iPhone OS 3.2 SDK reveals video chat functionality for future iPhone / iPad

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Video-chat-icons

What you are looking at is a screenshot of the contents of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK, and those circled files? Look at their names. That’s just About as clear an indication as there can be that a forthcoming iPhone, the iPad or both will be able to make video calls.

That’s not all. 9to5Mac has also dug up some references in some of iPad’s telephony applications of imbedded video chat strings.

For the iPhone, it’s pretty easy to guess what this means: an iPhone 4G with a forward-facing camera as well as a back-mounted one (or, even more elegantly, a single swivel-able camer capable of pointing both forwards and back… although that would likely require a substantial change to the iPhone’s streamlined, iconic design).

But could this mean that the iPad will support video chat after all? Although there’s been no announcement of a camera in the iPad, it seems like Steve Jobs’ iPad already had one, and a slot for iSight camera is already built into the frame.

Could Apple simply have held this announcement back to make sure that the addition of a camera module to the iPad didn’t hold back the ship date (similar to the way the last iPod Touch ditched its planned camera module at the 11th hour)? Or, more cynically, is Apple simply leaving out iPad video chat for the first generation so as not to tarnish the luster of the forthcoming iPhone update?

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