Apple is indeed working on a new hardware revision of its popular iPhone smartphone, according to the information in the latest firmware for iPhones. The new model may not necessarily be an affordable version of the device, but a redesigned version of the fully-fledged iPhone.

MacRumours web-site has discovered that the latest Apple iPhone 2.x firmware contains mention of the iPhone2,1 device, which is not yet available as the original iPhone was internally called iPhone1,1, whereas the iPhone 3G was designated as iPhone1,2. The web-site claims that these numbers do not change for simple storage increases and instead represent functionally different devices.

Considering the fact that “2,1” revision of iPod touch added a speaker, volume controls, microphone support and a much faster processor compared to the “1,1” version, it may be assumed that the “2,1” flavour of the iPhone will also feature rather dramatic changes.

There are lot of rumours and no actual information regarding the next-generation iPhone. Back in September ’08 Wei-han Lien, the senior manager of Apple’s chip team, said in an entry at LinkedIn web-site that he managed “ARM CPU architecture team for iPhone”. However, sources familiar with Apple’s plans implied earlier in 2008 that the company did have plans to put Intel Atom inside the iPhone, but that would cause Apple to re-create its software for the device.

Apple did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Apple, iPhone