I actually haven’t got a clue, but Sagee told me I should write such a post so I did. Let’s see how it goes…

iPhone OS 4.0 is now “out”. If you are looking for the official feature list, one of the best places for that would be Kevin C. Tofel’s post over at GigaOm. If there’s any quote from that post that you need to remember it’s this one:

“… But the implementation approach and polish of these new features are actually revolutionary because they don’t merely re-purpose the PC implementations of each task but are instead redesigned for mobile use.”

We’ll get back to this one later.

What is the most interesting development on the iPhone OS 4.0 for VoIP developers? The ability to run applications in the background, for sure – you can now write code that will work as if you are in charge of the phone. On this angle, you can read what Stuart Henshall wisely wrote about telecoms and social networks on iPhone OS 4.0:

“Unfortunately this means… VoIP on the iPhone is really just a dumb pipe. What’s important is the CallerID. Rich CallerID’s will get you more”

His whole post deserves your attention – it deals with what social network companies and VoIP companies should be doing now that multitasking is available on the iPhone.

To me, though, this isn’t earth shattering or even important. The more interesting news came in the after effect – when rumors began yet again on hidden features within this latest OS version. Particularly the ones about traces of video chat in the iPhone. And they came from a respected source – Greg Kumparak from MobileCrunch, who is following the discovery made by 9 to 5 Mac.

Where does that lead us?

Two options, I guess: either they will have video chat on the iPhone or they won’t.

Yes, The  iPhone will Have Video Chat

If they do, then we’re in for a real treat.

Apple is the king of user experience. With all the hurdles wrought by mobile video telephony, Apple will probably come up with some new and amazing way of running mobile video telephony – redesigning it for mobile use, as Kevin would say in this case.

I am hard pressed to believe that this is possible with today’s technology, but Apple might surprise me. And if they do, then I’m really interested to see what their user experience will look like.

When all is said and done, there will be consequences:

• Success for Apple in such a case will cause others to jump on the bandwagon of the mobile video chatting world, which will be good to a lot of companies who supply technologies to that end (RADVISION included).
• On the other hand, Skype, Google Voice, Truphone and the rest of the VoIP based telephony or video chatting pack will be hard pressed. Apple will provide its own service that provides a unique and improved experience compared to what they will be able to offer on their devices, they will need to move on to other mobile devices. And this uniqueness comes on top of the current set of hurdles of mobile VoIP.
• It might come down to opening up the visual communication market even further (not that it needs saving, but hell, it’s always the case with Apple).

No, This is Just Another Rumor

That’s the easy bet. Most of the rumors around Apple are false. They are actually known for spreading rumors around – it helps their stock, and I guess it also provides them with tons of free advice and customer insight that other companies actually need to work in order to receive.

Some Apple programmer merged various products that Apple is developing, caused these texts to get into the code and just forgot to throw them out – he probably didn’t even see them.

Another option for the conspiracy guys? Apple placed it there on purpose just to have some rumors floating around. Steve is probably sitting in his office, laughing at all the huff and puff of the posts out there around this thing, thinking of the next gimmicky thingamajig to leave inside the compiled OS – got to keep them rumors going.

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My bet?

No front facing camera and no video chatting. Not for the iPhone and not for the iPad.

If the rumors are true, then my feeling is that Apple were actually planning to add that, but got into some road bumps along the way. They found out that hosting such a service on a large scale is immensely hard, and that doing video chatting on a mobile device is far from easy. They simply ran out of time for the launch of this version and will continue working it for a later one.

You can say I took the safe road by not deciding between the two options and selected something in-between. I was never a decisive person…