IPhone Needs A New Brain

Will Apple's wonder gadget get more memory? Will it come in different colors? Who cares. A new processor is what it really needs.

Will the iPhone get more flash memory? Will it get new features, like a compass?

Who cares. What the iPhone really needs is a new processor. And there is no sign, yet, that it will get one.

Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) alluded to the problem in March, when it introduced new software for its smart phones. The reason it doesn't run more than one third-party application at a time, Scott Forstall, Apple's vice president for iPhone software development explained, is because such work will drain the battery too quickly.

It's more than just a power-management problem, however. "One of the drawbacks of the iPhone right now is it can only [run] one application at a time," says Will Strauss, president of wireless market research firm Forward Concepts. With a more powerful processor, he adds, the iPhone could run several applications concurrently.

Apple's rivals are already heading down that path. Palm is pushing out a new phone based around Texas Instrument's ( TXN - news - people ) OMAP3430 processor. One of the Pre's key features: the ability to show the user information from more than one application at a time. The software makes it slick, but TI's hardware makes that possible.

Apple, meanwhile, relies on an application processor from Samsung. There are two problems there. For starters, Samsung also sells smart phones, allowing it to give its phones the same capabilities, on paper, as Apple's iPhone. The bigger problem, however, is just about muscle. The relatively dinky processor can't match the TI model's power.

There are several possible solutions. Samsung could build a new processor around the same ARM Cortex-A8 architecture TI uses, or Apple could switch to TI, Strauss suggests. Alternatively, Apple could build a processor of its own, presumably one based on the ARM-architecture, with the chip designers it picked up last year with its acquisition of PA Semi (see "Apple Buys Chip Designer").

There are no signs that Apple is doing that--yet. Then again, if Apple were, it would likely keep such a move a very tightly guarded secret, because it would be the only information about its new phone that would really matter.