Do you think video recording is a possible update for the iPhone?

no. The camera does not have the capacity

If you don’t mind me asking KimboSlice, why?

no i would think you have to buy a new i phone when it can do that

i wish. that would be awesome.
i hate how it doesn’t have one.

@Kimbo: Why not?

LOL why did iPhone cost so much when it can’t do a basic function like take video? I know how apple schemes us though, the next iPhone will be able to take video and all of us poor saps will buy it ;(

not enough memory

The iPhone can take video. There is a third party application available for jailbroken iPhones. Apple merely needs to implement software to support it.

Also, to say 8 GB is not enough capacity for video is untrue. At these resolutions, its way more than enough.

the jailbreak software only allows videos for up to 5 seconds… And yes it is very much a memory issue and operating speed

lol why are the iPones so popular again? Seems to me they cant do anything a basic phone can.

Its a status symbol. And pure touchscreen is neato

I got an iPhone for all the features it does have. Suits me fine, wouldn’t trade it for anything else out there right now. Not sure how much I would use the video function. Previously, I had a Sidekick II with T-Mobile.

The 5 second limit appears to be more of an incentive to get people to donate money to the developer.

And I disagree that the is a “memory issue and operating speed” situation. My crappy free phone from 3 years ago shoots video and my iPhone is going to be running Spore in a few months. The limitations are only in software.

@bmrumble
I totally agree with you! And Spore is going to be awesome!

The iPhone has 128mb of active memory, which is around 110mb more than your average handset.

Memory is not the issue, Apple is simply yet to introduce this feature.

There are jailbreak apps available for the iPhone that do video, writing to the flash once random memory space has been consumed.

One possible reason for the lack of this feature could be down to the fact that many iPhones are almost full of music and photos, and that video at the resolution of the iPhone display would chew memory pretty fast. Still seems pretty debilitating in my opinion.

Memory, processor speed and storage space are non-issues. Like Flash support, it’s probably a decision based on battery life and overall user experience. Apple has a tendency to want something to work as close to perfect as possible from the end-user standpoint. Video would make major dents in the battery life and I can imagine there are some software issues as well. Remember that the OS for an iPhone is much more complex than the simpler OS you will find on most phones.

When the Blackberry launched, it didn’t have video capture either do to the complexity.

@soundedfury: Why would an Iphone video take up anymore battery life than watching videos on YouTube from your phone?

I have seen Iphones take video and it seems to work just fine?? Hmmm.

In order for the iPhone to grab video, it has to compress it. Compression is power hungry, which means it is battery hungry. Video playback is already compressed in H.264.

If you’ve ever played with any digital camera, you know you can playback many, many more videos than you can record new videos per charge.

@soundedfury:
Thank you. It’s for things like this that I just love this site.

so i’m guessing overall the chance of recording is
slim to none?

I think the chances are good in the long run, but not likely until after the next revision (which should be June). I’d be surprised if it was included in the upcoming revision.

Well, keep in mind that third party apps will have access to things the wifi antenna and the camera. If someone develops a video recording app, do you think Apple is likely to deny it? It’ll be interesting to see what happens.