony CMOC camera sensors in the iPhone 5. Analyst Yair Reiner of Wall Street’s Oppenheimer & Co. is quoted by Appleinisider isaying he expects OmniVision to remain Apple’s camera supplier for the fifth-generation iPhone, corroborated by checks with contacts in Apple’s supply channels, dismissing the notion an Apple-Sony hook-up as “rather silly.”
Whatever, regardless of whether the iPhone 5‘s camera supplier is to be OmniVision or Sony, it looks like camera sensor supply problems may be a significant factor in Apple’s evidently postponing the iPhone 5 introduction from an anticipated Worldwide Developer’s Conference release until some time later in the year. With the iPad 2′s camera performance being that unit’s most unanimously panned feature in reviews, Apple will want to get the camera right in the iPhone 5, where it is arguably a much more important feature than it is with the tablet product.
Also, with Sony Ericsson rumored to be getting 12MP+ camera equipped phones ready for summer release, Apple will need at least the 8MP sensors to remain even ballpark competitive in that context.

<< Read Now >>