There have been plenty of leaks already about Apple’s next iPhone, including hi-res images of leaked parts and a number of leaked hardware features. The newest rumor about Apple’s next iPhone is especially interesting however, suggesting that the device may have wireless file sharing between Macs and other iOS devices!
According to the report, the next iPhone will feature the Broadcom BCM4334 radio chipset, which includes support for WiFi Direct and Bluetooth 4.0. This could see the device include a form of AirDrop – a wireless file sharing feature introduced in OS X Lion.
All of these Macs have the built-in Wi-Fi Direct on dual-band Wi-Fi cards. The new iPhone will be the first iOS device that meets Apple’s standard for AirDrop. Therefore, we could easily see the Lion adhoc file-sharing protocol added to iOS 6.
It certainly gives Apple a reason to bump up the Wi-Fi chip to this more expensive dual-mode version that was just announced in late February. Wi-Fi Direct is used in more and more printers as well, but its main purpose is to make wireless file-sharing extremely easy, just as Google does in its Galaxy Nexus devices.
In addition to enabling wireless file sharing, the new chipset also features much lower power usage for WiFi, including dramatically reduced standby power consumption. The power savings offered by the chip would help offset the increased power drain from the inclusion of 4G LTE support.
It also supports the use of two network connections at the same time – one for connecting to a WiFi network, and another for WiFi direct, making it an even more ideal candidate for the next iPhone.
