A part listing from an iPod replacement parts vendor has led to speculation that this fall’s iPod Touch refresh will include not only the higher-resolution “retina display” of the iPhone 4, but also the iPhone 4’s front and back cameras and FaceTime video chat. Our sister blog AppleTell has more details on the rumor.
The notion of a camera coming to the iPod Touch is not a new one. Rumors of an iPod Touch camera abounded last year, sparked by an Apple job posting “looking for a Camera Engineering Project Manager (EPM) to drive the design, development and integration of camera modules across iPhone and iPod”.
So perhaps the rumors were just a year early. We’ve certainly seen the “design, development, and integration” of a new camera module into the iPhone, with the iPhone 4. It should stand to reason that the iPod Touch should be next. Certainly, given that FaceTime can only be used over wifi now, it should be just as usable with the iPod Touch as with the iPhone (though as AppleTell points out, they’ll have to come up with something other than phone numbers to use as identifiers for iPod Touch FaceTimers).
The addition of a camera could have implications other than just FaceTime, of course. iPod Touch owners could use the augmented-reality apps that are becoming all the rage, and it would also mean that OCR-for-the-blind applications (such as the one we covered here) could be developed for the iPod Touch. For that matter, OCR applications could be developed for the sighted, as well. (There are already services such as Evernote that will OCR and index the text of photos stored on their servers, after all.)
On a related note, AppleTell also reports on a tiny square Apple touchscreen, 1.7” in diameter, whose photos have started circulating online. Will future Mac laptops be getting touchscreen touchpads? Are the iPod Classics going to get touchscreens (and if so, will anyone try e-reading on them)? Or is it just a prototype that will never actually see the light of day? It’s going to be interesting finding out.
