iPhone 4GS? Save it for next year

As best I can tell, none of us on staff have made that particular typo anywhere on Beatweek.com, so I have no idea why the search engines have seen fit to begin sending people our way who were looking for something called an iPhone 4GS. Still, I can understand how some confused users who aren’t familiar with the how or the why behind iPhone naming conventions could mistakenly think that it might be the name of the next model: there was an iPhone 3G, then an iPhone 3GS, so why not an iPhone 4GS next? Well, that requires some explaining.

The iPhone 3G was actually the second generation iPhone model; its name derived from its adoption of the “3G” cellular data network. With the third generation iPhone, Apple was stuck in something of a bind as far as names and ended up with “iPhone 3GS” as a way of signifying that it was still a 3G device, still the same physical design, and yet featured various hardware upgrades (as Apple put it, the “S” stood for “speed”). Now with the next iPhone set to presumably roll out in June 2010, the nomenclature actually is in question, as “iPhone 4G” would signify the fact that it will be the fourth generation iPhone, but would also incorrectly imply that the device will use the 4G network, which doesn’t exist yet (despite Sprint’s claims to the contrary). But while we don’t yet know whether the next iPhone will be called “iPhone 4G” as Apple hasn’t yet officially even admitted that a new iPhone is coming, it’s reasonably safe to assume that the next model won’t be called iPhone 4GS. However, it is possible that the company could find suit to use such a name in 2011 when it rolls out the next iPhone after that.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I primarily created this page because if web searchers are going to land on this site after searching for “iPhone 4GS” then I’d rather they land on this page, where they can get an explanation as to what the iPhone’s various model names really mean, as opposed to some other random page on the site. As for the rest of you, perhaps you found it enlightening as well. At the very least you might get a kick out of the fact that so many people are out there hunting around for information on the new iPhone 4GS.