As a followup to my entry regarding those possible iPod + Phone hybrid rumors:
[ Eddy Cue, Apple's VP for applications ] has revealed that the company is working on a cell phone capable of playing songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store, due for release during the first half of 2005, in collaboration with long-term partner Motorola.
Well, that makes it more or less official, if not exactly tangible yet. Still no details or specs anywhere, but that’s to be expected I suppose. I’m still debating with myself if a music player + phone is the ideal combination, because personally I’m still leaning toward a camera + phone hybrid. I’m pretty sure that no matter how fancy that iPodPhone is going to be, it won’t have a 20-gig hard drive on it just yet, and i can’t really move my collection on to anything smaller.
In my mind, the perfect device would be based around a PocketPC like the O2 XDA (from the range of O2 mobile phones). It already has a camera, GSM and GPRS, IR/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi connectivity and a fairly large (1800 mAh) battery. All you have to do is slap on a 20-gig 1.8″ Toshiba drive, and hey presto! The perfect portable device. Of course, a machine like this would probably end up cannibalizing the entire digital jukebox and portable video player markets, not to mention take big heaping chunks of the entry-level laptop market as well. Man, can you just imagine what that would be like? It’d be a new age, where everyone walks around with huge geeky smiles on their faces and oodles of media traveling around with them in their shirt pockets.
Sigh.
I can’t wait for next year.