Monday, March 24, 2008

3G iPhone To Have 2-Way Video Conferencing?


That's the word according to Kevin Rose. He says the 3G iPhone will have both a main camera and smaller, lower-resolution, user-facing camera. It will have 3G, and the capability to conduct two-way video calls. Too band most of Rose's predictions don't come true.

Who knows how Rose (founder of Digg) managed to get his hands on this information. He's previously predicted--erroneously--that the iPhone would have two battery compartments, a slide-out keyboard, and would come in both GSM (AT&T (NYSE: T), T-Mobile, et al.) and CDMA (Sprint (NYSE: S), Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless, et al.) flavors. None of that materialized.

So why should we trust this newest prediction? Well, why not?

We need more phones with this video-sharing capability on board. It's definitely a fun way to interact with people over the phone. Trouble is, you need 3G signal to do it.

Right now, AT&T offers video sharing, which is a one-way video-sending service. This means one person can film something and show it to someone else. Both the sender and the receiver need to be in 3G coverage zones, however.

It's also really expensive. You can buy either 25 minutes or 60 minutes worth of sharing time from AT&T, and neither is cheap. Two-way video conferencing will likely be more expensive.

But for now, the 3G iPhone hasn't been even hinted at from Apple. Will this prediction pan out for good ole' Kevin? We should know if a few short months.

[Source: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/3g_iphone_to_ha.html]

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