From the time it was released until today, one of the many gripes about the iPhone is its lack of video-recording capabilities (and MMS and copy/paste, we know). For the time being, only those who jailbreak their iPhones can enjoy video recording with apps like Cycorder. While nothing has been confirmed yet, it would appear as though those iPhone patents that set the Internet on fire just a week ago reveal details that could hint at video for the iPhone. Alexander Wolfe of InformationWeek did a bit of digging into Apple’s patent documentation and has come up with some pretty interesting data that everyone else (including those who have done some serious analysis of Apple’s patents) seem to have missed. The patent states:
“The device supports a variety of applications, such as one or more of the following: a telephone application, a video conferencing application, an e-mail application, an instant messaging application, a blogging application, a photo management application, a digital camera application, a digital video camera application, a Web browsing application, a digital music player application, and/or a digital video player application.”
Does this mean that Apple is planning on bringing video to the next generation iPhone? Maybe. Or maybe it could be covering all their bases, just in case. One can hope, right? What the patent also reveals is that video-conferencing could be in store for the future as well:
“In some embodiments, the functions may include telephoning, video conferencing, e-mailing, instant messaging, blogging, digital photographing, digital videoing, Web browsing, digital music playing, and/or digital video playing. Instructions for performing these functions may be included in a computer-readable storage medium or other computer program product configured for execution by one or more processors.”
Right now, all anyone can do is speculate. The patent does show signs of potential for video-recording, video-conferencing and a host of other cool features; whether or not these features will actually come to fruition remains to be seen. We’ll just have to hope Apple doesn’t plan to sit on these patents and twiddle its thumbs.
