Apple released a minor update to the iPhone's firmware, version 2.2.1, the other day. According to MacRumors.com, the upgrade holds a nice little secret—a new iPhone may be in the offing.
The firmware's USBDeviceConfiguration.plist indicates that Apple may be prepping a new version of the iPhone.
You see, a mystery iPhone model is referenced as iPhone2,1 in the firmware (see image from MacRumors.com) , the same iPhone designation seen by at least one developer in an ad server report.
The USBDeviceConfiguration.plist references the original iPhone as iPhone1,1 and the iPhone 3G as iPhone1,2. With the mystery iPhone model, the 1 has become a 2 (a new generation, perhaps?) and the 2 in the iPhone 3G designation has become a 1 (making it the first version in that new iPhone series, maybe?). These leaves open the possibility that iPhone2,1 is referring to a new generation of iPhone.
Unfortunately, that's just about all that can be extrapolated from iPhone firmware 2.2.1. Seeing as a new iPhone is probably months a way, its new surprise we're short on rumored details right now.
One thing we know for sure is that the supposed new iPhone model won't be the much-rumored about smaller and cheaper iPhone Nano version of the iPhone. When asked about that possibility during Apple's earnings call last week, company COO put the kibosh on that rumor. Cook said:
You know us, we're not going to play in the low-end voice phone business. That's not who we are. That's not why we're here. We'll let somebody do that, our goal is not to be the unit share leader in the phone industry. It is to build the best phone.
Let's hope the new iPhone model, whatever it turns out to be, is a real improvement over the current model, which -- other than the addition of 3G -- was not much of an upgrade (internally hardware-wise) over the original iPhone.
Rumor has it the next generation iPhone model will feature a quad-core processor, far more powerful than the CPU in the current generation iPhone. It may even get a considerable boost in the graphics department with a jump up to a multi-core GPU as well.